# The One Hundred Most Influential People In History Elimination Game **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [April 6, 2010, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103 "2010-04-06T02:12:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/41 "2010-04-06T15:30:44Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > No one would claim Hart’s list is perfect, but his book does explain some of his odd-looking choices: > The idea that without JFK there might have been no Moon landing does _not_ seem farfetched. Certainly the political climate over at least the last 30 years would make such a “boondoggle” impossible. > > As for Queen Isabella, Hart acknowledges her husband’s influence, but gives preference to Isabella alone since, unlike with the Wright Brothers, she was clearly dominant. (I wouldn’t mind typing in excerpts from Hart’s arguments, if/when the game’s criterion is changed.) Yeah, but JFK is on the list for the same reason that QI1 is: they financed expeditions. Sorry, but to make the list of the 100 most influential people in history I think you have to do better than _that_, especially if you’re crowding out such influencers as John Rockefeller, Bardeen-Shockley-Brittain (inventors of the transistor), or [Norman Borlaug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Borlaug) (father of the Green Revolution, estimated to have saved a billion people (and counting!) from starvation from 1960-onwards). (Btw, I read this book in its first edition, way back in the late 70s, early 80s, and I have a copy of the 1991 edition on my shelf.) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/42 "2010-04-06T15:37:48Z")
Nitpick: Vasco de Gama did not discover the Cape of Good Hope. Bartolomeu Dias had already reached it - de Gama followed his course to it - and it was known from hearsay already. What de Gama _did_ do was round it in order to reach India. It seems to me that anyone from the last two or three centuries is automatically excluded. After all, they’ve only influenced two or three hundred years of human history. Anyway, with that in mind, Nicholas Otto has got to go. There are far more influential people in terms of the internal combustion engine and automobiles alone (such as Karl Benz). ETA: Wait, are we making judgments about positive/negative contributions? Why? ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/43 "2010-04-06T15:41:09Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Based on Hart’s list. You get one vote and the top vote-getter gets eliminated. > > 1. Jesus Christ-Son of God, Saviour of Mankind, Founder of Christianity Give me a break. :rolleyes: Buh-BYE, “Son of God.” Jesus is out. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/44 "2010-04-06T15:44:26Z")
Interesting that you refer to Jesus as the founder of Christianity, **Curtis**. Do you not believe in Jesus’ divinity? Deities don’t get credit for “founding” their own worship. Otherwise, God is the founder of Judaism, Ahriman becomes the founder of Zoroastrianism, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/45 "2010-04-06T15:48:25Z")
I wish the OP had spelled out more clearly: is he asking us to vote out the person we DISLIKE most, or the one we don’t really think was all that influential? Most people are voting for the one they DISLIKE, it appears, and that includes the OP. Because only a fool would suggest that Jesus of Nazareth and Karl Marx weren’t among the most important people in human history. I’d vote Beethoven off, because as much as I love much of his music, he just isn’t that important. He didn’t change the world in any appreciable way. There are many composers whose msuic was just as impressive, and who were. So, I vote for Beethoven. He just wasn’t a heavy hitter. But it was completely predictable that, given the makeup of the SDMB regulars, Jesus would get the boot first. Silly, but predictable. ---
**Author:** ![Hawkeyeop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/958977/32.png) [@Hawkeyeop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hawkeyeop)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/46 "2010-04-06T15:53:34Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > I wish the OP had spelled out more clearly: is he asking us to vote out the person we DISLIKE most, or the one we don’t really think was all that influential? > > Most people are voting for the one they DISLIKE, it appears, and that includes the OP. > > Because only a fool would suggest that Jesus of Nazareth and Karl Marx weren’t among the most important people in human history. You appear to have missed where he did spell it out later. > [@](#): > > You are supposed to pick the person who had the most negative or if that’s not the case the least positive amount of influence on History. I don’t dislike Jesus or think he wasn’t among the most important. But if we are asking who had the most negative affect on the history I stick by my answer. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/47 "2010-04-06T15:54:18Z")
I am voting Jesus…for the lulz. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/48 "2010-04-06T15:58:42Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Christianity helped established a morality of universal love, and promoted human equality which are the foundations of Western civilization. That morality existed long before Christianity, and it’s hardly a foundatiuon of western civilization. Capitalism is the foundation of western civilization. Constantine probably had more practical influence than either Jesus or Paul simply by making it the state religion of the Roman empire. He could have just as easily made it the Sol Invictus cult, and that would have become the dominant western religion. The growth of Christianity had more to do with the swords behind it than its content. I would also dispute that, in terms of actual philosophical content, that it been very influential at all. Modern culture is far more driven by capitalism than anything else, and western style democracy was inspired by Greco-Roman democratic models, not by Christianity. For my own answer, I’m not sure I could narrow it down to one, but I think that inventors are probably at the top of the list in terms of real world, practical influence. Henry Ford’s invention of the automobile has had _enormous_ ramifications, from the micro to the macro level. By the way, Moses doesn’t belong on the list. Moses is a fictional character. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/49 "2010-04-06T16:02:01Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Your rules and pick, OP, lead to making Jesus a natural choice: you say to “to pick the person who had the most negative or if that’s not the case the least positive amount of influence on History.” Most negative comes first, and only if there’s no negative does one consider the positive. > > Furthermore, you pick Marx not only because of his influence on Stalin, but also because of Hitler’s reaction to Marx. > > Given Marx’s strident reaction against religion (and Christianity in particular), your reasoning makes it clear that we need to lay all of Marx’s faults–including Hitler’s reaction against Marx–at Jesus’s feet. > > Again, we don’t consider the positive effects of the leaders, so all of the good (and it’s considerable) done by Jesus’s followers doesn’t count in his favor, any more than child labor laws (passed in the early 20th century at the behest of socialist leaders) go in Marx’s favor. > > So I reluctantly have to vote Jesus, at the same time complaining about the contest rules. Every person on this list has had some negative effect on humanity so who’s negative effect rules out the postive effects the most? Hopefully that’s clarified. Also moderate socialism existed before Marx. Marxism and communism’s most unique thought was socialist goals achieved through violent revolution rather than reason or democracy, thus child labour laws is not from Marx. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > It’ll be interesting if we actually follow through on Curtis’ plan and vote people out based on their moral influence. Once we got past the first dozen or so, we’d be facing some unusual choices. Who, for example, had a more negative influence on history: Euclid or Planck? Well whoever benefited humanity more. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/50 "2010-04-06T16:04:53Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > That morality existed long before Christianity, and it’s hardly a foundatiuon of western civilization. Capitalism is the foundation of western civilization. > > Constantine probably had more practical influence than either Jesus or Paul simply by making it the state religion of the Roman empire. He could have just as easily made it the Sol Invictus cult, and that would have become the dominant western religion. The growth of Christianity had more to do with the swords behind it than its content. I would also dispute that, in terms of actual philosophical content, that it been very influential at all. Modern culture is far more driven by capitalism than anything else, and western style democracy was inspired by Greco-Roman democratic models, not by Christianity. > > For my own answer, I’m not sure I could narrow it down to one, but I think that inventors are probably at the top of the list in terms of real world, practical influence. Henry Ford’s invention of the automobile has had _enormous_ ramifications, from the micro to the macro level. > By the way, Moses doesn’t belong on the list. Moses is a fictional character. How? Actually quite a few people on the list _could_ be fictional: Ts’ai Lun, Lao Tzu, and Homer to name a few. Also according to the New Chronology theory everyone before the fifteenth century is fictional. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/51 "2010-04-06T16:08:14Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > How? Actually quite a few people on the list _could_ be fictional: Ts’ai Lun, Lao Tzu, and Homer to name a few. Also according to the New Chronology theory everyone before the fifteenth century is fictional. If it helps, it’s because Moses isn’t mentioned anywhere outside the Bible. I think that’s good enough. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/52 "2010-04-06T16:14:10Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > For my own answer, I’m not sure I could narrow it down to one, but I think that inventors are probably at the top of the list in terms of real world, practical influence. Henry Ford’s invention of the automobile has had _enormous_ ramifications, from the micro to the macro level. This is especially impressive considering that Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/53 "2010-04-06T16:28:37Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > How? How is Moses fictional? He’s fictional because he never existed. The entire Exodus story is mythology. The Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt, never escaped or wandered in Sianai, never returned to Canaan and conquered it. None of that ever happened. The Israelites were an indigenous, Canaanite subculture, and they never left Canaan, never went to Egypt and never returned to conquer anything. There is no role for a “Moses” in any of that. He is a pure fiction (probably based on the Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmose I retrofitted as an Israelite hero to help create a romantic origin myth centuries late (the Exodus story was probably a garbled interpretation of the Hyksos expulsion). > [@](#): > > Actually quite a few people on the list _could_ be fictional: Ts’ai Lun, Lao Tzu, and Homer to name a few. Also according to the New Chronology theory everyone before the fifteenth century is fictional. Yes, I should have scanned the list more closely. Obviously, no fictional characters belong on it, though I suppose that “Homer” could be tautologically defined only as the athour (or authors) of the Homeric epics, which had to be composed by _somebody_. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/54 "2010-04-06T16:32:46Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Every person on this list has had some negative effect on humanity so who’s negative effect rules out the postive effects the most? Hopefully that’s clarified. That’s totally different from what you said before. Unless you plan to invalidate all votes so far, you need to think about what you want to do with this little game. > [@](#): > > Also moderate socialism existed before Marx. Marxism and communism’s most unique thought was socialist goals achieved through violent revolution rather than reason or democracy, thus child labour laws is not from Marx. Err…have you READ any Marx? Setting his ideology aside, he’s one of the most important and influential economists in history: he’s right up there with Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes. Your description of Marx’s most unique thought (I deliberately substituted “Marx’s” for “Marxism and communism’s,” since your use of the latter phrase renders your sentence a non sequitur) is completely off-base. Probably Marx’s most unique thought is the labor theory of value. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/55 "2010-04-06T16:41:33Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > This is especially impressive considering that Henry Ford didn’t invent the automobile. :dubious: Impertinent pedantry. ---
**Author:** ![Knorf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/58956e/32.png) [@Knorf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Knorf)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/56 "2010-04-06T16:43:02Z")
By the way, is it really right that so few women are on this list? For example, women’s suffrage is unquestionably one of the major social changes in human history, and yet not a single woman leader of the suffrage movement is on the list. The patriarchal nature of most of human history necessarily would lead to more men being on the list, but it seems to me the list goes too far in ignoring the accomplishments of women that are comparable to those of many men who are on the list. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/57 "2010-04-06T16:47:42Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Also moderate socialism existed before Marx. Marxism and communism’s most unique thought was socialist goals achieved through violent revolution rather than reason or democracy, thus child labour laws is not from Marx. It’s certainly [nothing to do with the conservative movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child). ---
**Author:** ![MsWhatsit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/eb8c5e/32.png) [@MsWhatsit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MsWhatsit)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/58 "2010-04-06T16:49:43Z")
**Curtis** , I recommend you seriously think about what you want the rules of this game to be - solicit advice here in this thread if you want; I think that might help you - and restart it. As it is, you’ve changed the guidelines twice already and it’s just a terrible mish-mash and destined not to be very interesting. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/59 "2010-04-06T16:51:29Z")
Seems like LHoD had a good plan: > [@](#): > > … Perhaps you could ask for it to be closed and to start a new one with better rules, tightening up both the criteria (talking about influence rather than negative/positive) and shortening the voting period? Maybe you could the people into sets based on the digit in the ones place in their listing, thus making fairly heterogeneous sets, and people could vote one person in each set off the island per round; then at the end of the game, the winners of each set go into a set together for a final series of eliminations. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103/60 "2010-04-06T16:56:15Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > How is Moses fictional? He’s fictional because he never existed. The entire Exodus story is mythology. The Israelites were never enslaved in Egypt, never escaped or wandered in Sianai, never returned to Canaan and conquered it. None of that ever happened. The Israelites were an indigenous, Canaanite subculture, and they never left Canaan, never went to Egypt and never returned to conquer anything. There is no role for a “Moses” in any of that. He is a pure fiction (probably based on the Egyptian Pharaoh Ahmose I retrofitted as an Israelite hero to help create a romantic origin myth centuries late (the Exodus story was probably a garbled interpretation of the Hyksos expulsion). > > Yes, I should have scanned the list more closely. Obviously, no fictional characters belong on it, though I suppose that “Homer” could be tautologically defined only as the athour (or authors) of the Homeric epics, which had to be composed by _somebody_. Similarly someone had to create the Mosaic Law and develop the Jewish religion. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That’s totally different from what you said before. Unless you plan to invalidate all votes so far, you need to think about what you want to do with this little game. To give an example Newton’s science may have ended up creating advanced weaponary so should he be eliminated? > [@Knorf](#): > > By the way, is it really right that so few women are on this list? > > For example, women’s suffrage is unquestionably one of the major social changes in human history, and yet not a single woman leader of the suffrage movement is on the list. > > The patriarchal nature of most of human history necessarily would lead to more men being on the list, but it seems to me the list goes too far in ignoring the accomplishments of women that are comparable to those of many men who are on the list. The author in his introduction mentioned this: he did not want to include token women just to be politically correct. He just ranked those who were important and nothing else. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It’s certainly [nothing to do with the conservative movement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child). Correct: it was the Progressive movement at least here in the US. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-one-hundred-most-influential-people-in-history-elimination-game/535103.md?page=4)