4 ms·

At subsistence levels, it is not unlikely that all but the most basic human learning would be lost to active memory in a generation or two. While the species wi

At subsistence levels, it is not unlikely that all but the most basic human learning would be lost to active memory in a generation or two. While the species will persist, the ability to live as flailing gods will not. I wonder, how do we preserve our science across such gaps in ability to sustain it. Should we even bother?

electromagnetic 16y ago
I'm sorry but there's been several occasions in human history where civilization has fully collapsed (region specific) and lost the written word (namely proto-greece) but fully recovered with no outside influence. If something doesn't spell our doom either in the short term or in the moderately-short term then we will quickly recover from where we left off. A generation or two of subsistence living will not entirely wipe out human civilization. No one is going to have to reinvent the wheel, because we've got so many present in our civilization that they could easily be scavenged for hundreds of years before the quantity became depleted and it would likely take a good thousand years before someone couldn't find an 'original wheel' to at least take inspiration from. Aluminium alloy wheels have such high proportions of aluminium in them that even the exceptionally slow oxidization (I work in siding and I can tell you that 20 year old aluminium siding barely has marks on it and it's paper thick, a few pounds would take millennia to degrade but would likely still be clearly recognizable). If we're really concerned about our longevity I'd suggest manufacturing information arcs that can teach the major language of the geographical area allowing people 100 years down the road to access the knowledge stored when civilization recovers. It would have to be built for longevity and nothing else (IE it can't easily be recovered for materials by scavengers or used to draw power). Essentially you'd want a very long life RTG to power a multiple redundancy computer system and basically load encyclopaedias and patent databases and an archive of literature, magazines and journals.
- troutwine 16y ago
  To be sure, though I think that the no outside influence restriction is a bit contrary to the archeological record. Though I didn't make it clear, what concerns me are not the coarse technologies of life--wheels and pottery and what not--but more fine, non-obvious innovations. Consider concrete: with the dissolution of the Roman political structure the secrets of concrete were lost. It took 13 centuries, until the 1750s, to rediscover its formula. During that time, public works were greatly retarded. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon (whose buildings rarely had windows for stability purposes) culture produced a rather famous poem we now call The Ruins in which Roman ruins are attributed to the works of giants. What concerns me is not the transmitting of basic machines across the simplification of a society, to use Joseph Tainter's jargon, but, rather, difficult, contextual knowledge. Our knowledge of Mathematics, for example, was preserved by luck: the Byzantine Empire harbored enough learned individuals and archivists until such a time as the Crusades swept through. All of my work simply assumes an industrial, technological civilization with advanced computational capacity. Any textbooks I might produce in the future will have the implicit assumption of contemporary operating systems, compilers and hardware. If, through sheer chance, any of my potential works survived across a collapse they would be useless without further context. I imagine that the same holds true for advanced works of physics, especially that which requires hugely complex experimental devices. Euclid held up well enough as his works were self-contained. What modern works can say the same?

electromagnetic 16y ago

I'm sorry but there's been several occasions in human history where civilization has fully collapsed (region specific) and lost the written word (namely proto-greece) but fully recovered with no outside influence. If something doesn't spell our doom either in the short term or in the moderately-short term then we will quickly recover from where we left off. A generation or two of subsistence living will not entirely wipe out human civilization. No one is going to have to reinvent the wheel, because we've got so many present in our civilization that they could easily be scavenged for hundreds of years before the quantity became depleted and it would likely take a good thousand years before someone couldn't find an 'original wheel' to at least take inspiration from. Aluminium alloy wheels have such high proportions of aluminium in them that even the exceptionally slow oxidization (I work in siding and I can tell you that 20 year old aluminium siding barely has marks on it and it's paper thick, a few pounds would take millennia to degrade but would likely still be clearly recognizable). If we're really concerned about our longevity I'd suggest manufacturing information arcs that can teach the major language of the geographical area allowing people 100 years down the road to access the knowledge stored when civilization recovers. It would have to be built for longevity and nothing else (IE it can't easily be recovered for materials by scavengers or used to draw power). Essentially you'd want a very long life RTG to power a multiple redundancy computer system and basically load encyclopaedias and patent databases and an archive of literature, magazines and journals.

troutwine 16y ago
To be sure, though I think that the no outside influence restriction is a bit contrary to the archeological record. Though I didn't make it clear, what concerns me are not the coarse technologies of life--wheels and pottery and what not--but more fine, non-obvious innovations. Consider concrete: with the dissolution of the Roman political structure the secrets of concrete were lost. It took 13 centuries, until the 1750s, to rediscover its formula. During that time, public works were greatly retarded. Indeed, the Anglo-Saxon (whose buildings rarely had windows for stability purposes) culture produced a rather famous poem we now call The Ruins in which Roman ruins are attributed to the works of giants. What concerns me is not the transmitting of basic machines across the simplification of a society, to use Joseph Tainter's jargon, but, rather, difficult, contextual knowledge. Our knowledge of Mathematics, for example, was preserved by luck: the Byzantine Empire harbored enough learned individuals and archivists until such a time as the Crusades swept through. All of my work simply assumes an industrial, technological civilization with advanced computational capacity. Any textbooks I might produce in the future will have the implicit assumption of contemporary operating systems, compilers and hardware. If, through sheer chance, any of my potential works survived across a collapse they would be useless without further context. I imagine that the same holds true for advanced works of physics, especially that which requires hugely complex experimental devices. Euclid held up well enough as his works were self-contained. What modern works can say the same?