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It's interesting to note that a technological civilization has occurred only in the past 200 years. Homo sapiens have been around on the planet for a long time

It's interesting to note that a technological civilization has occurred only in the past 200 years. Homo sapiens have been around on the planet for a long time so why is it only happening now? I suspect that easy access to large amounts of food, more time available for mental activities and the easy spread of information have given us advantages our ancestors did not have despite the apparent similarities in our brains. One tragedy currently ongoing is that many potentially brilliant minds in LEDCs are suffering from lack of the above three items. It does beg the question - how much mental capability could humanity gain by ensuring everyone on the planet has food, time and access to knowledge.

logfromblammo 9y ago
Increasing the capability raises the noise floor, so you would also need a grooming or discovery mechanism in order for the better ideas to achieve greater adoption. For instance, if someone comes up with some way for aluminum smelting to use x% less electricity, but no aluminum smelter ever knows about it, no benefit will be realized. Conversely, if all the smelters adopt it, and the inventor is never rewarded, they will simply stop telling people about their ideas, and restrict their thinking to those areas that will benefit them personally. I would argue that the patents and copyrights system is so lacking in additional capacity with respect to promoting good ideas that the overall benefit to humanity from increasing the raw mental capability will be negligible.
dalbasal 9y ago
Depends what you consider technology, I would say. Plant and animal domestication. A heavy hand axe that gave homo erectus a more dangerous clank than a big ram? Fish traps? Hydraulic engineering? Yuval Noah Harari puts the start around the same time as this article's modern brain, the palaeolithic revolution. The point at which cultural evolution takes over and replaces biological evolution as the driving force of change. But yeah, we have a ton of wasted potential. Nutrition, education, information and (uncomfortably) inbreeding along with the many types of unavailable opportunities...

logfromblammo 9y ago

Increasing the capability raises the noise floor, so you would also need a grooming or discovery mechanism in order for the better ideas to achieve greater adoption. For instance, if someone comes up with some way for aluminum smelting to use x% less electricity, but no aluminum smelter ever knows about it, no benefit will be realized. Conversely, if all the smelters adopt it, and the inventor is never rewarded, they will simply stop telling people about their ideas, and restrict their thinking to those areas that will benefit them personally. I would argue that the patents and copyrights system is so lacking in additional capacity with respect to promoting good ideas that the overall benefit to humanity from increasing the raw mental capability will be negligible.

dalbasal 9y ago

Depends what you consider technology, I would say. Plant and animal domestication. A heavy hand axe that gave homo erectus a more dangerous clank than a big ram? Fish traps? Hydraulic engineering? Yuval Noah Harari puts the start around the same time as this article's modern brain, the palaeolithic revolution. The point at which cultural evolution takes over and replaces biological evolution as the driving force of change. But yeah, we have a ton of wasted potential. Nutrition, education, information and (uncomfortably) inbreeding along with the many types of unavailable opportunities...