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> Collectively, it's a level of intellectual effort that humanity has likely never brought to bear on any other problem besides, perhaps, farming. I mean, if y
by jessriedel 8y ago
> Collectively, it's a level of intellectual effort that humanity has likely never brought to bear on any other problem besides, perhaps, farming.
I mean, if you are measuring in terms of brain cycles, perhaps. But huge amounts of these brain cycles were wasted because people lived in small tribes and information decayed quickly in space and time, requiring everyone to continually re-invent things. And the detailed knowledge for hunting one type of animal in one region was not particularly applicable to other animals in other regions, so these are to a large extent just different problems.
- UrukParthian 8y agoIIRC, in the absence of writing, humans had great oral memory. Not only that but they used other mental tricks. EX: Aborigines connecting myths to places in terms like "... And this is where angry bear slept for three days. The water here is still poisonous today from his angry urine..." and so on. I would say it's more precarious than "modern knowledge" but we haven't really tested the longevity of tech civilization. There are still tribes in Siberia who tell legends of the hunter of the sky tracking the great deer. The "problem" is that they're talking about a set of constellations that were last visible 20000+ years ago. If disaster strikes, how many mediums will be rendered useless (floppies, CDs, lithograph, tapes, etc.)?