6 ms·

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think

This is very cool to see. The main takeaways for me were: 1. It's easy to underestimate what is possible when you limit thinking to a short timescale. I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. Or conversely, it's easy to overestimate the difficulty of something if you are too constrained by thinking in terms of finishing it relatively quickly. 2. Building things does make it easier to build things - and conversely, not building things makes it harder. There is a lot of architectural stuff in our world today, particularly fine masonry and woodwork, that is still common because so much of it was made up through the 1930's or so, but which is actually quite difficult to produce today because most of the skilled labor and the industry that supported it is gone. This also reminded me of an article about scientific glasswork, which is similarly dying out[1], and of course more familiar to the HN crowd we know about old technology that was once common and now is difficult to replicate or maintain. Lots to think about. 1: https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassblower-20160613-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-caltech-glassb...

mehrdadn 6y ago
> I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. That's mind-boggling. Why would building a cathedral/mosque/temple take longer than a lifetime (or half)?
- 9wzYQbTYsAIc 6y ago
  https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/notre-dame-cathedral.htm https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/notre-dam...
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    Ah, thanks for the pointer! I just Googled and got this explanation: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-take-nearly-200-years-to-build-Notre-Dame-when-Hagia-Sophia-took-only-5-years/answer/Pat-Sullivan-32 https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-take-nearly-200-years-to-bu...
- obastani 6y ago
  Not an answer to your question, but the Sagrada Famila [1] began construction in 1882, and is projected to be completed around 2030. It's an immense (and beautiful) structure. Just want to point out that it's not just a matter of the buildings being built a long time ago; this kind of long-term construction is still happening today.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    I... just can't wrap my head around this. Is it that they actually take that long with enough people, or they have too few people working on them?
    - readams 6y ago
      They're specifically using old-style techniques to build it, and doing a sort of fund-as-you-go structure where donations finance the construction. This is combined with the fact that the building is really complicated and every block has to be custom-carved into a unique shape. There's also likely an element of not really wanting it to be done since the construction itself is a big part of the draw of the building for tourism.
      - close04 6y ago
        And yet the author of the present article would simply judge it by weight and say "with certainty" it must have taken only a fraction of the time.
    - teruakohatu 6y ago
      Funding but also they are to an extent a giant work of art, adding more people does not produce a better work of art.
    - ALittleLight 6y ago
      I hadn't heard of it, it seen pictures, until we went to see it in Spain. The building is absolutely mind boggling. The sort of thing that makes you proud to be a human. When you see it, the timeline starts to make sense.
- fouc 6y ago
  You might enjoy Ken Follet's novel "The Pillars of the Earth", it touches on the notion of spending a lifetime to build a cathedral.
- smabie 6y ago
  I mean, look at Petra. Some of that stuff must have taken centuries.
- goto11 6y ago
  Some cathedrals took centuries to complete, but mostly because of long gaps in active work due to lack of funds or interest. Furthermore cathedrals were often build iteratively - e.g. someone finances a new tower to add to an existing centuries old building.
- watwut 6y ago
  You run out of money, wars happen, corruption happen, things get finished later.
est31 6y ago
There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activities like the woodworking you mention. To give another example, the Saturn V rockets were built by a generation of metalworkers who had honed their skills in the manufacturing plants of world war 2. The plans for the rocket engines are still preserved but back then a plan was just a rough guideline. In the details, each single engine was hand-tailored to the individual rocket. Nowadays, stuff is far more automated and plans are highly precise. Thus Nasa couldn't just get the plans out of the cabinet and build new Saturn V rockets or even just put their engines into new rockets. I wonder if we are better in preserving our heritage than we used to be. Which information about the manufacturing process of one of today's cars will be usable in 100 years? Will they be able to build computer chips like we did?
- soperj 6y ago
  Sometimes writing it down means very little. Like Perelman's Poincaré conjecture solution. It took some of the best mathematicians years to even prove it being correct.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Didn’t the Egyptians write it down? But we still have no idea how to understand their hieroglyphics. Or how they even figured out their math.
    - rrmm 6y ago
      Some light info on it: https://www.storyofmathematics.com/egyptian.html https://www.storyofmathematics.com/egyptian.html
  - bingerman 6y ago
    I don't think they proved the correctness, just read it very thoroughly and were convinced by Perelman's reasoning.
downerending 6y ago
Not the same kind of scientific glasswork, but there were a couple (?) of guys at Harvard that produced a large number of educational models of various biological things, using glass. Worth visiting if you ever go there. https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers
necubi 6y ago
This is echoed in a fascinating r/AskHistorians comment I read recently [0]. The question was about how the Romans forgot how to make concrete in the late empire. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but the gist is: as the empire became poorer, demand for huge building projects (typically funded by the state) declined. Eventually, after a couple hundreds years, the tradition was lost entirely. Losing knowledge like this was much easier in earlier eras when fewer people were literate. Trade knowledge would be passed down via apprenticeships and rarely written down. So it only takes one generation of the apprenticeship system breaking down for the knowledge to be lost entirely. (Also, for anybody unfamiliar with r/AskHistorians, it's one of the best corners of the internet! Professional historians provide in-depth answers to random questions about history.) [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gntlr8/how_did_the_late_romans_just_forget_how_to_make/frc9cc9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gntlr8/how_d...
- ssivark 6y ago
  > Losing knowledge like this was much easier in earlier eras when fewer people were literate. The thing is, there are many aspects to doing things which can’t be written down. So even today, the one generation concept is meaningful. There is a deep “use it or lose it” spirit in biological systems. We might think of ourselves in primarily literate/rational terms, but that’s far from the truth.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    Nowadays we have video which can cover a large part of things that can't be written down. It doesn't cover all of it though, but it can get pretty close.
    - nullc 6y ago
      If you can manage to preserve access to the video. "Sorry, we lost all knowledge of how to build those during the great content-id wars of 2029."
      - 6y ago
pvg 6y ago
I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. I wonder whether that's not really more the exception rather than the rule - some famous cathedrals just took a long time. But lots of huge projects were completed in one or two decades or less - the pyramids, the Coliseum, the Taj Mahal, the Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, etc.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Kind of makes sense, since the person that commissions these things generally wants to see them completed in their lifetime.

mehrdadn 6y ago

> I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. That's mind-boggling. Why would building a cathedral/mosque/temple take longer than a lifetime (or half)?

9wzYQbTYsAIc 6y ago
https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/notre-dame-cathedral.htm https://history.howstuffworks.com/european-history/notre-dam...
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  Ah, thanks for the pointer! I just Googled and got this explanation: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-take-nearly-200-years-to-build-Notre-Dame-when-Hagia-Sophia-took-only-5-years/answer/Pat-Sullivan-32 https://www.quora.com/Why-did-it-take-nearly-200-years-to-bu...
obastani 6y ago
Not an answer to your question, but the Sagrada Famila [1] began construction in 1882, and is projected to be completed around 2030. It's an immense (and beautiful) structure. Just want to point out that it's not just a matter of the buildings being built a long time ago; this kind of long-term construction is still happening today.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I... just can't wrap my head around this. Is it that they actually take that long with enough people, or they have too few people working on them?
  - readams 6y ago
    They're specifically using old-style techniques to build it, and doing a sort of fund-as-you-go structure where donations finance the construction. This is combined with the fact that the building is really complicated and every block has to be custom-carved into a unique shape. There's also likely an element of not really wanting it to be done since the construction itself is a big part of the draw of the building for tourism.
    - close04 6y ago
      And yet the author of the present article would simply judge it by weight and say "with certainty" it must have taken only a fraction of the time.
  - teruakohatu 6y ago
    Funding but also they are to an extent a giant work of art, adding more people does not produce a better work of art.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    I hadn't heard of it, it seen pictures, until we went to see it in Spain. The building is absolutely mind boggling. The sort of thing that makes you proud to be a human. When you see it, the timeline starts to make sense.
fouc 6y ago
You might enjoy Ken Follet's novel "The Pillars of the Earth", it touches on the notion of spending a lifetime to build a cathedral.
smabie 6y ago
I mean, look at Petra. Some of that stuff must have taken centuries.
goto11 6y ago
Some cathedrals took centuries to complete, but mostly because of long gaps in active work due to lack of funds or interest. Furthermore cathedrals were often build iteratively - e.g. someone finances a new tower to add to an existing centuries old building.
watwut 6y ago
You run out of money, wars happen, corruption happen, things get finished later.

est31 6y ago

There is a star trek episode where they encounter a civilization which has built a benevolent AI a long time ago and has since lost capabilities to do much more than give commands to the AI. Our society has managed to write down some things like math for example so our knowledge as species won't be lost if mathematicians suddenly died. But it's harder to find permanent storage for the more skills based human activities like the woodworking you mention. To give another example, the Saturn V rockets were built by a generation of metalworkers who had honed their skills in the manufacturing plants of world war 2. The plans for the rocket engines are still preserved but back then a plan was just a rough guideline. In the details, each single engine was hand-tailored to the individual rocket. Nowadays, stuff is far more automated and plans are highly precise. Thus Nasa couldn't just get the plans out of the cabinet and build new Saturn V rockets or even just put their engines into new rockets. I wonder if we are better in preserving our heritage than we used to be. Which information about the manufacturing process of one of today's cars will be usable in 100 years? Will they be able to build computer chips like we did?

soperj 6y ago
Sometimes writing it down means very little. Like Perelman's Poincaré conjecture solution. It took some of the best mathematicians years to even prove it being correct.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Didn’t the Egyptians write it down? But we still have no idea how to understand their hieroglyphics. Or how they even figured out their math.
  - rrmm 6y ago
    Some light info on it: https://www.storyofmathematics.com/egyptian.html https://www.storyofmathematics.com/egyptian.html
- bingerman 6y ago
  I don't think they proved the correctness, just read it very thoroughly and were convinced by Perelman's reasoning.

downerending 6y ago

Not the same kind of scientific glasswork, but there were a couple (?) of guys at Harvard that produced a large number of educational models of various biological things, using glass. Worth visiting if you ever go there. https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers https://hmnh.harvard.edu/glass-flowers

necubi 6y ago

This is echoed in a fascinating r/AskHistorians comment I read recently [0]. The question was about how the Romans forgot how to make concrete in the late empire. I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but the gist is: as the empire became poorer, demand for huge building projects (typically funded by the state) declined. Eventually, after a couple hundreds years, the tradition was lost entirely. Losing knowledge like this was much easier in earlier eras when fewer people were literate. Trade knowledge would be passed down via apprenticeships and rarely written down. So it only takes one generation of the apprenticeship system breaking down for the knowledge to be lost entirely. (Also, for anybody unfamiliar with r/AskHistorians, it's one of the best corners of the internet! Professional historians provide in-depth answers to random questions about history.) [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gntlr8/how_did_the_late_romans_just_forget_how_to_make/frc9cc9/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gntlr8/how_d...

ssivark 6y ago
> Losing knowledge like this was much easier in earlier eras when fewer people were literate. The thing is, there are many aspects to doing things which can’t be written down. So even today, the one generation concept is meaningful. There is a deep “use it or lose it” spirit in biological systems. We might think of ourselves in primarily literate/rational terms, but that’s far from the truth.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  Nowadays we have video which can cover a large part of things that can't be written down. It doesn't cover all of it though, but it can get pretty close.
  - nullc 6y ago
    If you can manage to preserve access to the video. "Sorry, we lost all knowledge of how to build those during the great content-id wars of 2029."
    - 6y ago

pvg 6y ago

I think of the cathedrals, temples, mosques, etc. that have been built all over the world, where the people who started the work knew they wouldn't live to see it finished, but that didn't dissuade them. I wonder whether that's not really more the exception rather than the rule - some famous cathedrals just took a long time. But lots of huge projects were completed in one or two decades or less - the pyramids, the Coliseum, the Taj Mahal, the Pantheon, Hagia Sophia, etc.

Aeolun 6y ago
Kind of makes sense, since the person that commissions these things generally wants to see them completed in their lifetime.