5 ms·

Not sure I buy the "narrow overlap of generations" as the main reason for imperfect knowledge. Yes humans don't live long enough. But generations and population

by anu7df 6y ago

Not sure I buy the "narrow overlap of generations" as the main reason for imperfect knowledge. Yes humans don't live long enough. But generations and population ages vary smoothly in a cohort. May be centuries ago, when the effective number of people you interact with is small and finite due to slow transport of information, people and goods. But I would argue since the advent of books, organized schools and universities this is less of a problem. Now with the internet this is really a non issue. One has all the lectures that one could possibly want to listen and all the books and papers to spend every waking moment consuming. So I guess fundamentally we are only limited by our finite lifespan, and may be working memory that has a good decay rate.

xvilka 6y ago
> Now with the internet this is really a non issue. A good chunk of valuable information disappears all the time from Internet. Many thoughts expressed in personal blogs usually go away within a few years. See, for example, demise of Geocities and Yahoo Groups. While only a small part of this disappeared information is valuable, some of it incredibly useful and important.
- xmprt 6y ago
  Either the information was important and was probably backed up somewhere or replicated on other websites while geocities was still alive and other platforms where coming up (the overlap of generations) or the information was not noteworthy in which case it probably wouldn't have been found even if geocities existed today.
- imtringued 6y ago
  You're completely ignoring the argument. The purpose of the internet is not recording information for all eternity. It's to transmit information from person to person. If you want to preserve information then write a book and publish it. It will be archived in organizations that specialize in archival. They allow the internet as a communication method but in theory nothing prevents you from just driving to the location and reading the book on site without the internet.

by anu7df 6y ago

xvilka 6y ago

> Now with the internet this is really a non issue. A good chunk of valuable information disappears all the time from Internet. Many thoughts expressed in personal blogs usually go away within a few years. See, for example, demise of Geocities and Yahoo Groups. While only a small part of this disappeared information is valuable, some of it incredibly useful and important.

xmprt 6y ago
Either the information was important and was probably backed up somewhere or replicated on other websites while geocities was still alive and other platforms where coming up (the overlap of generations) or the information was not noteworthy in which case it probably wouldn't have been found even if geocities existed today.
imtringued 6y ago
You're completely ignoring the argument. The purpose of the internet is not recording information for all eternity. It's to transmit information from person to person. If you want to preserve information then write a book and publish it. It will be archived in organizations that specialize in archival. They allow the internet as a communication method but in theory nothing prevents you from just driving to the location and reading the book on site without the internet.