5 ms·

Not really an issue. Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. The key foundations of human intelligence and ingenuity will always remains regardless of whethe

Not really an issue. Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. The key foundations of human intelligence and ingenuity will always remains regardless of whether or not fossil fuels exist for us to exploit. Non-renewable resources only served to speed up our industrialization.

mikewarot 6y ago
> Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. No, it doesn't. Only knowledge that people consider to have value will be retained over time. Many things are lost to history, for example.. nobody knows how to make cobblestone. (Or so I'm told)
- shrimp_emoji 6y ago
  I've never heard that about cobblestone, but Roman concrete and "Damascus" steel are other examples. Granted, we've recently (mostly) rediscovered how to make those, but it shows knowledge accumulation isn't monotonic.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    There’s an important distinction here between losing the knowledge of how X people made Y, and losing the knowledge of how to do Y. For instance, the secret of Greek fire was lost to history, but I’m pretty sure napalm does the job just fine these days. As for Roman concrete, the Romans were blessed with some really nice volcanic ash, but we can build things out of concrete that the Romans never could thanks to rebar alone.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  >nobody knows how to make cobblestone. Can you expand on that? I didn't think cobblestones were made? Don't you just pick suitable stones?
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    In the United States, cobblestones were manufactured large blocks that were impermeable and very durable. Streets were paved with them.
    - AngusH 6y ago
      I think it sounds like a Sett: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sett_(paving) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sett_(paving) (which is often called a cobblestone) Edit: Still being laid in Edinburgh...
      - mikewarot 6y ago
        Here in the Midwest, far away from the granite blocks imported by ships there were companies that made additively "cobblestones", with their names on them, in my walkway there are such stones made in Attica, Indiana. The knowledge of how those were made, is apparently lost. Those things are tough like you wouldn't believe.
        AngusH 6y ago
        Ah, interesting and definitely not a Sett. I had assumed you meant that the stone had been manufactured into a block, but this is clearly something else. Some kind of special concrete formulation do you think? The formula kept as a trade secret, then lost when the company closed or got bought or something I suppose? Rather unfortunate, alas. Edited
  - TheCowboy 6y ago
    There are masonry techniques that are considered lost arts is probably what he's referring to, including types of load bearing cobblestone construction. An example that comes to mind is a brick townhouse nearby that was struck by a car and part of a structural brick rounded wall collapsed. It remained that way for many years because the owner simply couldn't find a mason that knew how to rebuild it.
- jbay808 6y ago
  There are certainly many periods of knowledge regression in history. Following the decline of the Roman Empire, many technologies were lost for centuries. In some cases the knowledge was preserved within one geographic area but lost to another. Even modern technology can be lost. Look inside any company with a lackluster documentation culture to see this in action on a small scale. Even NASA had to spent considerable time re-discovering how the Saturn 5 was put together. Edit - I think I meant this as a reply to the GP, but I'll leave it here.
- el_nahual 6y ago
  This one strikes painfully close to home! I grew up on an old colonial street in a major Latin American city. Beautiful street "paved" with cobblestones. Somehow the cobblestones managed to look both randomly placed and have some "lines" that gave it a very orderly look. The cobblestones were placed in some substrate that allowed moss to grow between them. At some point about 10 years ago, the city decided to tear up a giant trench in the middle of the street to replace some sewage. When they were done, they covered the trench with concrete and then re-placed the stones they had removed onto the concrete. It looks nothing like it used to. Just messy. I think that if someone who didn't grow up there were to see it, they would think it was a perfectly charming street, but really it lost so, so much. I asked around and apparently nobody knows how to lay cobblestones anymore. There was a certain art to how they were placed and the substrate selected: dirt, then sand (what kind? how coarse?) then stones, then something else. This ensured that they would never wash away even in the torrential rains we get here every year. Placing cobblestones seems like an easy thing to do. Just rocks on dirt, right? But how do you ensure they never move, they never wash away, they don't get covered in dirt or greenery. The craziest thing is that the street had remained basically pristine for what was probably 100+ years, but the new stones on concrete are already falling out.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > apparently nobody knows how to lay cobblestones anymore This is regional. I went to a talk on cobblestone streets in New York. There are entire books dedicated to the craft, and new scholarship on it ongoing. (It pertains closely to the question of prefabricated infrastructure.)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mikewarot 6y ago
      Make - as in mold and fire in a kiln... with ingredients upknown.
- carapace 6y ago
  One of the scariest things I ever read was the true story of how the British Navy discovered and then lost the knowledge of how to cure scurvy. IIRC, they found that limes (or lemons) would prevent scurvy on long voyages; then the ships got faster AND the switched to a citrus fruit lemons (or limes) that didn't have enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy, but they didn't realize it because the faster voyages didn't allow enough time for scurvy to develop; then on some longer voyages sailors did develop scurvy despite eating the citrus fruit, so the Navy erroneously concluded that citrus fruit didn't cure scurvy after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#19th_century
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Military officers are very hard-headed. Admirals resisted submarines and carriers until catastrophe forced their hands. Most people don't realize that scurvy had actual fatalities on most British ships that went on long voyages. Similarly, in Japan in the late 1800's, deckhands had a ration of free rice (mainly carbohydrates), so that's all they ate. As a result, there were ships half full of sailors laying ill from almost no vitamins, mainly B1, resulting in beriberi. That continued with the army into the early 1900's: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost-sank-the-japanese-navy-f985772c81a6 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost...
- mistrial9 6y ago
  I was told that gold and silver smithing, for jewelry, has lost techniques since the 1700s. There are well-known pieces of jewelry from that era that are not reproducible now.
egberts1 6y ago
There was a government project on how to design a 10,000 year sculpture indicating that this is a nuclear wasteland. No telling how to cut across language cultural barrier in case of a great reset.

mikewarot 6y ago

> Knowledge steadily accumulates over time. No, it doesn't. Only knowledge that people consider to have value will be retained over time. Many things are lost to history, for example.. nobody knows how to make cobblestone. (Or so I'm told)

shrimp_emoji 6y ago
I've never heard that about cobblestone, but Roman concrete and "Damascus" steel are other examples. Granted, we've recently (mostly) rediscovered how to make those, but it shows knowledge accumulation isn't monotonic.
- philwelch 6y ago
  There’s an important distinction here between losing the knowledge of how X people made Y, and losing the knowledge of how to do Y. For instance, the secret of Greek fire was lost to history, but I’m pretty sure napalm does the job just fine these days. As for Roman concrete, the Romans were blessed with some really nice volcanic ash, but we can build things out of concrete that the Romans never could thanks to rebar alone.
rebuilder 6y ago
>nobody knows how to make cobblestone. Can you expand on that? I didn't think cobblestones were made? Don't you just pick suitable stones?
- mikewarot 6y ago
  In the United States, cobblestones were manufactured large blocks that were impermeable and very durable. Streets were paved with them.
  - AngusH 6y ago
    I think it sounds like a Sett: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sett_(paving) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sett_(paving) (which is often called a cobblestone) Edit: Still being laid in Edinburgh...
    - mikewarot 6y ago
      Here in the Midwest, far away from the granite blocks imported by ships there were companies that made additively "cobblestones", with their names on them, in my walkway there are such stones made in Attica, Indiana. The knowledge of how those were made, is apparently lost. Those things are tough like you wouldn't believe.
      - AngusH 6y ago
        Ah, interesting and definitely not a Sett. I had assumed you meant that the stone had been manufactured into a block, but this is clearly something else. Some kind of special concrete formulation do you think? The formula kept as a trade secret, then lost when the company closed or got bought or something I suppose? Rather unfortunate, alas. Edited
- TheCowboy 6y ago
  There are masonry techniques that are considered lost arts is probably what he's referring to, including types of load bearing cobblestone construction. An example that comes to mind is a brick townhouse nearby that was struck by a car and part of a structural brick rounded wall collapsed. It remained that way for many years because the owner simply couldn't find a mason that knew how to rebuild it.
jbay808 6y ago
There are certainly many periods of knowledge regression in history. Following the decline of the Roman Empire, many technologies were lost for centuries. In some cases the knowledge was preserved within one geographic area but lost to another. Even modern technology can be lost. Look inside any company with a lackluster documentation culture to see this in action on a small scale. Even NASA had to spent considerable time re-discovering how the Saturn 5 was put together. Edit - I think I meant this as a reply to the GP, but I'll leave it here.
el_nahual 6y ago
This one strikes painfully close to home! I grew up on an old colonial street in a major Latin American city. Beautiful street "paved" with cobblestones. Somehow the cobblestones managed to look both randomly placed and have some "lines" that gave it a very orderly look. The cobblestones were placed in some substrate that allowed moss to grow between them. At some point about 10 years ago, the city decided to tear up a giant trench in the middle of the street to replace some sewage. When they were done, they covered the trench with concrete and then re-placed the stones they had removed onto the concrete. It looks nothing like it used to. Just messy. I think that if someone who didn't grow up there were to see it, they would think it was a perfectly charming street, but really it lost so, so much. I asked around and apparently nobody knows how to lay cobblestones anymore. There was a certain art to how they were placed and the substrate selected: dirt, then sand (what kind? how coarse?) then stones, then something else. This ensured that they would never wash away even in the torrential rains we get here every year. Placing cobblestones seems like an easy thing to do. Just rocks on dirt, right? But how do you ensure they never move, they never wash away, they don't get covered in dirt or greenery. The craziest thing is that the street had remained basically pristine for what was probably 100+ years, but the new stones on concrete are already falling out.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > apparently nobody knows how to lay cobblestones anymore This is regional. I went to a talk on cobblestone streets in New York. There are entire books dedicated to the craft, and new scholarship on it ongoing. (It pertains closely to the question of prefabricated infrastructure.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikewarot 6y ago
    Make - as in mold and fire in a kiln... with ingredients upknown.
carapace 6y ago
One of the scariest things I ever read was the true story of how the British Navy discovered and then lost the knowledge of how to cure scurvy. IIRC, they found that limes (or lemons) would prevent scurvy on long voyages; then the ships got faster AND the switched to a citrus fruit lemons (or limes) that didn't have enough vitamin C to prevent scurvy, but they didn't realize it because the faster voyages didn't allow enough time for scurvy to develop; then on some longer voyages sailors did develop scurvy despite eating the citrus fruit, so the Navy erroneously concluded that citrus fruit didn't cure scurvy after all. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#19th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#19th_century
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Military officers are very hard-headed. Admirals resisted submarines and carriers until catastrophe forced their hands. Most people don't realize that scurvy had actual fatalities on most British ships that went on long voyages. Similarly, in Japan in the late 1800's, deckhands had a ration of free rice (mainly carbohydrates), so that's all they ate. As a result, there were ships half full of sailors laying ill from almost no vitamins, mainly B1, resulting in beriberi. That continued with the army into the early 1900's: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost-sank-the-japanese-navy-f985772c81a6 https://medium.com/war-is-boring/eating-too-much-rice-almost...
mistrial9 6y ago
I was told that gold and silver smithing, for jewelry, has lost techniques since the 1700s. There are well-known pieces of jewelry from that era that are not reproducible now.

egberts1 6y ago

There was a government project on how to design a 10,000 year sculpture indicating that this is a nuclear wasteland. No telling how to cut across language cultural barrier in case of a great reset.