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Knowledge is passed on from master to apprentice. Nearly-universal literacy helped to alleviate this issue somewhat, but even today most practical knowledge is
by ontekhunhsentuh 6y ago
Knowledge is passed on from master to apprentice. Nearly-universal literacy helped to alleviate this issue somewhat, but even today most practical knowledge is passed on by people working together.
The result is that even a gap of a single generation is enough for some knowledge to be lost. That's why Roman concrete was forgotten, why we can't build a Saturn V anymore, why you can't just start a chip-fab with enough money, and why it's so hard to maintain code without access to someone that designed the code-base.
Most things, even if they're written down, are more accurately modelled in someone's brain.
- phkahler 6y agoThat's why odd gaps appear. Like an article about how China can't manufacture the balls for ball-point pens, or critical parts for jet engines. Maybe a few missing pieces are why Intel cant seem to figure out EUV lithography. None of these things are trivial and probably not documented in a way where a noob could pick them up.
- shakezula 6y agoEven just the specific knowledge of building a house is probably a generation removed from most people these days. It scares me to think of just how fragile we really are.
- hnuser123456 6y agoSure, but what is forgotten makes room for novel ideas which are hopefully sometimes improvements. Plus, now we have computers to write and share this knowledge so it doesn't always have to be memorized.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y ago> which are hopefully sometimes improvements The death of Latin is very upsetting.
- rajansaini 6y agoWhy is that out of curiosity?
- pmlnr 6y agoIt was the common language of the time.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 6y agoReading the English for Catullus 16 (pretty dirty) and feeling jealous that they could put it so succinctly in their own language. Also this TED talk https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shape....
- qiqing 6y agoTechnically, there are more Latin speakers alive today than cumulatively during the Roman Empire. However, I think negligibly few are _native_ speakers. Exponential population growth is weird.
- NoImmatureAdHom 6y agohttps://xkcd.com/1513/ https://xkcd.com/1513/
- shakezula 6y agoThis is absolutely perfect and is exactly the type of knowledge that I'm so afraid we'll lose with even one generation of major civil disruption.
- leafmeal 6y agoCan you elaborate on the Saturn V a bit more?
- ontekhunhsentuh 6y agoThis came up when people started looking sideways at the ballooning costs of the Space Launch System. Even though we have extensive blueprints and even parts left over from Saturn V rockets, the institutional knowledge to use any of those things simply doesn't exist anymore, and would have to be re-created at exceptional cost of you wanted to build another one. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6281/why-not-build-saturn-vs-again https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/6281/why-not-build...
- Bjartr 6y agoIIRC, even if we could, we can do better. For example a Saturn V engine is around 5,000 parts, though we've lost the knowledge to assemble them. However, a contemporary study of that found that, with modern manufacturing techniques, you can build an equivalent today with just 40 parts.