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Humans had civilization before we knew how to use fossil fuels, we just didn't have industrial civilization. AIUI civilization mostly consists of agreeing to li
by andrewflnr 6y ago
Humans had civilization before we knew how to use fossil fuels, we just didn't have industrial civilization. AIUI civilization mostly consists of agreeing to live and work together in groups bigger than Dunbar's number.
- spurgu 6y agoYeah of course would you'd need to redefine civilization as "inudstrial" civilization for my argumentn to make sense. Still, check out parent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26563017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26563017 tl;dr: we've kickstarted civilization due to our harnessing of energy. If the venusians didn't have that option they would've probably lived as cavemen and couldn't have prevented or foreseen the disaster.
- nvader 6y agoUnless the disaster was self-inflicted by the Venusians, when they unleashed the sequestered carbon by harvesting energy. This is one of the reasons this story sticks in my mind.
- thaumasiotes 6y agoI've seen two pretty common definitions of "civilization". One is agriculture; one is writing. There have been plenty of "barbarian" groups that coordinated on very large scales.