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Fascinating. Although I've never read Asimov, I've often posed the following thought experiment: Suppose humanity were set back to the stone age. In the sense

Fascinating. Although I've never read Asimov, I've often posed the following thought experiment: Suppose humanity were set back to the stone age. In the sense that all working technology is 100% destroyed into ash. We don't even have a proper hammer or knife. What we do have is written documentation about how the modern world works, and an army of the brightest engineers. How long would it take to re-create modern tech? And with the documentation/academic papers we currently have, could we even do it? What I mean is, what are all the steps we need to take from building a forge out of mud and flint and steel, to producing an i9 intel chip, 5g networks and space ships? Think of this as an ansible script that bootstraps cavemen to modernity.

ornornor 5y ago
You might enjoy this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990
goldenchrome 5y ago
Without technology, we wouldn’t have the resources to sustain our population, leading to widespread skirmishes for local resources and a rapid devolution of society. Many people would die and we’d probably be set back a thousand years at least. Pockets of the world would escape this fate, having successfully organized around the right leaders. They would probably only be set back a few hundred years and become the new governments of the world a hundred years later. These may feel like long time scales, given that we would somehow have access to all human knowledge, but I feel they are correct. There is an unfathomable amount of work to be done, and a lack of societal stability will constantly set us back even as we make progress. We will basically have to relive much of modern history.
- zamfi 5y ago
  You're probably on the right track. One thing to mention, though, is that all the easy-to-dig carbon fuel has been dug, so "use coal to power X" just isn't quite as feasible. Biomass just doesn't work for a lot of it.
- matkoniecz 5y ago
  I think it would be far worse! We would lose access to modern tech and ancient tech is lost completely already. How many people can farm without access to machinery at all? How many would be able to produce any hammer from scratch? How you would ensure that they are heard and followed? How many draft animals are present in your area, for example oxen and horses? Rebuild time just to restore food supply is too long, we would collapse to prehistoric stage with some pockets of places where food stockpiles were not destroyed. And maybe even worse as animals are not available for hunting! We would survive as species, but with nearly total population, cultural and technological loss.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    People worry about the wrong things! There is no conceivable scenario in which we lose access to modern technology. OK, in some far-fetched case we can't use complex electronics. Then what? Well, no one need draft animals because there are still many gasoline and diesel engines around that run without electronics. Since we're not all driving cars around any more, our supplies of fuel will last at least until we can get pumpjacks and small refineries running again. Believe it or not, the farmers can farm just fine without their $500k tractors, it just means they have to farm a lot smaller area with less output, but their skills will transfer just fine. This is akin to "preppers" learning to make fire by rubbing sticks together: in what situation do they think they'll run out of matches and cigarette lighters?
    - matkoniecz 5y ago
      I was responding to post about 100% fictional and magical situation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27021924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27021924 I think that noone here was thinking that this scenario is likely? > all working technology is 100% destroyed into ash. We don't even have a proper hammer or knife. What we do have is written documentation about how the modern world works, and an army of the brightest engineers. Preparing for such scenario is waste of time, but thinking about it may be interesting. Actual complexity and importance of various infrastructure is interesting. > This is akin to "preppers" learning to make fire by rubbing sticks together: in what situation do they think they'll run out of matches and cigarette lighters? This one is actually possible to be directly useful, and not an example of something useless.
- imtringued 5y ago
  If everyone is still alive then a "reset" is impossible. Sure the electric grid may die and kill everyone, but the reset only happens after lots of people are dead.
roel_v 5y ago
The "How to make everything" YT channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g) does that. He started from digging up clay with his bare hands to make pots, and is now roughly in the iron age IIRC, melting iron using only stuff from earlier 'tech tiers'. One thing I found interesting is that apparently many metals used to be collected from ores just laying around. Those sites are all exhausted today. So a full 'reset' of the earth wouldn't be possible today. Of course metals could be scavenged from the machines we have now (in a nuclear disaster style scenario), but we could never fully 'redo' the technical evolution we did over the last 10's of k's of years.

ornornor 5y ago

You might enjoy this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39026990

goldenchrome 5y ago

Without technology, we wouldn’t have the resources to sustain our population, leading to widespread skirmishes for local resources and a rapid devolution of society. Many people would die and we’d probably be set back a thousand years at least. Pockets of the world would escape this fate, having successfully organized around the right leaders. They would probably only be set back a few hundred years and become the new governments of the world a hundred years later. These may feel like long time scales, given that we would somehow have access to all human knowledge, but I feel they are correct. There is an unfathomable amount of work to be done, and a lack of societal stability will constantly set us back even as we make progress. We will basically have to relive much of modern history.

zamfi 5y ago
You're probably on the right track. One thing to mention, though, is that all the easy-to-dig carbon fuel has been dug, so "use coal to power X" just isn't quite as feasible. Biomass just doesn't work for a lot of it.
matkoniecz 5y ago
I think it would be far worse! We would lose access to modern tech and ancient tech is lost completely already. How many people can farm without access to machinery at all? How many would be able to produce any hammer from scratch? How you would ensure that they are heard and followed? How many draft animals are present in your area, for example oxen and horses? Rebuild time just to restore food supply is too long, we would collapse to prehistoric stage with some pockets of places where food stockpiles were not destroyed. And maybe even worse as animals are not available for hunting! We would survive as species, but with nearly total population, cultural and technological loss.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  People worry about the wrong things! There is no conceivable scenario in which we lose access to modern technology. OK, in some far-fetched case we can't use complex electronics. Then what? Well, no one need draft animals because there are still many gasoline and diesel engines around that run without electronics. Since we're not all driving cars around any more, our supplies of fuel will last at least until we can get pumpjacks and small refineries running again. Believe it or not, the farmers can farm just fine without their $500k tractors, it just means they have to farm a lot smaller area with less output, but their skills will transfer just fine. This is akin to "preppers" learning to make fire by rubbing sticks together: in what situation do they think they'll run out of matches and cigarette lighters?
  - matkoniecz 5y ago
    I was responding to post about 100% fictional and magical situation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27021924 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27021924 I think that noone here was thinking that this scenario is likely? > all working technology is 100% destroyed into ash. We don't even have a proper hammer or knife. What we do have is written documentation about how the modern world works, and an army of the brightest engineers. Preparing for such scenario is waste of time, but thinking about it may be interesting. Actual complexity and importance of various infrastructure is interesting. > This is akin to "preppers" learning to make fire by rubbing sticks together: in what situation do they think they'll run out of matches and cigarette lighters? This one is actually possible to be directly useful, and not an example of something useless.
imtringued 5y ago
If everyone is still alive then a "reset" is impossible. Sure the electric grid may die and kill everyone, but the reset only happens after lots of people are dead.

roel_v 5y ago

The "How to make everything" YT channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g) does that. He started from digging up clay with his bare hands to make pots, and is now roughly in the iron age IIRC, melting iron using only stuff from earlier 'tech tiers'. One thing I found interesting is that apparently many metals used to be collected from ores just laying around. Those sites are all exhausted today. So a full 'reset' of the earth wouldn't be possible today. Of course metals could be scavenged from the machines we have now (in a nuclear disaster style scenario), but we could never fully 'redo' the technical evolution we did over the last 10's of k's of years.