3 ms·

> An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns. I love how you can start with really rough tools (like wood and stone tools), and iterative

> An amateur can, with care, skill and some money, work to microns. I love how you can start with really rough tools (like wood and stone tools), and iteratively create more and more accurate tools, to the point of rivaling commercial tools.

edoceo 5y ago
I mean, that's how we got here. In the grand scheme the time from using rocks to make fire (flint) to putting electricity into thinking rocks (silicon) to throwing refined carbon into space was very short. Amateurs stacked on amateurs from only 1600 mothers ago!
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It's only been 340-ish years since we started on the electricity tech tree in any rigorous sense. That's 16 or 17 moms ago, at most. If you had a durable, stable culture 200,000 years ago and dropped a series of carefully selected experiments in their laps, they'd have been able to create with electricity with as much brain power as we have today. Still, we had thousands of years of cultural experiments to survive to eventually arrive at a confluence of social structures that allowed for us to explore science and rational natural philosophies. From the Greek mathematics and Sumerian city states to Roman empire building and onward, we carry pieces of those things that perform best at giving us life less full of struggle and suffering. A smartphone, seen from Kurzweil's view of human progress as a function of structured information, you get a sense of being present for something vast and terrifying and beautiful. Stacked amateurs all the way back to the brave little rodents thriving after the dinosaurs died.
  - vimax 5y ago
    That reminded me of the poem The Calf-Path https://poets.org/poem/calf-path https://poets.org/poem/calf-path
    - robbedpeter 5y ago
      Thank you! >>They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do.
kaba0 5y ago
Could you point me to some resource on how would such a process look like?
- rfrey 5y ago
  Start with researching the "three plate method" to generate a flat surface. A flat reference plane is the first thing you need to make precision machines. (The second is an accurate way to divide a circle.) But the three plate method is one of those foundational, from-first-principles realizations that changes everything. It basically means you can start with three rocks and manufacture your own reference plates that are accurate in flatness to any arbitrary tolerance you have the patience to achieve. With a truly flat plate in hand, you can generate a reference square - again, to any tolerance you like. If reading about that stuff (it's everywhere on the web if you know the right codewords "three plate method"), your next step is to find a copy (electronic, probably, it's long out of print) of Moore's "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". I keep a copy beside my bed so on nights when I can't sleep, I can caress the covers and ease my soul.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Thank you very much!

edoceo 5y ago

I mean, that's how we got here. In the grand scheme the time from using rocks to make fire (flint) to putting electricity into thinking rocks (silicon) to throwing refined carbon into space was very short. Amateurs stacked on amateurs from only 1600 mothers ago!

robbedpeter 5y ago
It's only been 340-ish years since we started on the electricity tech tree in any rigorous sense. That's 16 or 17 moms ago, at most. If you had a durable, stable culture 200,000 years ago and dropped a series of carefully selected experiments in their laps, they'd have been able to create with electricity with as much brain power as we have today. Still, we had thousands of years of cultural experiments to survive to eventually arrive at a confluence of social structures that allowed for us to explore science and rational natural philosophies. From the Greek mathematics and Sumerian city states to Roman empire building and onward, we carry pieces of those things that perform best at giving us life less full of struggle and suffering. A smartphone, seen from Kurzweil's view of human progress as a function of structured information, you get a sense of being present for something vast and terrifying and beautiful. Stacked amateurs all the way back to the brave little rodents thriving after the dinosaurs died.
- vimax 5y ago
  That reminded me of the poem The Calf-Path https://poets.org/poem/calf-path https://poets.org/poem/calf-path
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    Thank you! >>They follow in the beaten track, And out and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue, To keep the path that others do.

kaba0 5y ago

Could you point me to some resource on how would such a process look like?

rfrey 5y ago
Start with researching the "three plate method" to generate a flat surface. A flat reference plane is the first thing you need to make precision machines. (The second is an accurate way to divide a circle.) But the three plate method is one of those foundational, from-first-principles realizations that changes everything. It basically means you can start with three rocks and manufacture your own reference plates that are accurate in flatness to any arbitrary tolerance you have the patience to achieve. With a truly flat plate in hand, you can generate a reference square - again, to any tolerance you like. If reading about that stuff (it's everywhere on the web if you know the right codewords "three plate method"), your next step is to find a copy (electronic, probably, it's long out of print) of Moore's "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy". I keep a copy beside my bed so on nights when I can't sleep, I can caress the covers and ease my soul.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Thank you very much!