"The condescencion of the modern age toward those who came before use never ceases to amuse." Well, it's also a bit sad testament to the fact that in general p

"The condescencion of the modern age toward those who came before use never ceases to amuse." Well, it's also a bit sad testament to the fact that in general people have very little experience of how far they could go from starting from first principles, instead of just reading a single plausible answer from textbook. A single human can be quite inventive and achieve quite a lot if they focus their energies. The bayesian interpretation could be also that "it's pretty easy to progress this far in mechanical computation if you guess the correct route to take".