3 ms·

That's extraordinary. If kragen is around, I've always been curious what, if any, of our technological discovery history has really been time-gated rather than

That's extraordinary. If kragen is around, I've always been curious what, if any, of our technological discovery history has really been time-gated rather than just dependency-gated. Like, are there certain technological advancements that simply would have been impossible before the year X, when Y happened?

throwaway4aday 4y ago
I think Y tends to be a combination of factors like enough wealth within a society combined with enough people and communication and a culture of exploration and experimentation free from overly despotic government. Those circumstances have been quite rare in history as far as we know.
Retric 4y ago
The Spinning wheel could arguably have been a Neolithic invention but instead only shows up fairly recently. What makes it notable is it probably saved more labor than any other device in history, and in many ways set the stage for the Industrial revolution. In terms of discovery, trade with the America across the Bering Strait could have occurred vastly earlier and dramatically changed history. It’s likely people where crossing fairly regularly without realizing anything unusual was going on.
- kragen 4y ago
  the spinning wheel is a wonderful example, and i wish i'd thought of it arguably agriculture, the needle, the bow, the boat, and fire 'saved more labor' than the spinning wheel, but it isn't clear that in their case those even apply
kragen 4y ago
it's a really interesting question, and i don't really have a good answer plant has made a reasonably good demonstration here that if you have the knowledge and a fair bit of free time (i.e., you aren't working 60 hours a week just so you aren't arrested by the king's men, don't starve to death, and don't get eaten by lions) you can get from banging rocks together to casting tools from smelted iron within a single human decade; in historical human terms this took from pre-pottery neolithic (≈10'000 bce) to the warring states period (≈500 bce) so it seems that human innovation was purely 'dependency-gated' or maybe 'knowledge-gated' at least during that period; but could we have acquired the knowledge faster? russo's book claims that the main reason we didn't was that we didn't have the hypothetico-deductive method until the hellenistic period, and then it was forgotten again after the roman conquests, until being rediscovered in the 18th and 19th centuries. but even today most places are not advancing rapidly or really at all; life expectancy may be improving in chuuk, bangalore, and montevideo, and they certainly know about the hypothetico-deductive method, but world-changing innovation isn't happening there, and there are worrisome signs it is endangered even in the places it's previously been abundant so i don't think there were, like, volcanic eruptions or eclipses or population explosions or something that needed to happen before technological advancement could continue, if that's what you're asking
- akkartik 4y ago
  I tend to think of it as not dependency gated but social-technology gated. As you say, the critical resource was leisure, sufficiently widely distributed as to lead to humans playing status games like, "who can polish the shiniest mirror." And that requires a fairly sophisticated society in terms of number of classes, the way they depend on each other, possibilities of social mobility, resilience to sudden resource constraints, etc., etc.
  - kragen 4y ago
    i don't think the critical resource was leisure; hunter-gatherers have plenty of leisure time, and the leisure time of chinese emperors and the roman élite was so notorious that it toppled a number of dynasties. john plant has had less leisure time in his life than almost any individual noble, scribe, sadhu, or other monk, in most civilized societies throughout most of history and i don't think that we have good evidence that the wildly innovative hellenistic society was noticeably more sophisticated in these ways than the imperial society that ground the intellectual face of mediterranean society under its boot for the following 16 centuries, ceding leadership in math, science, and technology to india and china until the renaissance i think it's a mistake to think of intellectual and technological progress as something that will inevitably happen at the fastest rate allowed by some critical resource; historically progress was the exception, not the rule, and that remains true worldwide today. it requires a delicate constellation of favorable conditions
    - abecedarius 4y ago
      I liked Ober's The rise and fall of classical Greece for more background bearing on this for greater Greece. It argued that literary sources underweighted things like classical Greece's relative economic dynamism (shown by archaeology).
      - kragen 4y ago
        interesting, i'll have to check it out i still haven't finished russo's book you recommended me, which was another huge mind bomb for me

throwaway4aday 4y ago

I think Y tends to be a combination of factors like enough wealth within a society combined with enough people and communication and a culture of exploration and experimentation free from overly despotic government. Those circumstances have been quite rare in history as far as we know.

Retric 4y ago

The Spinning wheel could arguably have been a Neolithic invention but instead only shows up fairly recently. What makes it notable is it probably saved more labor than any other device in history, and in many ways set the stage for the Industrial revolution. In terms of discovery, trade with the America across the Bering Strait could have occurred vastly earlier and dramatically changed history. It’s likely people where crossing fairly regularly without realizing anything unusual was going on.

kragen 4y ago
the spinning wheel is a wonderful example, and i wish i'd thought of it arguably agriculture, the needle, the bow, the boat, and fire 'saved more labor' than the spinning wheel, but it isn't clear that in their case those even apply

kragen 4y ago

it's a really interesting question, and i don't really have a good answer plant has made a reasonably good demonstration here that if you have the knowledge and a fair bit of free time (i.e., you aren't working 60 hours a week just so you aren't arrested by the king's men, don't starve to death, and don't get eaten by lions) you can get from banging rocks together to casting tools from smelted iron within a single human decade; in historical human terms this took from pre-pottery neolithic (≈10'000 bce) to the warring states period (≈500 bce) so it seems that human innovation was purely 'dependency-gated' or maybe 'knowledge-gated' at least during that period; but could we have acquired the knowledge faster? russo's book claims that the main reason we didn't was that we didn't have the hypothetico-deductive method until the hellenistic period, and then it was forgotten again after the roman conquests, until being rediscovered in the 18th and 19th centuries. but even today most places are not advancing rapidly or really at all; life expectancy may be improving in chuuk, bangalore, and montevideo, and they certainly know about the hypothetico-deductive method, but world-changing innovation isn't happening there, and there are worrisome signs it is endangered even in the places it's previously been abundant so i don't think there were, like, volcanic eruptions or eclipses or population explosions or something that needed to happen before technological advancement could continue, if that's what you're asking

akkartik 4y ago
I tend to think of it as not dependency gated but social-technology gated. As you say, the critical resource was leisure, sufficiently widely distributed as to lead to humans playing status games like, "who can polish the shiniest mirror." And that requires a fairly sophisticated society in terms of number of classes, the way they depend on each other, possibilities of social mobility, resilience to sudden resource constraints, etc., etc.
- kragen 4y ago
  i don't think the critical resource was leisure; hunter-gatherers have plenty of leisure time, and the leisure time of chinese emperors and the roman élite was so notorious that it toppled a number of dynasties. john plant has had less leisure time in his life than almost any individual noble, scribe, sadhu, or other monk, in most civilized societies throughout most of history and i don't think that we have good evidence that the wildly innovative hellenistic society was noticeably more sophisticated in these ways than the imperial society that ground the intellectual face of mediterranean society under its boot for the following 16 centuries, ceding leadership in math, science, and technology to india and china until the renaissance i think it's a mistake to think of intellectual and technological progress as something that will inevitably happen at the fastest rate allowed by some critical resource; historically progress was the exception, not the rule, and that remains true worldwide today. it requires a delicate constellation of favorable conditions
  - abecedarius 4y ago
    I liked Ober's The rise and fall of classical Greece for more background bearing on this for greater Greece. It argued that literary sources underweighted things like classical Greece's relative economic dynamism (shown by archaeology).
    - kragen 4y ago
      interesting, i'll have to check it out i still haven't finished russo's book you recommended me, which was another huge mind bomb for me