4 ms·
I can't imagine an archaeologist or historian studying e.g. Pierre de Fermat ever saying, "Good thing we have so few documents and artifacts! That way we know w
by fallingsquirrel 2y ago
I can't imagine an archaeologist or historian studying e.g. Pierre de Fermat ever saying, "Good thing we have so few documents and artifacts! That way we know what was really important to him."
What's the proof for Fermat's Last Theorem again? Doesn't matter, it was just a footnote anyway so let's not bother preserving it. It doesn't matter that it took our smartest minds 358 years of trail and error to rediscover the proof. It can always be discovered again.
- ivan_gammel 2y agoWe don’t know if the proof did exist. The complexity of the one we have is an indication that he did not tell the truth, whether that was a genuine mistake, a joke or something else. For sure it wasn’t the longest time gap between a problem statement and a solution. Yes, rebuilding civilization from scratch would be a difficult task, taking centuries if not millennia, if no knowledge is preserved. However we do preserve it and do spend considerable effort, what cannot be said about our culture and individual experiences.
- fallingsquirrel 2y agoMaybe the complexity of the one we have is an indication that we haven't rediscovered it. We discovered a worse one. Maybe it will take our smartest minds another 350 years to rediscover his. If preserving data was easier in the 1600s we could just grep through Fermat's hard drive and we would know for sure! Let's keep making preservation easier, and preserving as much as we can. Maybe much of it is worthless, but I guarantee there's at least one document we think is worthless today, that historians 500 years from now will be glad we preserved anyway.