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> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that peo

> I don’t understand how people underestimate it so badly when we have so much history we are taught that demonstrates it. It is the tendency to think that people in the past were dumb, and we aren't. Like, there always has to be some explanation involved when we learn that people did something unintuitive in the past -- people learned how to make beer by accidentally leaving leftover bread in liquid and then drank it when they were starving. Maybe? Or maybe they figured out that things ferment and played with it until it worked, like we would have done it? Why does it always have to be an accident? People may have had less access to information and technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we are now.

RajT88 2y ago
> People may have had less access to information and technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we are now. There's probably an aspect to people confusing "knowledge" with "brainpower". People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. We have the advantage of Millenia of stuff figured out and documented. So we know on average more about how the universe works than people in the distant past.
- abakker 2y ago
  I’d say it: we know that some people currently know more, but, the average person mostly knows something about what is known, rather than knowing it directly.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. I seriously doubt that. My experience in college was not to learn facts and formulae, but to learn how to learn. I.e. training the mind. It's similar to athletes. The worst Olympic athlete today would blow away the best from a century ago. That's not because people are inherently stronger today, but because we know how to train much better.
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    But again, that is access to knowledge. How good would your college education have been if there was no library or textbooks? If you took the athletes today without their support team and sent them back in time two years before an Olympics event to compete on their own, I don't think it would be as big of a blowout as you suggest.
    - sethherr 2y ago
      It would be a huge blowout. We didn’t know how to train or eat and athletes smoked and drank substantially more. Meanwhile, the gear evolutions make significant difference. But take distance running - prior to 1954, nobody had done a sub 4 minute mile. After that was known to be possible multiple people sub 4 minute miled in the following decade. If you sent a top runner back a hundred years they would be able to run a sub 4 minute mile, even with 1920s equipment - and the world record in 1923 was 4:10
      - yread 2y ago
        > even with 1920s equipment Are you sure about that? Can you post a result where someone ran with leather shoes on asphalt?
        hilux 2y ago
        Zola Budd, a woman, ran a barefoot mile in 4:17.57, which is about 10 seconds slower than the current women's WR. The men's mile WR is about 24 seconds faster than the women's. Presumably plenty of barefoot African dudes could run a mile a lot faster than Budd did. With the exception of the new "energy return" shoes, there's no evidence that shoes help runners run faster - probably the opposite.
      - kaffekaka 2y ago
        As far as I know the progression into sub 4 minute miles was quite linear and not some kind of sudden breach once everybody understood it was at all possible. The story of a sudden breach is perhaps more attractive though.
WalterBright 2y ago
Initial technological progress was agonizingly slow. Presuming that man then was just as smart as today, why would that be so? I suspect it is because the thought of what might be possible just never entered their minds. For example, Edison invented the idea of the invention development laboratory. Very, very recently. The Wright Bros were the first to come up with the idea of a research and development laboratory - just over a century ago.
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. Agriculture, animal husbandry, arts, warfare, engineering were all very sophisticated, limited by the materials science available (firearms, for instance, need very strong metals not to explode). The scientists that existed before the industrial age in the West were upper class, bored and educated men who did it for their own amusement. It wasn't until the abandonment of the economic system which worked on the assumption that international economics was zero sum and capitalism (and imperialism) took hold that the incentive structure for creating novel technologies could exist. This is all recollection based on various histories I have consumed and may not be entirely correct, but I'm pretty sure the idea is solid.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. That is partially true. There is no incentive, for example, for slaves to make any improvements. I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. That meant the few people in power were not enough to think of much new stuff. You could say free markets were the greatest invention, because it incentivized everyone to be a creator. The evolution of guns is an interesting topic. So is the evolution of sailing ships. The latter occurred over thousands of years. Very very slow! You might want to investigate James Burke's "Connections" book and series. It's an entertaining overview of the history of invention.
    - 2y ago
jyounker 2y ago
> Why does it always have to be an accident? Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered. Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener except invert sugar.
- rob74 2y ago
  Same as the famous discovery of Penicillin in a petri dish contaminated with a mold that killed off the bacteria? ...but now I'm starting to wonder how many people working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and died, because they had accidentally discovered a toxin?
  - Eisenstein 2y ago
    Except it happened to be in a petri dish and it happened to be observed at the time by a scientist. Total accident!
    - bregma 2y ago
      Serendipity favours the prepared mind. That's all.
  - Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    Dying is still a valuable scientific outcome, but few people become famous for it except maybe Marie Curie.
sdwr 2y ago
The funny thing is that, if anything, we are the dumb ones in this scenario. They figured it out through reasoning and trial and error and raw experience, while for us it's apparently impossible to learn anything we don't already know the answer for.

RajT88 2y ago

> People may have had less access to information and technology, but that didn't make them any dumber than we are now. There's probably an aspect to people confusing "knowledge" with "brainpower". People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. We have the advantage of Millenia of stuff figured out and documented. So we know on average more about how the universe works than people in the distant past.

abakker 2y ago
I’d say it: we know that some people currently know more, but, the average person mostly knows something about what is known, rather than knowing it directly.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 2y ago
> People in the past were just as good at figuring stuff out as we are today. I seriously doubt that. My experience in college was not to learn facts and formulae, but to learn how to learn. I.e. training the mind. It's similar to athletes. The worst Olympic athlete today would blow away the best from a century ago. That's not because people are inherently stronger today, but because we know how to train much better.
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  But again, that is access to knowledge. How good would your college education have been if there was no library or textbooks? If you took the athletes today without their support team and sent them back in time two years before an Olympics event to compete on their own, I don't think it would be as big of a blowout as you suggest.
  - sethherr 2y ago
    It would be a huge blowout. We didn’t know how to train or eat and athletes smoked and drank substantially more. Meanwhile, the gear evolutions make significant difference. But take distance running - prior to 1954, nobody had done a sub 4 minute mile. After that was known to be possible multiple people sub 4 minute miled in the following decade. If you sent a top runner back a hundred years they would be able to run a sub 4 minute mile, even with 1920s equipment - and the world record in 1923 was 4:10
    - yread 2y ago
      > even with 1920s equipment Are you sure about that? Can you post a result where someone ran with leather shoes on asphalt?
      - hilux 2y ago
        Zola Budd, a woman, ran a barefoot mile in 4:17.57, which is about 10 seconds slower than the current women's WR. The men's mile WR is about 24 seconds faster than the women's. Presumably plenty of barefoot African dudes could run a mile a lot faster than Budd did. With the exception of the new "energy return" shoes, there's no evidence that shoes help runners run faster - probably the opposite.
    - kaffekaka 2y ago
      As far as I know the progression into sub 4 minute miles was quite linear and not some kind of sudden breach once everybody understood it was at all possible. The story of a sudden breach is perhaps more attractive though.

WalterBright 2y ago

Initial technological progress was agonizingly slow. Presuming that man then was just as smart as today, why would that be so? I suspect it is because the thought of what might be possible just never entered their minds. For example, Edison invented the idea of the invention development laboratory. Very, very recently. The Wright Bros were the first to come up with the idea of a research and development laboratory - just over a century ago.

Eisenstein 2y ago
More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. Agriculture, animal husbandry, arts, warfare, engineering were all very sophisticated, limited by the materials science available (firearms, for instance, need very strong metals not to explode). The scientists that existed before the industrial age in the West were upper class, bored and educated men who did it for their own amusement. It wasn't until the abandonment of the economic system which worked on the assumption that international economics was zero sum and capitalism (and imperialism) took hold that the incentive structure for creating novel technologies could exist. This is all recollection based on various histories I have consumed and may not be entirely correct, but I'm pretty sure the idea is solid.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > More likely it was because the systems didn't exist that incentivized figuring out solutions to the problems which technology solves. That is partially true. There is no incentive, for example, for slaves to make any improvements. I cannot think of any technology developed by slaves. That meant the few people in power were not enough to think of much new stuff. You could say free markets were the greatest invention, because it incentivized everyone to be a creator. The evolution of guns is an interesting topic. So is the evolution of sailing ships. The latter occurred over thousands of years. Very very slow! You might want to investigate James Burke's "Connections" book and series. It's an entertaining overview of the history of invention.
  - 2y ago

jyounker 2y ago

> Why does it always have to be an accident? Because that's a surprisingly common way for things to be discovered. Saccharine? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. Aspartame? Somebody working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and discovered it was sweet. I think this is true of basically every major artificial sweetener except invert sugar.

rob74 2y ago
Same as the famous discovery of Penicillin in a petri dish contaminated with a mold that killed off the bacteria? ...but now I'm starting to wonder how many people working in a lab didn't clean their hands well, licked their fingers, and died, because they had accidentally discovered a toxin?
- Eisenstein 2y ago
  Except it happened to be in a petri dish and it happened to be observed at the time by a scientist. Total accident!
  - bregma 2y ago
    Serendipity favours the prepared mind. That's all.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Dying is still a valuable scientific outcome, but few people become famous for it except maybe Marie Curie.

sdwr 2y ago

The funny thing is that, if anything, we are the dumb ones in this scenario. They figured it out through reasoning and trial and error and raw experience, while for us it's apparently impossible to learn anything we don't already know the answer for.