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> tech tree was pretty much directed by resources availability and human ingenuity didn't play much role at all and any species of roughly 50-150 human IQ would

by diggan 1y ago

> tech tree was pretty much directed by resources availability and human ingenuity didn't play much role at all and any species of roughly 50-150 human IQ would follow pretty much the same path Huh? There are inventions that happened by mere coincident, or two "right" humans at the same place and the same time. Penicillin, superglue and microwave ovens are just some examples from the top of my head, that probably wouldn't have happened if they weren't "accidentally" discovered. It would seem many inventions are driven by "Hmm, what happened there?" accidents, and since the right person actually paid attention, they dove into it rather than dismissing it.

sokoloff 1y ago
I doubt we’d be able to avoid discovering microwave heating across 200 years of using RF in the relevant frequency area. Once discovered, applying it to a countertop application seems inevitable.
- diggan 1y ago
  > Once discovered, applying it to a countertop application seems inevitable I guess hindsight is funny like that, most inventions/technology seem obvious to us today. Like putting wheels on luggage, of course that's easier and better in every way, but how many years was it between "luggage" was invented, and someone put wheels on them?
  - pm215 1y ago
    It took a little while, but the window isn't quite as wide as it might at first seem. Before solid smooth paved and floored surfaces are ubiquitous, wheels on luggage are of only limited use, and if you are carrying your own luggage you want something that's easy to carry on your back. In a time period where most people rich enough to be doing travelling with luggage have servants to carry it, making the luggage easier to move around isn't very high priority. When cost of labour is low and porters in railway stations and hotels are ubiquitous, wheeled luggage seems less necessary. And at the other end of the window, Wikipedia reports ad-hoc attempts to do wheels on luggage in the 1920s, and actual patents or products (either for a wheeled suitcase or a "put wheels on your existing suitcase" add-on) by the 1940s. I think I'd be happy putting this in the "inevitable" category -- the idea floats around and maybe it takes a few decades for the market to be wide enough and somebody to have a good implementation and marketing to make it take off as a consumer product, but if the specific people who did that in our timeline hadn't managed to, somebody else would have.
  - scotty79 1y ago
    For wheels on luggage to make sense we had to build enough flat, hard surfaces on the way. When we did, it was inevitable.
XorNot 1y ago
But that proves the point: coincident discovery implies that ingenuity was far less important than environment. There are smart people everywhere, what there is not is the prior knowledge or resources to turn that into new discoveries. Notably we see way more coincident discovery after the printing press and more distant trade became common place (and centers of trade usually originated innovations wherever they happened).

by diggan 1y ago

sokoloff 1y ago

I doubt we’d be able to avoid discovering microwave heating across 200 years of using RF in the relevant frequency area. Once discovered, applying it to a countertop application seems inevitable.

diggan 1y ago
> Once discovered, applying it to a countertop application seems inevitable I guess hindsight is funny like that, most inventions/technology seem obvious to us today. Like putting wheels on luggage, of course that's easier and better in every way, but how many years was it between "luggage" was invented, and someone put wheels on them?
- pm215 1y ago
  It took a little while, but the window isn't quite as wide as it might at first seem. Before solid smooth paved and floored surfaces are ubiquitous, wheels on luggage are of only limited use, and if you are carrying your own luggage you want something that's easy to carry on your back. In a time period where most people rich enough to be doing travelling with luggage have servants to carry it, making the luggage easier to move around isn't very high priority. When cost of labour is low and porters in railway stations and hotels are ubiquitous, wheeled luggage seems less necessary. And at the other end of the window, Wikipedia reports ad-hoc attempts to do wheels on luggage in the 1920s, and actual patents or products (either for a wheeled suitcase or a "put wheels on your existing suitcase" add-on) by the 1940s. I think I'd be happy putting this in the "inevitable" category -- the idea floats around and maybe it takes a few decades for the market to be wide enough and somebody to have a good implementation and marketing to make it take off as a consumer product, but if the specific people who did that in our timeline hadn't managed to, somebody else would have.
- scotty79 1y ago
  For wheels on luggage to make sense we had to build enough flat, hard surfaces on the way. When we did, it was inevitable.

XorNot 1y ago

But that proves the point: coincident discovery implies that ingenuity was far less important than environment. There are smart people everywhere, what there is not is the prior knowledge or resources to turn that into new discoveries. Notably we see way more coincident discovery after the printing press and more distant trade became common place (and centers of trade usually originated innovations wherever they happened).