4 ms·
That's one theory, yes. Cooking food (with fire) makes more calories available, meaning less hunting required to support more individuals, and/or freeing up mor
by vitally3643 4mo ago
That's one theory, yes. Cooking food (with fire) makes more calories available, meaning less hunting required to support more individuals, and/or freeing up more time and calories for thinking. This allowed us to evolve bigger and more complex brains.
While it's not a given that fire is a hard prerequisite for an industrial civilization, it certainly accelerated our technological development. Fact of the matter is, we know of exactly one civilization, which is not enough to draw any conclusions. There's no real reason we know of that aquatic species cannot evolve into a technological civilization, we just haven't seen it happen. Fact is we don't really know how an intelligent technological species evolves. We only have guesses from our own history.
- smilespray 4mo agoAnd a sample size of one.
- vitally3643 4mo agoThat's what I said, yes.
- nobodyandproud 4mo agoWe have counter examples of human pods that never really achieved “civilization”. What’s missing that make them more akin to orcas or wolves?
- greiskul 4mo agoIt is possible it is just time. Modern humans are considered to have existed for 300k~ years. Civilizations are about 6k years old. So who knows. Maybe if you gave them an extra 10k years, they would have achived "civilization". It is not much for the scale of human existance. But it is longer than any of our civilizations has existed for.
- nobodyandproud 4mo agoFor humans, I wonder if population size and density is also a factor. That is, if there’s a critical mass and population size.
- asdff 4mo agoAnd makes sense with agriculture and civilization coming together. Agriculture improved the carrying capacity of an acre of land dramatically from what it was from foraging and hunting.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4mo agoWritten language ? Got it too easy ?
- nobodyandproud 4mo agoIt doesn’t have to be writing. At least one culture used ropes and knots.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4mo agoI think that (Incas) was more numerical record keeping rather than written language. What's special about written language (which some existing hunter-gatherer tribes still don't have), as opposed to spoken language, is that it allows cultural knowledge to be spread, stored, accumulated, and built upon.
- aurareturn 4mo agoFire, agriculture, electricity, AI. Rank these inventions in terms of importance to humanity.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoAI hasn’t taken its final form yet.
- aozame 4mo agoAI is not important at all. Just make things more convenient, but is completely unnecessary.
- bdamm 4mo agoCheck back in 5 years. This is going to age poorly. The reason is that, despite what many think, AI actually is able to create novel ideas and solutions. That's why AlphaGo was so important; it couldn't beat the world's best Go player just be being a fancy autocomplete and a big processor. It had to create new discoveries and then use them effectively. That was the turning point. It's been a decade of improvements since then, and AI is already making discoveries we couldn't have made without it. The impacts are already here and in your world, you just haven't recognized them as such yet. But in a few years it will be undeniable to even the most uneducated observer, since changes that could not be possible will be present in every person's life as the effects ripple out across basically every industry.
- artisin 4mo agoIn no timeline nor carbon-based universe does GP's comment age poorly.
- stasomatic 4mo agoI am a bit skeptical but cautiously optimistic about AI “creating novel ideas”, if we are using “create” pedantically. Any interesting examples?
- 4mo ago