Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 205 posts

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#91

Post by gwern »

sgt101 wrote: post #57

We would have known about machines like the Antikythera mechanism because the Romans wrote about them : specifically Cicero documented the existence of these kinds of machines (that could predict the motion of the planets).

The only reason anyone pays any attention to that throwaway line in Cicero is because the Antikythera mechanism exists. Can you find a single modern reference to that Cicero passage - pre-Antikythera mechanism - which interprets it, in full generality, as proving the Greco-Romans had analogue computing developed to such a high extent?

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#92

Post by _Microft »

squish78 wrote: post #72
samvher wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that a piece of meat is more nutritious than the same mass in plant matter is not in conflict with the idea that an ecosystem can feed more vegetarians than omni/carnivores.

Except in the winter in temperate climates when you can't harvest enough calories or protein to survive on a vegetarian diet

Are you claiming that vegetarians have no access to the global logistics services or storage of food? This is ridiculous.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#93

Post by adamrezich »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #11
jordanbeiber wrote: post #3

On this topic - Oswald Spenglers observations on the topic of civilizational collapse are an interesting read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West > Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.

Now the superorganism is global. Who will be left to carry the torch?

That is quite the claim.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#94

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kijin wrote: post #22
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in our hard drives.

No, in books and journals. We're still printing them by the billions every year. Software of various kinds might be lost, since we usually don't print them out. But the theory required to re-implement them are all available on paper, sitting in a library somewhere. A book on algorithms and data structures will be far more useful to a future civilization than raw source code for a hardware architecture that won't even…

A book on software and algorithms would be useless without hardware to experiment on. There's only so much you can do with cogs and rods, so software only really starts to make sense with electronics of some kind - and only becomes useful when you have enough speed and memory to do real work.

Which in turn assumes that you have real work to do. One of the earliest civilian computing systems was a payroll calculator - which is only useful if payroll is a problem you need to have solved, which in turn is only necessary if your economy is complex enough to need payroll calculations at significant scale, and human "calculators" aren't available.

The point is that the Greeks and the Romans had the IQ to invent modern technology. The Greeks especially also had the philosophical background.

But neither had the politics or the economics.

Modern computing is a political phenomenon, not just a scientific one. It exists because it solves certain economic and political problems, and there's no reason to assume that a different culture would have identical problems - even if it could understand the theory.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#95

Post by isoprophlex »

abhishekjha wrote: post #38

Isn't spacetime an all time storage system? You can't burn it, chafe it, erode it. Its is going to be there forever. Even if there's something that you think has been lost(like the library of Alexandria or the Roman empire) is waiting to be seen again. It is never lost. These `movies` of spacetime is being saved on a forever store.

Storage is useless without retrieval. Good luck implementing a system to replay your movies of spacetime...

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#96

Post by JoeAltmaier »

spodek wrote: post #73
solotronics wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, animals can digest many forms of plant that are useless as human food such as plains grasses and tree leaves. Vegetarianism is elitist in that many people on earth cannot afford to foregoe any availible source of protein and food, there are starving people already and telling someone in Africa they shouldn't eat a chicken that forages near their house is pretty narrow minded. I tend to eat vegetarian on my own…

What does being vegetarian have to do with telling other people what they should or shouldn't eat?

The old joke: "How can you tell if someone is a Vegetarian? They'll tell you."

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#97

Post by dredmorbius »

chrisco255 wrote: post #41

This quote: "Ecologically, these Archaic hunters and gatherers had moved one entire link down the food chain, thereby eliminating the approximately 90-percent loss in food value that occurs when one feeds on an animal that is a plant-eater." This is just completely false. All meat consumed is bioavailable protein and nutrients. Even more so when it's cooked. Plants have reduced bioavailability due to high oxalate, ph…

The reference is to trophic levels and caloric loss.

Plants, in net, capture about 1-3% of available solar energy and convert that to equivalent biomass. Food conversion -- the parts you can eat -- are a small fraction of that.

Herbivores and predators each convert about 10% of the food energy they eat into body mass, for a 90% reduction (approximately) at each trophic level. Grazers lose 90% of the primary plant food energy, first-order predators lose 90% of the herbivore food energy, second-order predators (rare, but they do exist), lose 90% of the first-order predator food energy.

This is known as the trophic or ecological pyramid:

https://www.britannica.com/science/trophic-pyramid

Yes, eating something that can eat what you cannot is a net win. Eating something that eats what you can (most contemporary livestock) is not.

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#98

Post by jordanbeiber »

wsy wrote: post #85
jordanbeiber wrote: post #3

On this topic - Oswald Spenglers observations on the topic of civilizational collapse are an interesting read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West > Spengler's model of history postulates that any culture is a superorganism with a limited and predictable lifespan.

It is an interesting and inspiring read. However, it turned out to be completely wrong, like many (all?) predictive models of history.

Well according to him we are the latest civilization and have entered the final decadent millennia of our existence. We’ll have to wait and see!

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#99

Post by polyterative »

abhishekjha wrote: post #38

Isn't spacetime an all time storage system? You can't burn it, chafe it, erode it. Its is going to be there forever. Even if there's something that you think has been lost(like the library of Alexandria or the Roman empire) is waiting to be seen again. It is never lost. These `movies` of spacetime is being saved on a forever store.

If you can find a way to retrieve the info, yes

Re: Civilizational Collapse, Part 4

#100

Post by drinane »

ddxxdd wrote: post #12

This feels reminiscent of the current issue of long-term data storage. Flash drives are volatile and can lose your data any minute. Solid State drives are slightly less volatile, and a hard disk has magnetic fields that will last decades, but nothing will keep our gigabytes of data alive and intact for future archaeologists. If the Library of Alexandria can burn, then so can any form of digital storage. On a side not…

I think for what is important you can make it important effectively forever.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

Post reply on HN