A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism • Hacker News Board

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#51

Post by shakezula » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #33

progre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read someware that in 2000 years the books we managed to save from the middle ages and up to about 1850 will still be around but anything printed after that will be gone because the paper of the modern age is to fragile to last.

The cultures that dominated North and South America prior to the arrival of European explorers and the mass plague that accompanied them were absolutely vast, and we are only now starting to piece together the size and scale of some of those empires. There are several reasons for the gap in understanding of their scale, but one is that the well-settled communities (with some exceptions primarily centered in South Ame…

They were also about as complex and technologically advanced as their Old World counterparts. I'm consistently impressed by how well South American cultures understood the cosmos, plumbing, irrigation, materials, etc... South American civilizations would have been a source of new information, and no doubt a bunch of knowledge was lost.

We only have a few books left from thousands of years of civilizations. It makes me incredibly sad to think about the history we lost. It would be like if we only had one or two books to understand all of Roman history. Absolutely blows my mind how fragile everything we've built is.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#52

Post by johnnujler » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

chatzi wrote: post #19

johnnujler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if it would be wise to dismiss the possibility so easily. We clearly do not know all the causal elements involved, plus I wouldn't be surprised if the name of the island itself had something to do with "antariksha".

Antikithira is a composite word: Anti (a prefix meaning opposite) + Kithira (a nearby island). So maybe it is the other way round, "antariksha" is named after the island ?

Never said it was named after antariksha. Merely pointed out the possibility of a connection. Are we considering word formation and origin retracing a settled matter?

Also just realised that I am replying to a sock puppet account. Thanks anyway.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#53

Post by waserwill » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #41

HenryKissinger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Turchin is not a professional historian. He's a hack whose theories have been debunked.

People throw around "debunked" like it's final. In reality, it's just a lazy dismissal without substance. You want to say he's wrong about something, say what it is and give a reason. Otherwise you're just avoiding actual critical thought. (Also, I have no idea who Peter Turchin is. I just don't like it when people inflict their defective thinking on others.)

The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse.

His own description from a decade ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a A large project he directs and uses to study this: http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ And has produced some interesting descriptive work such as: https://www.pnas.org/content/115/2/E144.full

Some of his group's work [0] has been criticized on methodological grounds [1]. While some of his work may produce overdetermined models (trying to model history, considering all of the possible variables, can be tricky), the sorts of things he is interested in have been developed a fair bit, of late [2].

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1043-4 [1] https://github.com/babeheim/moralizing-gods-reanalysis [2] https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/7846.full

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#54

Post by salemh » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #28

belval wrote: post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations. Many ancient Greek classics, such as the works of Aristotle might have been lost forever had they not been saved by Islamic scholars. And don't think it couldn't happen again. We'v…

You mean West Romes fall. The Eastern Roman empire lasted until the 15th century. Eastern Rome was sacked in 1204 which was the actual blow that jump stated the Western Enlightenment after plundering Eastern Rome for 50 years. https://www.ancient.eu/article/1188/1204-the-sack-of-constan... https://www.britannica.com/place/Byzantine-Empire/Byzantine-... https://historyofislam.com/contents/the-classical-period/con...

The Ottomans did not take over East Rome until the 15th century, where much of the plunder was already gone to the West. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/fallconstan...

While the West would term the East Romans as "Byzantines" in the 15th Century, this isn't correct to say they were not in Roman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#55

Post by beagle3 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 4:58 PM UTC

tylermw wrote: post #43

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern digital recordings can last for a very long time. And old USB stick dug up in hundreds of years, can be reinterpreted by a future modern civilization. They're kind of all 'saved by Islamic scholars' in that sense?

The data on that USB drive will deteriorate over a couple decades. NAND memory generally isn't an adequate format for archival purposes.

Indeed. The BBC’s Domesday book was put on a pre-CD glass based optical medium which should last forever, but they managed to lose reading equipment for it, and a huge digitization effort from the 80s would have been lost (they published a call for help, and eventually someone found a reader in their garage.... but it was a close call)

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#56

Post by ivanhoe » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

stryan wrote: post #44

krapp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations. Many ancient Greek classics, such as the works of Aristotle might have been lost forever had they not been saved by Islamic scholars. And don't think it couldn't happen again. We'v…

> The fall of the Roman empire was essentially a post-apocalyptic event for the West. The economic and political collapse of Rome's satellite states halted the progress of technological and cultural development across subsequent generations. "Halted" and "post-apocalyptic" are strong words. The Fall of Rome was a very long and drawn out event, and plenty of technological and cultural development continued after the F…

Well, almost all of the work of Greek philosophers and their science and philosophy achievements were in Catholic Europe completely forgotten and actively censored for centuries. Fantastic Roman infrastructure, aqueducts, running water inside the multi-storey buildings and huge sewage systems were completely neglected - people completely lost the Antic ideas of hygiene - resulting in horrible sanitary conditions as newly built cities lacked any sanitary infrastructure. Even rich people lived like that, almost no castle even after the middle age had a sewage system, nor running water. They used wells for water and dropped sewage in front of houses, on the streets directly.

Now, they didn't return to stone age of course, practical tools and technologies that were a part of common knowledge remained in use, but many advanced engineering skills were lost. Also the society drastically changed, it fell into religious fanaticism and extreme conservatism - which is the main reason why it was called the dark age actually.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#57

Post by generalizations » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

waserwill wrote: post #53

generalizations wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People throw around "debunked" like it's final. In reality, it's just a lazy dismissal without substance. You want to say he's wrong about something, say what it is and give a reason. Otherwise you're just avoiding actual critical thought. (Also, I have no idea who Peter Turchin is. I just don't like it when people inflict their defective thinking on others.)

The short of it: Turchin advocates for a field of 'cliodynamics' which tries to apply math to meaningfully describe and predict social trends, especially large ones such as collapse. His own description from a decade ago: https://www.nature.com/articles/454034a A large project he directs and uses to study this: http://seshatdatabank.info/seshat-about-us/ And has produced some interesting descriptive work such as: htt…

That is cool stuff. Thanks for the links, I'll be reading those later.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#58

Post by tokai » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

belval wrote: post #15

What happened to these advanced civilization of the antiquity? We have drawings of highly advanced siege engines yet it seem that after the fall of Rome we all went back to fighting with sticks for a few centuries. Why is that?

As I understand it this idea of the dark ages isn't supported by modern historians.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#59

Post by curtainsforus » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

lallysingh wrote: post #35

spaetzleesser wrote: post #13

I always wonder what future archaeologists in will read into artifacts from our time when they find them in 2000 years...

They'll read digital archives. They'll be fine.

Assuming the computers and the archives and the OS'es and the standards documentation and so on and so on survive.

200 years of javascript-style churn does not a reliable storage method make.

Re: A Model of the Cosmos in the Ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism

#60

Post by hnuser123456 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

shakezula wrote: post #49

phkahler wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why odd gaps appear. Like an article about how China can't manufacture the balls for ball-point pens, or critical parts for jet engines. Maybe a few missing pieces are why Intel cant seem to figure out EUV lithography. None of these things are trivial and probably not documented in a way where a noob could pick them up.

Even just the specific knowledge of building a house is probably a generation removed from most people these days. It scares me to think of just how fragile we really are.

Sure, but what is forgotten makes room for novel ideas which are hopefully sometimes improvements. Plus, now we have computers to write and share this knowledge so it doesn't always have to be memorized.