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Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

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Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#71

Post by gaustin »

WalterBright wrote: post #60

I'd like to see someone make a knife without using any modern technology precursors whatsoever. That means starting from using ones hands and what is available from nature in its natural form. I think it'd be quite an accomplishment.

People already do this. Some only go so far as stone blades, or allow modern tools for certain steps. Others bootstrap the whole process from stone-age to steel.

I've never done it. It's incredibly time consuming but satisfying, from the first hand accounts I've read. You can cut hours or days off of your work time by using modern tools for some of the most seemingly trivial steps.

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#72

Post by ramchip »

I remember a cooperative online game, with a mostly text-only interface, in which you could build smelters and tools and climb gradually the tech tree. It was very detailed and interesting but I lost track of its name and URL. Does it ring a bell for anybody?

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#73

Post by RickHull »

daeken wrote: post #61
flexd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be wrong (search turns up nothing), I have seen this before though and thought it came from here (since this is usually where I find my quality reading material). No need to get all downvotey, I wish I had the authors abilities.

I don't know if it's been here in the past, but it was linked in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2644863 a couple days ago.

Yep, that's where I found it. I figured it was worth its own submission.

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#74

Post by viraptor »

shazow wrote: post #70
RomP wrote: post #47

I sometimes wonder how long would it take for the civilization to re-create the current level of technology, if all the material artifacts disappear one day: books, computers, robots, factories, even hammers. If all that remains is the current level of knowledge in the heads of 7bln people, how long would it take from the stone age to Core i7, heart transplants and Boeing 787s? And how much different the world would…

I wonder the same. I like to imagine the current population being transposed to an alternate Earth where humans never existed. I guess the first most important step is for everyone to start documenting everything they know of science, creating a kind of ad-hoc paper Wikipedia (once we make paper, of course). If the current generations die before their knowledge is recorded or passed down, we're going to be held back…

And provided a good number of people who can organise / lead the reconstruction, so it doesn't just get sidetracked and forgotten. Reminds me of the story from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where the wheel could not be invented, because marketing people couldn't agree on the colour...

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#76

Post by ars »

toddh wrote: post #48
InclinedPlane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average person would not be overly useful, but a skilled and knowledgeable individual would have much to offer. A chemist can make nylon, gunpowder, matches, or plastic from relatively easily obtained chemicals even in ancient times, for example. There are also lots of other little tricks that are just as or more valuable. Things like germ theory, medicine, cooking, electricity, etc. In roman times it would have b…

The idea of science itself would probably be more powerful than anything an individual could accomplish. Let a 1000 flowers bloom and all that.

Science is older than you think. Science is making experiments, recording results, and trying to figure out what is going on.

The oldest clearest example of science is alchemy. Today we know it's impossible, but back then they reacted a tremendous number of compounds and carefully recorded the results.

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#77

Post by ars »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #59
pyrhho wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Better Bread? Historically bakers had extremely short lives because without mixers they had to breathe in the flour dust all day. And the bread would have been extremely unevenly cooked (no temperature-regulated ovens), as well as being extremely salty (no preservatives). - Pasta? Pasta is absolutely amazing. It is an extremely dense source of calories, which doesn't rot, is super-compact, and only requires water a…

Pasta is an amazing invention. It's functionally similar to hard tack except it can be prepared to an edible state very quickly with merely boiling water and also tastes much better.

Can you make pasta with whole grain flour? I'm not sure milling techniques available in those days were able to make the right kind of flour.

Also without fortifying the flour pasta is calories without nutrients. It's useful as a suplement, but dangerous to live on it long term.

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#78

Post by biot »

burgerbrain wrote: post #34
InclinedPlane wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average person would not be overly useful, but a skilled and knowledgeable individual would have much to offer. A chemist can make nylon, gunpowder, matches, or plastic from relatively easily obtained chemicals even in ancient times, for example. There are also lots of other little tricks that are just as or more valuable. Things like germ theory, medicine, cooking, electricity, etc. In roman times it would have b…

Even easier than the telegraph, but potentially even more dramatic: the phonograph. Paper diaphragm, wax cylinder, a needle, and viola! You're a god! ;)

Great idea. I'm sure many would love to hear a recording of a viola.

Re: Guy makes a knife from scratch. He has to make a smelter first.

#79

Post by hyperbovine »

dstein wrote: post #9

It's reasons like this, that I really wonder if someone from today were to time travel into the past if anything they know would be useful at all. Medieval people would probably think we're all idiots.

Well, if you had had a couple years' worth of graduate-level math and physics courses, you would be an intellectual demigod. The introductory sequences in analysis / algebra / geometry / mechanics / electrodynamics / relativity are a distillation of what the best minds in history spent the past 500 years figuring out. When I have no other motivation to study these topics, I just remember that Newton, Euler, Gauss, et al. would have /killed/ to get a look at my textbook :-)

(Hopefully you'd remember the proofs!)

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