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200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

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Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#71

Post by adventured »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #62
bspammer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter what my ancestors felt, it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now, and faster than 10,000 years ago. Back then, you'd be lucky to see a single revolutionary invention in a lifetime. Now we're seeing them every decade, if not annually. I don't disagree that my descendents will be justified in feeling the same way, as long as the exponential curve keeps on going and civilizati…

Is this really true? If someone from 1950s America time-travelled to the present day, is there anything at all that they conceptually couldn't fathom? Maybe if you transported someone from 1950s China to present-day China, they would be more shocked, but a present day suburban home in 2021 is not all that markedly different than a 1950s home -- and neither is the workplace, the commute, the cars. Mostly replaced pape…

> is there anything at all that they conceptually couldn't fathom?

Well you set the bar artificially high with that phrasing. Is there ever anything people of the last couple thousand years would be literally unable to conceptually fathom? No. We know that from ancient texts, they would be able to grasp anything we have today (even if it might take more elaborate explanation). 1950s Americans, or any citizens around the world at the time, would be more than astounded by 3-4 billion people being essentially always connected on a gigantic, seemingly instantaneous global communications and commerce network. The modern smartphone would similarly astound, what they can do all-in-one and the quality of it (the audio, the video, the music, movies, news, communication, click-button services & purchasing, digitization of money, the quality of digital photographs and how many you can take with no regard for space, it would all astound). Someone from the 1980s would be just as astounded by a recent iPhone, they'd feel like a time traveler.

People in 2007 were truly astounded by the iPhone. It almost felt like a product delivered from the future. It put all industry jaws on the floor and reset the grid for everyone in the tech industry, without exception. Maybe people have now widely forgotten the shock effect it had, I haven't forgotten.

That said, the parent's claim was an exaggeration. We're not inventing/harnessing such extraordinary stuff every year. Maybe a few things of note per decade globally.

CRISPR, cracking the human genome, modern antibiotics, Internet, Web, transistor and microprocessor, software, computers including personal, space flight, powered flight, various engines, electricity and electric light, fossil fuels, nuclear power and weapons, various green revolution outcomes (food production), solar and a few key renewable energy technologies, the commercial/industrial laser, and so on.

There are several dozen things that can be added to that list from the last 100-150 years. A few per decade globally might be a reasonable peg.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#72

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

bspammer wrote: post #38
adriand wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really amazing. I find this sort of thing absolutely haunting. It's a vivid reminder that there is nothing particularly special about this moment in time: it's only special to us because we're living it. But their present moment was no less vital and immediate and real to them as this moment is to us. And yet, it happened so incredibly long ago! I had the same feeling when I encountered a beautiful statue of a woman…

I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred year…

In the face of accelerating change, every moment feels like an inflection point, and the past always looks stagnant in comparison. Measured from the baseline of where things are now, the past was so different. Measured from the baseline of how quickly things change now, the past was so slow.

The catch is that it’s true no matter when you say it from, so long as change is accelerating. Exponential growth is my favorite example. Plot y=k^t for any k from t=long time ago to t=T. It will look like y is at an ‘insane inflection point,’ regardless of the T you choose.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#73

Post by scotty79 »

mrspeaker wrote: post #67
adriand wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really amazing. I find this sort of thing absolutely haunting. It's a vivid reminder that there is nothing particularly special about this moment in time: it's only special to us because we're living it. But their present moment was no less vital and immediate and real to them as this moment is to us. And yet, it happened so incredibly long ago! I had the same feeling when I encountered a beautiful statue of a woman…

I got the same feeling reading the "Pompeii wall graffiti". It's not beautiful, but it hit me hard: 2000+ years, and people are the same people! ( https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p... )

For me it's a stark reminder that while we think of ourselves as smart, well off individuals that have a grip on the world we actually own everything to our scientific knowledge and infrastructure and stripped of that we'd be just as royally screwed as our very remote ancestors were because we aren't even an ounce more intelligent than them.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#74

Post by yesimahuman »

willcipriano wrote: post #52
bspammer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred year…

> I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. Your ancestors all felt the same way. So will your children.

It’s likely they will all look back at this particular period of a hundred or so years as one of the most pivotal times for at least one really big reason: that’s when we set the climate on a path of destruction

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#75

Post by bspammer »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #72
bspammer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, there is something special about this moment in time. We're in an insane inflection point of human development. For millions of years things stayed roughly the same. It's really only in the last 10,000 years that stuff has really kicked off, and the last 300 where human development has gone absolutely crazy. There's several existential threats that might destroy civilization over the next few hundred year…

In the face of accelerating change, every moment feels like an inflection point, and the past always looks stagnant in comparison. Measured from the baseline of where things are now, the past was so different. Measured from the baseline of how quickly things change now, the past was so slow. The catch is that it’s true no matter when you say it from, so long as change is accelerating. Exponential growth is my favorit…

Sure if you look at it from a purely mathematical point of view, but we can anchor ourselves to something which is (relatively) constant - the human lifespan. We're one of the first generations to feel the effects of the exponential curve within our lifetimes.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#77

Post by jfoutz »

radicaldreamer wrote: post #62
bspammer wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't really matter what my ancestors felt, it's blatently obvious that there's more going on right now, and faster than 10,000 years ago. Back then, you'd be lucky to see a single revolutionary invention in a lifetime. Now we're seeing them every decade, if not annually. I don't disagree that my descendents will be justified in feeling the same way, as long as the exponential curve keeps on going and civilizati…

Is this really true? If someone from 1950s America time-travelled to the present day, is there anything at all that they conceptually couldn't fathom? Maybe if you transported someone from 1950s China to present-day China, they would be more shocked, but a present day suburban home in 2021 is not all that markedly different than a 1950s home -- and neither is the workplace, the commute, the cars. Mostly replaced pape…

One of my ancestors father was wealthy. They took long trips over the summer. One year, she came home and they had electricity. One year, they had a telephone. She saw one of the demonstrations of flight by the wright brothers. A global pandemic. No war is good, but I'd put the world wars as particularly bad. She saw people drive cars on the moon, on television!

~1905-1985 was a pretty good run.

Cell phones, the internet, mrna vaccines. There's probably tons of amazing stuff I'm overlooking. I don't think I would trade with Katherine. Although, I wish she was around for a few years longer so I could talk to her when I was closer to being an adult.

I don't think you could find a modern technology that would throw her for a loop. Maybe, but she's a cherry picked example.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#78

Post by tnzm »

tshaddox wrote: post #66
spullara wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if we populate the galaxy. Which isn't that hard if we try. But even then we lived at the origin of the galactic species. Pretty special. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

The Universe is a lot bigger than our galaxy though. Why is it more special to live near the beginning of humans populating the galaxy than, say, living near the beginning of humans populating that new subdivision they're developing out at the edge of my town?

Because the galaxy is a lot bigger than that subdivision, too.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#79

Post by ericbarrett »

cletus wrote: post #48
themgt wrote: post #5

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in modern day Tibetans. Really incredible.

What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. One possible argument is that such people would transit high altitudes going between hunting grounds (for example) but is this really enough pressure to produce a genetic…

Not an anthropologist, but my first hypothesis would be avoiding other humans (war and predation). Perhaps disease-carrying insects as well.

Re: 200k-year-old hand art found near a Tibetan hot spring

#80

Post by AlotOfReading »

cletus wrote: post #48
themgt wrote: post #5

Found at 14,000ft on the Tibetan Plateau. Very likely altitude adapted denisovans, whose genetic adaptations to living in such low oxygen are still present in modern day Tibetans. Really incredible.

What was the evolutionary advantage that being able to live at high altitudes 200,000 years ago gave you? There really weren't that many people around so finding land with available food and water doesn't seem like it would be that much of an issue. One possible argument is that such people would transit high altitudes going between hunting grounds (for example) but is this really enough pressure to produce a genetic…

The 'why' is pretty much unknowable. Evolution doesn't push organisms to do new things, it simply responds to existing selective constraints. What we observe is that Humans (even archaic ones) seem to have expanded into virtually every region they could find, regardless of how hospitable it was. This particular set of changes happens to reduce physiological stress at high altitude, so it was preserved in populations experiencing that constraint.
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