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

Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#11

Post by julienmarie »

If multiple terabytes, you can store a lot of information. All Wikipedia is only 21.23 GB compressed as of 21 September 2022. The English Books from Gutenberg Library are around 40GB.

With 1TB, you have already a pretty solid base to rebuild civilization.

Then you can go deeper:

As of last year, all Library Genesis for nonfiction is 40 TB and Scientific Papers are 78.5 TB. Total Library Genesis seems to be 220TB.

Finally, you can go bigger: The total size of archive.org seems to be around 212 PetaBytes. That's some serious storage required.

If I had only one floppy disk, it would be a selection of philosophy books from Socrates, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, La Boetie, Kant, Spinoza, Descartes, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein.

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#12

Post by hammock »

bombcar wrote: post #5

Handbook of Chemistry. As many engineering documents as I could find. Copy of the Great Books. The Art of Computer programming. Terabytes would be enough to contain perhaps most written material in English but the above is what I would start with.

The great books?

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#13

Post by folli »

arisbe__ wrote: post #4

Well if I could just impart one idea or concept it would be similar to Feynman's quote: >“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made…

That naturally shows Feynman's bias as a physicists. A biologist would very likely answer that the concept of evolution should be first on the list of ideas to preserve. A mathematician will yet have another answer...

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#14

Post by Dracophoenix »

hammock wrote: post #12
bombcar wrote: post #5

Handbook of Chemistry. As many engineering documents as I could find. Copy of the Great Books. The Art of Computer programming. Terabytes would be enough to contain perhaps most written material in English but the above is what I would start with.

The great books?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_W...

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#15

Post by personjerry »

Depends on the type of disaster and what your goal is.

Assuming some kind of nuclear apocalypse and you want to rebuild, a bunch of survival info, basic engineering instruction you or a small group could execute, and encyclopedias would be valuable.

But most importantly, the vast majority of your storage space should be for batteries.

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#16

Post by Dracophoenix »

ohiovr wrote: post #7
arisbe__ wrote: post #4

Well if I could just impart one idea or concept it would be similar to Feynman's quote: >“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made…

The future would continue like a nursery rhyme. Embedded in everyone that had English speaking ancestors had this inscribed in them: ring around the rosy pocket full of posy ashes ashes we all fall down The inscription date was 538 ad, the second year of the plague of Justinian and the installment of the Biship of Rome.

Oddly enough, that's a similar idea to a plot point in anime called Dr.Stone.

https://dr-stone.fandom.com/wiki/100_Tales

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#18

Post by silisili »

julienmarie wrote: post #11

If multiple terabytes, you can store a lot of information. All Wikipedia is only 21.23 GB compressed as of 21 September 2022. The English Books from Gutenberg Library are around 40GB. With 1TB, you have already a pretty solid base to rebuild civilization. Then you can go deeper: As of last year, all Library Genesis for nonfiction is 40 TB and Scientific Papers are 78.5 TB. Total Library Genesis seems to be 220TB. Fin…

Great list.

Perhaps a stupid question - does that Wikipedia number include photos? If not, what kind of overhead does that add?

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#19

Post by jhugo »

ohiovr wrote: post #7
arisbe__ wrote: post #4

Well if I could just impart one idea or concept it would be similar to Feynman's quote: >“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made…

The future would continue like a nursery rhyme. Embedded in everyone that had English speaking ancestors had this inscribed in them: ring around the rosy pocket full of posy ashes ashes we all fall down The inscription date was 538 ad, the second year of the plague of Justinian and the installment of the Biship of Rome.

There's no record of that rhyme earlier than the 19th century. Also, the association of it with any kind of plague is a modern invention. Usually association with the Great Plague is claimed, but no writing about the rhyme from before WWII makes any mention of a plague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses#The_Gre...

Re: Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

#20

Post by silisili »

Really interesting question. I'm answering from the perspective of a civilization ending or resetting event, rather than say, a disaster like a hurricane.

Wikipedia to start. But IMO that's not good enough as it's not very discoverable, but makes a great 'for further reading.'

Definitely world history content. Lack of written record is probably one of the most frustrating aspects when studying past civilizations.

Definitely books and such on planting, crop rotations, problems, etc.

Books on maths, physics, geography, biology, chemistry, etc. Probably at least 101 level.

Once I covered those bases, I'd probably fill the rest with video, music, and photo content, though I'm not sure yet of what or how much

Post reply on HN