61–70 of 194 posts
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There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
That one is an interesting scifi premise, but deeply unpersuasive when it comes to actual humans.
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Modern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it. ^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
Sure, but no-one on Earth today is willing to pay for a pyramid - or anything like it - even with the convenience of modern construction. I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals. These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospe…
I suppose the Burj Khalifa, the Sky Tree, the Sphere, and the Luxor don't count? Mount Rushmore? The only thing that's changed is that we've gotten more efficient at megaprojects and, I suppose, they've become so common you don't register them as interesting anymore.
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Modern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it. ^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
Sure, but no-one on Earth today is willing to pay for a pyramid - or anything like it - even with the convenience of modern construction. I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals. These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospe…
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Romans, huh? Many of them were slaves, they believed they could learn the future by looking at the patterns of birds in flight, a Roman's bloodline was very important to the Roman's importance. You can take "behaviorally identical" too far, ideas got better over time, people in the past had bad ideas.
Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not g…
So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become right-on to say that it's so, as if denying it is a prejudice like timeism or something. It obviously matters to some world view, equality maybe?
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Ancient Aliens conflates two very different ideas. The show’s core argument is that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we give them credit for. That may be true, but “more advanced” does not mean they had superior technology or help from aliens. It can simply mean they had technical knowledge, methods, or craftsmanship that we have since lost or forgotten. Elon Musk has made a similar point about the US sp…
Have we actually forgotten how to land to the moon? That sounds very fishy, I’m pretty skeptical that’s not the case, that was done at a time where we had good records and still have access to them. And it’s close enough to current time that people who worked on it are still alive (not all of course). Coming from musk makes me believe that’s not true, he’s far from a reliable narrator
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Still sounds a lot like humans today. Many are still slaves, many believe they can learn the future by reading cards with funny pictures on them, for some bloodline is very important, as is race. I don't think we are meaningfully different at all. The same types and groups of people and social structures all still exist today. I suppose the big difference is those of us who are well adjusted know that racism is not g…
I don't understand the downvote, it's like "nooo, their ideas were exactly as good as the ones we have today, humans don't learn over time, how dare you imply we used to be stupider, it's sacrilege". So I object to this weird article of faith every time it comes up, we can't have been exactly as sensible and exactly as clever in the past as we are today, it doesn't make any sense to say that. But it's somehow become…
But, I'm not saying that humans haven't learned anything, but that cognitively we haven't changed. A roman citizen has the exact same brain capacity to reason and adapt as we do today. There is zero separation from ancient human vs. modern human in that aspect.
You are conflating collective knowledge with individual human intelligence. That roman looking at bird entrails to predict the future was using the exact same pattern-recognition ability we use today to look at data visualizations, or trend graphs.
You could go back in time, steal an ancient roman baby, and raise them in today's year and they would be no different from you or I.
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There's a ton of people that, for some reason, just can't grok that humans have been largely behaviorally and biologically identical for the past 200k years. The average ancient roman plebeian's life would not look dramatically different from ours today, minus technology of course. They worked a day job, ate at thermopoliums (basically fast food), lived in crowded apartment complexes with various forms of slum lords,…
There are ideas that ancient human thinking was very different and primitive compared to modern. For example (and others): The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes (1976)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ancient Aliens conflates two very different ideas. The show’s core argument is that ancient civilizations were more advanced than we give them credit for. That may be true, but “more advanced” does not mean they had superior technology or help from aliens. It can simply mean they had technical knowledge, methods, or craftsmanship that we have since lost or forgotten. Elon Musk has made a similar point about the US sp…
Have we actually forgotten how to land to the moon? That sounds very fishy, I’m pretty skeptical that’s not the case, that was done at a time where we had good records and still have access to them. And it’s close enough to current time that people who worked on it are still alive (not all of course). Coming from musk makes me believe that’s not true, he’s far from a reliable narrator
The hard part of putting humans on the moon and bringing them back safely is not a problem if basic scientific knowlege, it is more an engineering challenge in an incredibly complex and bespoke domain. It is the know how that this component from this manufacturer has this kind of failure rate under these conditions, but when interacting with this other component under these conditions the failure rate is much higher, but that can be mitigated if we apply this kind of technique, but only if the temperature stays within X....
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Modern construction firms would have no problem^ planning and building you a pyramid if you were willing to pay for it. ^ well, maybe some problems like any project, but they would overcome them.
Sure, but no-one on Earth today is willing to pay for a pyramid - or anything like it - even with the convenience of modern construction. I have a similar feeling looking at the great cathedrals. These structures took up a huge proportion of the community's money, labour and talent, for decades on end. They're orders of magnitude bigger than any 'normal' building of the time or for centuries later. All with no prospe…
- Luxor in Las Vegas: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Las_Vegas_Luxor_04.j...
- Bass Pro Shop Memphis Pyramid: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Memphis_Pyramid.JPG
- Sunway Pyramid Mall, Malaysia : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunway_Pyramid_front...
- Walter Pyramid, Cal State Long Beach: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Csulb-pyr1.jpg
- Muttart Conservatory, Edmonton: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Muttart_Conservatori...
- Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, Kazakhstan: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%9C._%D0%90%D1%81...
