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Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

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Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#101

Post by NikolaNovak »

card_zero wrote: post #50
thewebguyd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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.

If that's sarcastic, good one :)

If genuine, I'm puzzled. In the current world we have a tremendous amount of people who hold various superstitious beliefs as well as spend tremendous amount of time on their genealogy. And nepotism never went away. I agree those are "bad ideas", but don't see how they differentiate us from people 5k years ago?

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#102

Post by applfanboysbgon »

bji9jhff wrote: post #92

I think the more likely explanation is racism. If the pyramids were in Europe, nobody would challenge their human origin but pyramids are in Africa Surely aliens are involved.

This is provably incorrect. Stonehenge is the target of alien conspiracies as well.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#103

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #71
thewebguyd wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

A couple years ago I realized that I had somewhat subconsciously made the same assumption. The thing that snapped me out of it was my awe in watching Clickspring (YT) try to recreate the Antikythera Mechanism. That device's complexity and craftsmanship is proof to me that despite the lack of technology, there were some astonishingly smart and resourceful people living thousands of years ago.

Maybe they learned from the aliens?

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#104

Post by NikolaNovak »

card_zero wrote: post #65
thewebguyd wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We have access to different data points today. But the way I read the original post is that human mind as such did not meaningful change. If you took a Roman or Egyptian embryo from 5k years ago and incubated it today, you'd have a modern human. The fact that many people back then had crazy ideas, is orthogonal to the biological argument at hand - and that's before we look at amount of people with crazy ideas today, many of which are largely the same.

Basically I think we have to pick a lane on whether we are talking biology, vs culture, vs knowledge and accumulated data.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#105

Post by enneff »

xdennis wrote: post #85

> This feels deeply insulting considering humans also created taxation, organized warfare, and raisins. Offtopic, but why do people hate raisins so much? No other dried fruit gets so much hate. I would imagine it's something genetic like the reason why some people dislike coriander (which has been shown to be related to genetic sensitivity to aldehydes).

I don’t understand why you wouldn’t like raisins? They’re pretty much just sugar.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#106

Post by orthoxerox »

chadd wrote: post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

"The WiFi password is fourwordsalluppercase. One word, all lowercase."

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#107

Post by dafugg »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #82
chadd wrote: post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

My father in law has email address that is about his small dog. He's Scottish and his dog growls a lot. So his address is weegrrrr. Oh let me tell you the fun of spelling that one over the phone. He's also not the most patient man in the world either :-)

Tell him to be careful. The chinese government might try to re-educate his email address.

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#108

Post by marshray »

throw2ih020 wrote: post #98
marshray wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you see how far "some Apollo program last-minute production-floor manufacturing changes were not written down" is from "humans lost fundamental technology needed to land on the moon"?

In aerospace, those are the same statements. Those production floor changes are often the difference between a payload working or failing.

How many years did these production floor changes take to engineer?

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#109

Post by tremon »

chadd wrote: post #42

The classic Mcsweeney's for the HN crowd is "E-mail Addresses That Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone" https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/e-mail-addresses-that-wo...

lol, that's what I'd call a dense piece of text:

(header)

  [email protected]
  [email protected]
  [email protected]
  [email protected]
  [email protected]
(end article)

Re: Notes from tired Egyptian whose job is explaining that humans built the pyramids

#110

Post by throw2ih020 »

marshray wrote: post #108
throw2ih020 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In aerospace, those are the same statements. Those production floor changes are often the difference between a payload working or failing.

How many years did these production floor changes take to engineer?

Over a period from 1960 to 1969:

> Landing humans on the Moon by the end of 1969 required the most sudden burst of technological creativity, and the largest commitment of resources ($25 billion; $187 billion in 2024 US dollars)[24] ever made by any nation in peacetime. At its peak, the Apollo program employed 400,000 people and required the support of over 20,000 industrial firms and universities.[25]

A large chunk of those industries and supporting academia no longer exist in the US outside the defense sector.

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