Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video]

For the space station for example, I'd consider it "completed" the moment it was taken into operation, the rest is building upon it and maintaining. Cathedrals are single objects, though of course I don't know how they were built, and for how many hundred years they may have seemed "complete enough" to the untrained eye.

...at the end of today. today, there is not, but autocratic regimes create their own reasons to have major conflicts. They are expansionist, and will keep at it until stopped. Moreover, the longer they are allowed to engage in bad behavior, the larger the conflict that will be required to fix the problem. CCP already has a long history with expansionist actions in Tibet, HK, Taiwan, the 9-dash line, is running concentration camps for Uyghurs, and working it's Belt and Road plan to capture poorer nations in debt traps. Yet their rhetoric is all about how the US is being the aggressor when it practices Freedom Of Navigation exercises in international waters, or is "interfering in internal affairs" by working w/Taiwan.

They will not let these topics go until they win, and they will always find new excuses to expand. Their excuses for current expansion are 100% bullsh*t, why would you expect them to not make new ones when convenient? It's their standard mode of operating.

If you think this will somehow end by itself, you make many wrong assumptions about how autocracies work, or you know something that no one else does about how to stop this, and should share it in the interest of world peace.

Of course automation plays a part, but it is nothing like the whole story. China now has far greater capabilities to make critical components from chips to solar panels than is located here. Look what happens to our supply chain when supply is just reduced a bit. What do you think would happen to our economy in a conflict?

>>China's history of planning has led to tons of misallocation of resources, and I'm not sure I'd want to emulate that.

Of course we wouldn't want to emulate that; that's a strawman argument.

But to use that argument to avoid planning altogether is foolish. And yes, resources will APPEAR to be wasted. Keeping more than minimal capabilities immediately at hand is "inefficient".

This is the same as exercising and eating right to stay in good physical condition - no one needs to be able to lift weight and run fast for 99.99% of modern jobs. Yet it is a good idea for many reasons. By your argument, why bother to save for emergencies or tough times? That's inefficient - you should enjoy your full income right now - heck, go into debt too!. Also by your argument, we shouldn't plan to avoid technical debt - that's inefficient waste of programmer time - just write the first thing that comes to mind to deploy the feature.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/26/1048358753/if-nasa-green-ligh...

> "We do need to learn how to conduct missions over these very long timescales if we are ever going to come close to achieving any of the aspirations of interstellar exploration that are so often posed in the popular media," she says.

> To help understand how to deal with the intergenerational nature of this proposed mission, the research team reached out to Janet Vertesi, a sociologist with Princeton University who has studied the organizational aspects of other projects in space.

> ...

> She's led discussions with the researchers to help them sort through this. Astronomer Carey Lisse, who is working on the interstellar probe study, said these sessions were "very blunt and made us think a lot."

> He's done the math. "I will be 75 in 2036 when we launch. That means that I know I'm not going to be on this mission probably for more than 10 years after launch," says Lisse, adding that the need for handovers is just a fact. "This isn't just theory or just talk. It's going to happen multiple times, probably two or three times at least."

> ...

> Ocker, who doesn't even have a Ph.D. yet, points out that she'll be late in her career by the time this probe reaches interstellar space, if NASA decides to support it and if it launches in the 2030s. "I'm very hopeful that this mission will happen. I really hope it does, in which case I'll be very excited to use the data when it does eventually come down," she says.

It turns out that Archimedes had actually discovered some of the foundational principles of integral calculus centuries before Newton or Leibniz even considered it [1]. In fact, Eudoxus — another Greek mathematician — had created a "method of exhaustion" which was essentially an informal, geometric method for computing limits (though he tried to make it as rigorous as possible) [2]. And if they don't impress you, then Euclid on his own is an extraordinary mathematician. The Elements is a modern mathematical marvel, with all of its theorems on foundational geometry and algebra stemming from 5 axioms.

Astronomy was a critical part of many ancient cultures, from the Aztecs to the Indians (and of course, the Greeks). After some pondering, it makes sense why they would invest so much time, energy, and innovative zeal into creating a device as intricate as the Antikythera. I wonder how many other inventions and revolutionary ideas created by ancient cultures have been lost to time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Method_of_Mechanical_Theor...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_exhaustion