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Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#261

Post by antepodius »

new2628 wrote: post #209
ajuc wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically there would be ~2 times less people on Earth and over half of them would work in farming if not for this one invention.

Would the state of the Earth be better or worse if not for this development?

May as well just say The Earth would be better off if people had never existed if you're going to go that route.

There's more people living better lives, so things are better. There are new problems caused by our previous success that we solve next.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#263

Post by mNovak »

irchans wrote: post #159
tgv wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think a layperson can understand even the basic principle behind AM, let alone the actual device. It's not as "simple" as washing your hands.

I seem to recall building small AM transmitters in elementary school. I don't remember if I used a transistor or not. I think it was easy to construct the capacitor and the inductor. (I build it in the early 70's and don't really remember how.) We also made crystal diode radios, but I have no idea how to construct a diode from scratch, so maybe those are not simple.

A pencil tip touching a steel razor blade is famously a diode which can be used to build a "foxhole" radio [1].

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

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#264

Post by jvanderbot »

gwbas1c wrote: post #260
jvanderbot wrote: post #247

Hand washing. Modern disease control and prevention is borderline magic. Hand-washing is clearly the most important lifesaving and disease preventing invention in modern times. Materially ... Well, "yourself" precludes anything computerized, unless you mean "program". It also precludes a huge range of materials science advances. Technically, you can make steel and concrete yourself with enough real-world minecrafting…

> Hand washing Hand washing isn't modern by any stretch of the imagination. Promoting it is modern, though.

Oops, you are correct. The modern connection to germ theory is most important.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#266

Post by ajuc »

antepodius wrote: post #261
new2628 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would the state of the Earth be better or worse if not for this development?

May as well just say The Earth would be better off if people had never existed if you're going to go that route. There's more people living better lives, so things are better. There are new problems caused by our previous success that we solve next.

Grading the state of the Earth is subjective, what's good for plants or bacteria may be bad for mammals or fungi, and there's a few mass extinctions every million years anyway.

If you don't care about homo sapiens, then global warming isn't really "bad" - the ecosystems will adapt.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#267

Post by ralusek »

war1025 wrote: post #228
puranjay wrote: post #184

The humble ball point pen. People forget how cumbersome and/or expensive it was to write before cheap ball point pens became a thing. You had to use fountain pens. The cheap ones leaked and were an absolute mess to carry around. The ones that didn't leak were expensive. I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years and just stash them everywhere I want

> I can now buy more pens for $100 than I'll ever use in years I just checked and you can get a pack of 60 Bic Ballpoint pens for $4.50.

I mean it's one banana, Michael, what could it cost...10 dollars?

Re: Ask HN: What’s the most important modern simple invention?

#268

Post by godot »

war1025 wrote: post #248
acd wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers. Liberating women from having to do these tasks and instead contributing to the general economy instead.

> the number of hours saved by Washing machines and Dishwashers. This is true, but to some extent over-stated I think. We have a family of five, and don't use our dishwasher. I just do the dishes every morning while I listen to the news on the radio. It takes less than an hour. As far as washing machines, I agree that they are quite convenient, but the truth is most clothing doesn't need to be washed nearly so often…

I think if you spend close to an hour to wash dishes every morning, it's actually a good proof of how much time it could save you. Being able to use that hour productively with other means while you do it (e.g. listening to the news or podcasts in your case) is somewhat a separate topic.

Loading and unloading the dishwasher for the same amount of dishes every day will probably take less than 30 minutes. I would estimate you could have a savings of 30 minutes every day if you used the dishwasher. Depending on how you use water when you hand-wash them, you may also save some water as well.

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