Antikythera Mechanism: An ancient 'computer' that 'shouldn't exist' [video] • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by jimhefferon » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

bobthechef wrote: post #52

hnmullany wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same way - the extended 3rd century crisis in the Roman Empire led to a loss of sculpting expertise. No art was commissioned for so long that skills weren't passed on.

An example closer to home, though perhaps not as stark, is the loss of expertise in various industries that have been outsourced. The US is a good example. This is one (of many) arguments against outsourcing your industry just because it's cheaper and increases the profits of the outsourcing company. The tradition and culture that allows a certain industry to flourish is interrupted and destroyed and rebuilding that…

I had a summer job one year working on space stuff. I was in the clean room and the first day they took me back there, white suit and all, and took some ball bearings off a wire rack. They were maybe a foot in diameter. My job that summer was to test to see which were the least noisy. (Basically, they rotated very slowly, and there was a phono needle resting on the outside with a strip chart measuring the vibration caused when balls hit each other, etc.) The best ones were going up.

They told me to be careful. These were the rejects from another project, but this project was legally required to use only US tech and the US no longer had the ability to manufacture bearings this large, since we had outsourced for some time and everyone who could do it got out of the business. So we needed these exact ones. (This was the late 70's.)

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

#62

Post by nathias » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #28

nathias wrote: post #15

Technology can stay 'inert' even if it is invented, for example the Romans already knew steam machines but didn't find a use for them, probably because they had slaves to do all that cheaper. Until recently solar power tech was the same ...

This is a _bit_ of a myth; the main reason that Roman-era steam engines went nowhere was that they didn't have the metallurgy to make them practical. Like, they had _watermills_; the idea that they were uninterested in mechanical power because they had slaves doesn't really hold up.

Interesting, what metallurgical skills were they missing? Wouldn't even a very crude steam machine be better than animal harness? Maybe the missing part was coal, burning wood would be very inefficient ...

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

#63

Post by gpm » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #54

rozab wrote: post #11

Jonathan Blow's talk 'Preventing the Collapse of Civilization' goes into detail about how technology can regress, with the Mechanism being one example. This kind of thing is far more common than we think, most would be surprised to learn that Ancient Greece had writing for about 600 years before forgetting it. There was no writing in Greece for over 400 years, until they adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 730 BC.…

One of the interesting possibilities for the Fermi Paradox is the fact that we've wiped out the readily accessible deposits of iron, coal, oil, etc. A second go at the industrial revolution would be much harder, if we regressed that far.

Coal, yes. Iron, wouldn't the iron we moved to the surface be even more accessible? We didn't destroy it, just rearranged and concentrated it?

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

#64

Post by varelse » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

Joker_vD wrote: post #7

luma wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All they're saying is that the technology represented in this device has no equivalent in the historical record anywhere near that time and that place. It's not to say that it literally cannot exist, rather, our historical understanding of these peoples is clearly incomplete. These are the sorts of findings that change our understanding of history which makes it pretty exciting to me. The Clickspring series on this m…

I've seen people claimed that, e.g. the polished granite columns common across European palaces and even some cathedrals, could not have been a) polished so well without laser technology, b) could not be moved and then erected without modern engine-powered equipment. So all of it was the work of ancient aliens or something, and the history as we're taught it is completely falsified, for some reason. Because obviously…

I've worked for people who think anything they can't do themselves is impossible. It's not an uncommon outlook.

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

#65

Post by Robotbeat » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

Add “Antikythera” to the title.

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

#66

Post by ceejayoz » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

gpm wrote: post #63

ceejayoz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the interesting possibilities for the Fermi Paradox is the fact that we've wiped out the readily accessible deposits of iron, coal, oil, etc. A second go at the industrial revolution would be much harder, if we regressed that far.

Coal, yes. Iron, wouldn't the iron we moved to the surface be even more accessible? We didn't destroy it, just rearranged and concentrated it?

Guess what we do most of our iron smelting with?

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

#67

Post by tzs » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

I think we tend to underestimate what ancient technology could produce because we forget that in ancient times they often operated on longer timescales than we do.

With our technology for example we could make all the parts for the Antikythera mechanism in a short time. The ancient Greeks definitely had no technology that would have allowed them to do that, so we see the existence of the Antikythera mechanism as a great mystery.

But I don't see any reason to believe that the Greeks built it in a short time. It could easily be the lifework of the builder, or even the lifework of successive generations of a family of builders.

If you need to make a very precise gear in a day you need our technology. If you need to make a very precise gear in 50 years you just need someone with an abrasive that is harder than the material you are making the gear from.

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

#68

Post by chilling » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

rozab wrote: post #11

Jonathan Blow's talk 'Preventing the Collapse of Civilization' goes into detail about how technology can regress, with the Mechanism being one example. This kind of thing is far more common than we think, most would be surprised to learn that Ancient Greece had writing for about 600 years before forgetting it. There was no writing in Greece for over 400 years, until they adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 730 BC.…

Really nice presentation. I think the bottleneck here is that developers creates tool for other developers to simplify their job and few decades later we end up with lots of handy and easy to use tools that just mask the real toughness of the problem. You can see it easily in web development with tools like React or even the CSS which is (IMHO) full of nasty hacks.

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

#69

Post by x1f604 » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #66

gpm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coal, yes. Iron, wouldn't the iron we moved to the surface be even more accessible? We didn't destroy it, just rearranged and concentrated it?

Guess what we do most of our iron smelting with?

Primitive iron smelting was done with charcoal, I believe. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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

#70

Post by crispyambulance » Fri, Dec 10, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #54

rozab wrote: post #11

Jonathan Blow's talk 'Preventing the Collapse of Civilization' goes into detail about how technology can regress, with the Mechanism being one example. This kind of thing is far more common than we think, most would be surprised to learn that Ancient Greece had writing for about 600 years before forgetting it. There was no writing in Greece for over 400 years, until they adopted the Phoenician alphabet around 730 BC.…

One of the interesting possibilities for the Fermi Paradox is the fact that we've wiped out the readily accessible deposits of iron, coal, oil, etc. A second go at the industrial revolution would be much harder, if we regressed that far.

I think it might be helpful to consider what happened to the dinosaurs. The same could happen to us if we fail to evolve in time...

Asteroid hits. Wipes out almost all life. A million years later, the biomass around us will have all been converted to a black ooze (oil), covered by millennia of rock, sediment, and tectonic plates. Eventually future civilized beings who plunder the Earth for our biomass that has been converted to oil and coal discover uncanny hard-to-explain remnants of a past civilization of, get this, bipedal animals.