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Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

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Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#91

Post by JanezStupar »

toddh wrote: post #69
JanezStupar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying that intense competition between national armies is not the kind of competition that humans are willing to stake almost anything and commit endless resources on? War itself may not increase technological growth. But preparations for war certainly do. And please show me another competition that has yielded lets say 50% of technological advances that various arms races have? Sadly when human devel…

Wasn't low-cost sequencing of human genomes created by the competition generated by an X prize? Maybe we simply aren't harnessing gamification principles properly. Maybe really big games like wars aren't the only way.

If you re-read my comment you will notice that I haven't said that wars are only way to induce progress.

However I did say that I would like to see an example of a phenomena that produced at least 50% of technological advances that warfare has.

Low cost genome sequencing is all nice and dandy - but thus far worthless. I'm not saying it ain't got potential, but thus far it hasn't really impacted us in any meaningful way. And I'd be willing to bet that any future impacts on this field are going to be financed through military complex.

Even the renewable energy sources will probably come from military and not from enlightened corporations.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to pass judgment here. It's just an observation.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#92

Post by philwelch »

00010 wrote: post #42
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I should have done some research before opening my fat mouth ... but duplicate images only or was it extended to duplicate "written" works? Ex post facto lots of this sort of thing (block printing images -> movable type) seem pretty straight forward, doesn't it.

I think one of the hallmarks of any truly revolutionary technology is the ease and speed with which it spreads, becomes assimilated, and soon seems 'obvious' to those who were born after its adoption. The wheel being the archetypal example. I'm no expert on printing presses, but the Wikipedia page on Moveable Type has some good material, including the suggestion that Gutenberg's most important innovation was a greatl…

Incidentally, printing's rapid adoption was surely in part due to its usefulness not just for intellectuals, but also for the ever-present propaganda efforts of government officials.

Not to mention the ability to print bibles, which was pretty important at the time.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#93

Post by mrleinad »

Charuru wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #10

In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of expending ~$17 trillion and ~74 million human lives on war and destruction, we would have reached the moon in a robust and durable way by no later than the mid-1950s He kinda gives away the answer to this earlier in the article, while explaining why the cool edge-case technologies the Romans had never took off: the truth i…

Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.

So... isn't war a form of competition that was there and then, previous to the global competitive market of today?

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#94

Post by philwelch »

gwern wrote: post #88
loup-vaillant wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fatal disease will probably make the life insurance that pays for your cryopreservation much more costly. Signing up when you're still healthy and young may be more beneficial, even when the probability of eventually destroying your brain is higher.

Eliezer wasn't talking about how you sign up or pay for it (he himself is signed up with term insurance & is young and reasonably healthy); he was talking about what kinds of dead people having signed up would be most useful to. Predictable deaths are best because the stabilization teams can be there waiting. (There are of course wrinkles to this. If you die of alzheimers or senile dementia, is there any 'you' left,…

The scarier question is, if you are resurrected from cryonics, whether they will preserve enough of your neurons to protect you from similar impairment.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#95

Post by philwelch »

varjag wrote: post #29

The Greeks and Romans were societies of slavery, with very little need to industrial innovation.

In America, the invention of the cotton gin increased, not decreased, the demand for slavery. This is an instance of the Jevons paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#96

Post by philwelch »

wazoox wrote: post #54
meric wrote: post #23

The article mentioned: "The Montgolfier brothers came up with the idea while lying beside a fire and watching hot ash and embers float upwards – and they thought about this in a military context – namely how to take Gibraltar from the British." And later "However, Hero of Alexandria (10–70 CE) was well known for constructing complex automata, had powered a pipe organ using his wind-wheel (windmill) and developed a va…

> Each story of humans' invention seems to just as much be a story of the individual who led its discovery, rather than the environment surrounding him/her, and when the environment is taking into account, it seems it does more to stifle innovation than to foster it. We can argue that the WWII may not have taken place without Hitler, however the personal computer revolution would have occurred with Commodore instead…

You'd also need to stop Mussolini, Stalin, and Hirohito to stop a world war from breaking out at the time. At minimum.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#97

Post by Unseelie »

api wrote: post #79

" Transhumanists must come to realize that in order to control history, and thus their own destinies, they must leverage their way into a position of control over the ideology, morality and direction of this civilization. To fail to do so at this juncture in time is to accede to the end of our history – not by the practical abolition of death, but rather by its universal application to humankind, and perhaps to all l…

If we work on the assumption that the majority of people aren't rational scientists, then harnessing the superstition towards such things as progress and invention rather than conservatism seems a very brilliant move by those persons trying to leverage political discourse. Its likely much easier to convert the followers of hate, fear, and superstition on their terms than to convince them that rational science is better.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#98

Post by ThomPete »

Charuru wrote: post #12
jasonkester wrote: post #10

In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of expending ~$17 trillion and ~74 million human lives on war and destruction, we would have reached the moon in a robust and durable way by no later than the mid-1950s He kinda gives away the answer to this earlier in the article, while explaining why the cool edge-case technologies the Romans had never took off: the truth i…

Are you saying that war increases technological growth? That's crappy pop-history that's largely been discredited. Competition invites advancement, blowing up your competitors does nothing.

As far as I remember to have read somewhere.

The Nazi doctors did quite a lot for the advance of the medical field simply because of all the horrible experiments they could do.

Re: Why didn't the Romans have hot air balloons?

#100

Post by gaius »

api wrote: post #81
jasonkester wrote: post #10

In hindsight, it seems clear that if humanity had decided in 1939 to colonize space, instead of expending ~$17 trillion and ~74 million human lives on war and destruction, we would have reached the moon in a robust and durable way by no later than the mid-1950s He kinda gives away the answer to this earlier in the article, while explaining why the cool edge-case technologies the Romans had never took off: the truth i…

The average person is only motivated by hate, fear, and superstition. That is the main constraining factor.

The average person just wants to survive. The problem comes when they believe, whether it is true or not is irrelevant, that their survival requires someone else to die.
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