Shalmanese comments on How inevitable was modern human civilization - data - Less Wrong

30 Post author: taw 20 August 2009 09:42PM

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Comment author: Shalmanese 21 August 2009 05:41:59PM 5 points [-]

The bias is that we don't even notice things that occured once. How important is there that we have a moon? That we have a continent that spans east-west? That the K-T impact happened exactly when it did?

There could be a hundred other crucial factors which we never even noticed because nobody thought they were important to the development of civilization.

Comment author: taw 21 August 2009 05:51:38PM 0 points [-]

East-west continent span seems irrelevant, at least for modern civilization, as it was on its way all the way from Upper Paleolithic up to something reasonably civilized in Central America too, independently, up to the point when we broke their isolation.