thomblake comments on Open Thread: October 2009 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: gwern 01 October 2009 12:49PM

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Comment author: DanArmak 01 October 2009 05:16:30PM 2 points [-]

What for? There aren't any stick-and-stones cultures around.

Do you assign significant probability to the need for such a book in humanity's future? I don't. It would require that:

  • No technological human societies survive
  • Adults who know the relevant things don't survive
  • Technological artifacts and particularly sources of knowledge (e.g., copies of encyclopedias or entire libraries-on-disk) don't survive

But also that:

  • Some people survive all this
  • Such a book will survive all this and there will be a high chance of a copy being found by survivor groups
  • Survivors will be able to use the book (requires resources like extra food/manpower to sink into rebuilding project, and the organization/government to provide this) - in fact survivors will mostly lack for knowledge
Comment author: Gavin 02 October 2009 05:01:53AM 2 points [-]

There's a huge different between having the raw knowledge available and simple step by step instructions.

A book created for this express purpose would be an order of magnitude more useful than any number of encyclopedias or even entire libraries. A big challenge would be even knowing what to research--if you don't have the next technology, you may not even know what it will be.

The biggest obstacle is really distribution. What you'd need its a government, church, or NGO to put a copy in every branch or something.

Maybe you could donate a copy to every prison library. Prisons would actually be a really defensible location to stay post-societal collapse . . .

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