Kevin comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
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Suppose you could find out the exact outcome (up to the point of reading the alternate history equivalent of Wikipedia, history books etc.) of changing the outcome of a single historical event. What would that event be?
Note that major developments like "the Roman empire would never have fallen" or "the Chinese wouldn't have turned inwards" involve multiple events, not just one.
I'd like to know what would have happened if the Library of Alexandria hadn't been destroyed. If even the works of Archimedes alone -- including the key insight underlying Integral Calculus -- had survived longer and been more widely disseminated, what difference would that have made to the future progress of mathematics and technology?