JoshuaZ comments on Open Thread, August 2010 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: NancyLebovitz 01 August 2010 01:27PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (676)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Yoreth 02 August 2010 06:33:00AM 4 points [-]

Suppose you know from good sources that there is going to be a huge catastrophe in the very near future, which will result in the near-extermination of humanity (but the natural environment will recover more easily). You and a small group of ordinary men and women will have to restart from scratch.

You have a limited time to compile a compendium of knowledge to preserve for the new era. What is the most important knowledge to preserve?

I am humbled by how poorly my own personal knowledge would fare.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 02 August 2010 12:52:46PM *  8 points [-]

I suspect that people are overestimating in their replies how much could be done with Wikipedia. People in general underestimate a) how much technology requires bootstrapping (metallurgy is a great example of this) b) how much many technologies, even primitive ones, require large populations so that specialization, locational advantages and comparative advantage can kick in (People even in not very technologically advanced cultures have had tech levels regress when they settle large islands or when their locations get cut off from the mainland. Tasmania is the classical example of this. The inability to trade with the mainland caused large drops in tech level). So while Wikipedia makes sense, it would also be helpful to have a lot of details on do-it-yourself projects that could use pre-existing remnants of existing technology. There are a lot of websites and books devoted to that topic, so that shouldn't be too hard.

If we are reducing to a small population, we may need also to focus on getting through the first one or two generations with an intact population. That means that a handful of practical books on field surgery, midwifing, and similar basic medical issues may become very necessary.

Also, when you specify "ordinary men and women" do you mean who all speak the same language? And do you mean by "ordinary" roughly developed world countries? That's what many people seem to mean when questions like this are proposed. They could alter things considerably. For example, if it really is a random sample, then inter-language dictionaries will be very important. But, if the sample involves some people from the developing world, they are more likely to have some of the knowledge base for working in a less technologically advanced situation that people in the developed world will lack (even this may only be true to a very limited extent because the tech level of the developing world is in many respects very high compared to the tech level of humans for most of human history. Many countries described as developing world are in better shape than for example much of Europe in the Middle Ages.)

Comment author: arundelo 02 August 2010 02:55:02PM 3 points [-]

how much technology requires bootstrapping (metallurgy is a great example of this)

I would love to see a reality TV show about a metallurgy expert making a knife or other metal tool from scratch. The expert would be provided food and shelter but would have no equipment or materials for making metal, and so would have to find and dig up the ore themselves, build their own oven, and whatever else you would have to do to make metal if you were transported to the stone age.

Comment author: RobinZ 02 August 2010 05:42:12PM 2 points [-]

One problem you would face with such a show is if the easily-available ore is gone.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 03 August 2010 12:51:33AM *  1 point [-]

Yes, this is in fact connected to a general problem that Nick Bostrom has pointed out, each time you try to go back from stone age tech to modern tech you use resources up that you won't have the next time. However, for purposes of actually getting back to high levels of technology rather than having a fun reality show, we've got a few advantages. One can use the remaining metal that is in all the left over objects from modern civilization (cars being one common easy source of a number of metals). Some metals are actually very difficult to extract from ore (aluminum is the primary example of this. Until the technologies for extraction were developed, it was expensive and had almost no uses) whereas the ruins of civilization will have those metals in near pure forms if one knows where to look.

Comment author: ABranco 05 August 2010 04:07:00AM *  1 point [-]

The argument that no one person in the face of Earth knows how to build a mouse from scratch is plausible.

Matt Ridley

Comment author: arundelo 13 June 2011 05:19:58AM 1 point [-]
Comment author: nazgulnarsil 13 June 2011 05:46:29AM 0 points [-]

He [pratchett] has to hide it from the authorities.