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jimrandomh comments on Open Thread, August 2010 - Less Wrong
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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.
Presupposing that only a limited amount of knowledge could be saved seems wrong. You could bury petabytes of data in digital form, then print out a few books' worth of hints for getting back to the technology level necessary to read it.
If the resources for printing are still handy. I don't feel comfortable counting on that at present levels of technology.