One of the themes of current scientific progress is getting more and more information out of tiny amounts of data.
But the other theme is the selection effect. We call it the Stone Age not because stone tools were the prominent fixture of their lives, but because the stone tools are the things that survive. How much of a caveman's life was spent in a cave? Well, that's the part of it that we can see. We might as well call them "bone people," except every now and then we find a mummy to make it clear there was so much more to them.
And so, like ancient people, it seems like your best bet for persistence is to fall into a glacier.
We call it the Stone Age not because stone tools were the prominent fixture of their lives, but because the stone tools are the things that survive
Woah, is this common knowledge? I feel silly for not realizing that myself.
One of the themes of current scientific progress is getting more and more information out of tiny amounts of data. Who'd have thought that we could learn so much of distant and recent biological history from DNA, and so much about distant planets, stars, galaxies, and the cosmos from tiny differences in very small amounts of light?
Pratchett's death puts an extra edge on the question-- to what extent can people be re-created from what they've left behind them, especially if they've written novels which include a lot of their personality?
Any thoughts about theoretical limits of how much can be figured out from small amounts of data?