Post Ajlpy7RvcO2OtKjlLs by dusnm@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) More posts by dusnm@fosstodon.org
 (DIR) Post #Ajlpy4xirighB4abzc by dusnm@fosstodon.org
       2024-07-09T23:15:18Z
       
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       Looking back at the history of technological development of our species I'm fascinated by how wide the gap between the first rudimentary stone tools and the development of agriculture some 12k years ago. You have millennia of stagnation. It's wild to think people used to live the same way for thousands of years on end.If we take the best estimate for the emergence of behavioral modernity to be ~75k years ago then it took us ~63k years to develop agriculture.Absolutely mindblowing.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ajlpy5h690z3Rnoqie by dusnm@fosstodon.org
       2024-07-09T23:19:59Z
       
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       It would take us another 11+ thousand years to develop the steam engine, at the dawn of the first industrial revolution, after which technological progress explodes beyond belief.We're used to the concept of some groundbreaking technology emerging every few years or so. So much so that we've come to be unimpressed by it.These are our ancestors, homo sapiens, they lived, told stories, had children, got sick and died, just like we do. They were just as smart as us.So what gives?
       
 (DIR) Post #Ajlpy5rjVTUTymnLIO by admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org
       2024-07-10T00:17:43Z
       
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       @dusnm I guess what gives is the accumulation of knowledge. Peeing far because we stand on the shoulders of giants, and such.  It seems weird this accumulation took so long in between, but perhaps it was about precision in recording, about explaining well? I remember what happened when i tried to document something by myself last time: i had to correct a lot of details when i checked with someone not in the know.  Add that and that for some engineering feats you need lots of boring quality stuff (no steam engine out of bronze or brittle rusty iron) and i think it becomes fathomable. People wrote down lots of stuff, but took millenia to get the "detailed enough" and "understandable enough" parts well enough for the explosion of development to work. And that care needs to be taken for things that are not flashy like the steam engine.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ajlpy6SbIOytp82mlE by Hyolobrika@social.fbxl.net
       2024-07-10T00:21:01.378776Z
       
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       Maybe the reason is that our lives aren't actually better despite our technology and agriculture and they knew that.
       
 (DIR) Post #Ajlpy7RvcO2OtKjlLs by dusnm@fosstodon.org
       2024-07-09T23:24:08Z
       
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       What's funnier is that our nature didn't fundamentally change from the times we crudely painted the world as we knew it on cave walls.We still tell the same allegories, share the same experiences and have the same desire to connect with others like us.We're still, for better or for worse, quintessentially human. And I guess I can take some solace in that.
       
 (DIR) Post #AjlqamsO2iSQNWYEsa by admitsWrongIfProven@qoto.org
       2024-07-10T00:23:38Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @Hyolobrika @dusnm I don't understand? Who are "they"?  People before new stuff was developed cannot know, and who else is there?