[tt] [Open Manufacturing] Re: Fwd: [ExI] we stand on the shoulders of giants

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com> -----

From: "Paul D. Fernhout" <pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com>
Date: Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:33:42 -0400
To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com
Subject: [Open Manufacturing] Re: Fwd: [ExI] we stand on the shoulders of
 giants
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Reply-To: openmanufacturing at googlegroups.com


Bryan Bishop wrote:
> From: spike 
> Thought experiment: Q decides to see if modern humanity can be placed
> on an earthlike planet devoid of technology to see if we can bootstrap
> ourselves back to modernity, or if we would fall back to the
> prehistoric mean existence in which we spent so much of our history.
> He takes an unlikely subset, those who read ExI-chat and poofs them to
> a pristine earth-like planet, along with their mates and children, but
> none of their books or technology.  He realizes the odds are against
> us, so he puts them in a friendly temperate environment, with lush
> vegetation, optimal rainfall, tasty beastage and so forth.

The periodic table is probably the most important document to have memorized 
in that context. From the periodic table, you can derive a lot of 
information that has taken thousands of years to figure out.
   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=periodic+table
   http://www.webelements.com/

However, consider is what the USA was like around the 1600s after most of 
the natives were wiped out by European bioterrorism
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto
(mostly, but not all, unintentionally though) and other more direct attacks.

Here is one example of natural abundance without many people around:
   http://www.nps.gov/history/archeology/cg/fd_vol8_num3-4/salmon.htm
"""
Common folklore in New England holds that Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar), a 
highly prized game and food fish in both Europe and North America, were once 
so abundant in the rivers that early colonists could walk across the backs 
of the fish as they ran up the rivers in spring to spawn. There are tales 
that people became so tired of eating them that a law was passed requiring 
poor servants and laborers to be fed the fish no more than twice a week.
"""

Passenger pigeons darkened the sky for weeks on end.

Buffalo filled the plains.

Also, the Galapagos shows how normally animals are unafraid of humans and 
you can walk right up to them. Only generations of hunting them shifts their 
behaviors to avoid humans (which may be a good thing in the case of bear as 
opposed to deer). So, gathering enough food is pretty much a non-issue, if 
you know what you can eat and how to prepare it.

At the root of human survival is natural self-replicating biotechnology, as 
well as the natural water cycle that purifies drinking water.

All people need to be happy is food, clean water, and a good community.

A long life is nice, but it's a tough call between a happy shorter life into 
fifties and sixties and a longer stressed out life that is a decade or two 
longer (where the last decade is frailness and dependency and pain and 
dementia, or where the "frailspan" is increasing to track increases in 
lifespan).

So, really, why bother reinventing technology if you live in such abundance?

OK, asteroid deflection and a space program, but why not leave that for 
10,000 years from now?

Half of all cancers are said to be environmentally caused (pollution etc.).

Hunter/gatherers had a lot of free time, even on marginal lands:
   http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm

A small population like proposed would not be a large breeding ground for 
new communicable diseases, so colds and flus would disappear fast.

An intact biosphere would hold in check stuff like Lyme disease.
   "Forest fragmentation predicts local scale heterogeneity of Lyme disease 
risk."
   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16187106

A better diet (more plants, less fat) and more exercise would eliminate most 
Western diseases:
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508

More sleep, less stress, and extended breastfeeding would help general 
population health too. Less sugar means less tooth problems.

Granted, people would have to relearn how to squat during childbirth to 
reduce mortality:
   http://pregnancy.about.com/cs/laborbasics/a/squatting.htm
"For a long time we have ignored the most effective position for giving 
birth: squatting. The advantages of squatting have long been known, but in 
modern medicine has been ignored for positions that were more advantageous 
for the practitioner's view and the use of instruments such as forceps, 
stirrups and vacuum extractors."

Technology is often the result of play, but it only takes hold and spreads 
and is refined extensively in the face of scarcity. If you live in a 
pre-scarcity society, you may well be better off without it.

Sure, you can invent lots of scenarios where it is good to have technology 
(especially medical and dental technology), but there are also many 
situations where our technology harms us (pollution, accidents, stress, 
deception, clutter, war, etc.). It's not clear that we are better of with 
iPods and having forgotten how to sing ourselves or make up songs.

The Greeks developed the steam engine, but with slaves and general abundance 
before the destruction of the local environment (trees and fish), had no 
need of it (not suggesting we go back to slavery).

The Chinese had gunpowder, but with a post-scarcity technology like 
bureaucracy already, and other cultural practices like returning human waste 
to the fields, they had no need of gunpowder to put down riots or conquer 
other lands.

You don't need to develop every post-scarcity technology even when you have 
scarcity. A few obvious ones like bureaucracy can be enough for a while. 
Even a significant degree of social hierarchy or formal organization of some 
sort may not be needed if nature is abundant enough. If there was one 
technology to preserve, it might be the Iroquois confederacy ideals (stuff 
that underlies the US constitution).

For an example of a group of kids coming together in a related setting, see:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_in_the_Sky
"Heinlein tracks the social development of this village of educated 
Westerners deprived of the rudiments of technological civilization..."

To be clear, with almost seven billion humans on the planet now, abandoning 
most technology is not an option if most will eat. In Ursula K. Le Guin's 
book "Always coming home" she paints a picture of a high-tech society that 
has made more joyful choices about its technological infrastructure. In our 
current situation, that is probably a better approach than abandonment of 
technology.

But with only 1000 or so people, it will take a few thousand years (or more) 
probably to reach the point where population density is a big issue. So, 
except as an intellectual amusement, reinventing technology may not be of 
much positive value for many, many generations.

The biggest loss in such a transition would not be the computers. It would 
be missing a good stainless steel knife. It would also be missing the 
results of many thousands of years of genetic engineering of breeding of 
animals like the dog and crops like potatoes, corn, and rice. So, if I had 
to pick some stuff to take along, it would be dogs, seeds, and knives. 
Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson would be good reading matter, too. 
  But, I know, you don't get to take anything. The loss of millenia of 
bioengineered plants and animals would be the hardest part of the 
transition, although, as I said, natural abundance would be a substitute for 
a long time.

Still, obviously, there would be a lot of things that would go badly. People 
would die of things we could easily save them from with antibiotics or minor 
surgery, especially as probably few on the ExI list are experts in medicinal 
herbs. A native village knows a lot. All that computer programming skill on 
the ExI list? Imagine a village knowing that much about herbs, animals, 
hunting, and otherwise using local resources, like any native village 
network 30,000 years would have known. There is a reason humans (and human 
community networks) are capable of knowing so much, even if we have filled 
those brains with other information of less direct relevance to survival now.

So, we should say: "Q, we won't play your game. Thanks for the nice empty 
planet though. Our great-etc. grandchildren will reinvent technology when 
they need it due to rising populations and increasing scarcity." :-)

Would I still chisel the periodic table into stone somewhere, anyway? Yeah, 
probably -- if I could remember it. :-) It is an amazing accomplishment of 
humanity to figure it out. Makes me wonder if anthropologists have searched 
very ancient structures for evidence of periodic tables?

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/

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Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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