LogFAQs > #972342562

wolfy42 posted...

While it is possible, it's extremely unlikely, even the old fear of wiping out all tech (massive EMP charge etc) and being unable to get back to the same level of technology because fossil fuels are too hard to reach now, is pretty much gone due to our current methods of generating power from solar etc.

This is falling into the trap of assuming massive calamity is required to seriously set things back. There are plenty of lesser factors that can cause issues in and of themselves, or combine to form a systemic chain reaction crash.

There are a LOT of simmering issues brewing in the world that people have already identified as future flash-points. We have no real way to predict which are going to ignite and when, and what consequences they'll have when they do.

Even stuff like Covid was predicted (virologists and other specialists were warning that the world wasn't ready for another pandemic, and predicted we'd see one within 10-20 years). We weathered Covid, but it had plenty of related negative consequences that we're still dealing with (and likely will be for a while to come). Now imagine if multiple problems on that level occur at the same time. Infrastructure can strain past a breaking point from multiple smaller issues as easily as it can from larger ones.

And none of that takes into account possible problems we can't foresee.



wolfy42 posted...

Information is very hard to totally destroy

Information is very easy to destroy, and we've actually spent the last century or so making it easier than ever. As media storage capacity increases, lifespan decreases. Clay tablets last for thousands of years, but papyrus and paper is much more fragile. Mass produced books from the 20th century is even more fragile, as they used cheap paper and cheap ink to reduce costs, and those decay far faster (there are books published in the 60s/70s/80s that are already almost completely degraded).

Digital storage is worse in some ways. Magnetic tapes from the 60s and 70s have mostly degraded, and even CDs and DVDs tend to have a lifespan of about 70 years, give or take (and writable ROMs are worse - I have backup data CDs from the early 2000s that have already become impossible to read from bitrot). And even beyond the integrity of the storage medium, the ever-changing standards mean that some things have become extremely difficult (if not impossible) to access. If you've got a stack of old floppy discs or zip discs, you'll find it hard now to ever actually use them, without tracking down surviving old hardware and jury-rigging a set-up (and even that will grow harder to do over time).

(It's like when people ask why we can't get to the moon now when we could do it in the 60s - as technology advances, it leaves obsolete technology behind, and what was possible then becomes impossible now. Sure, we can find new ways to do old things, but the old way still becomes lost to time.)

Sure, information can be copied into new systems and retained, but then you start getting into the problem of curation (who chooses what's worth keeping and what winds up lost?) and the problem of error propagation (mistakes made in transcription become perpetuated in all future transfers). And with digital storage, you run into the problem of power (if you have data stored on a hard drive, but no power - or no power of the correct voltage/wattage/etc to access it, what you actually have is a fancy doorstop).

So yeah, data can very easily be lost, even in the Information Age.

And on top of all that, there's also the cultural assumption problem - some knowledge has been lost simply because people considered it so common-sensical that no one ever thought to write it down (things like the recipe for Roman concrete). Or because certain knowledge was deemed to be too important and needed to be kept secret (like the recipe for Greek Fire). Or because information that is inaccurate or outright lies is perpetuated while factual data is lost over time.

In a significant enough crisis situation, there is a tendency for humans to prioritize currently useful information over other forms of learning, and that can easily result in things being forever lost. Even in the last few hundred years we've lost films, tv shows, crafting secrets, historical context - in a crisis scenario, we could easily lose much, much more.

But even beyond ALL of that, mere catastrophic data loss isn't the only way that "progress" could backslide. Scenarios like certain Christian and Islamic library purges or things like the Ming Chinese actively suppressing their own naval supremacy for political reasons show that culture can easily play a role in shifts, and that history isn't always "ever upward and ever onward", regardless of the lies that American schools have perpetuated for years.



wolfy42 posted...

Anyway unless something massive happens, even if most of humanity goes poof, most of humanity is worthless anyway, the brightest minds will continue to develop technology and advance and more than likely we will eventually reach the stars and conquer them.

Again, this is basically the myth of progress. And this (along with most of the rest of your post) falls into what I generally classify as the belief that SCIENCE! is capable of answering every question and solving every problem, which often borders on religious faith more than rational reasoning.

"Well, we don't understand it today but we will tomorrow" is a massive act of faith. It and statements like "Look how much we've learned over the last 150 years or so, surely we'll eventually learn even more and solve [x]" are both logical fallacies. They're assumptions without proof (which ironically is something science itself looks down on).

Sure, it's possible future humans WILL solve today's insoluble problems. But there's no real guarantee that it WILL happen or MUST happen. It's entirely possible that some problems may never be solved. It's possible that some problems cannot be solved, due to the very nature of the universe itself. Or our limited perception of it. There may be some limitations we can never transcend, even if we had a quadrillion uninterrupted years to try.

Believing it's inevitable that humans will somehow manage to colonize the universe makes so many assumptions about things we cannot prove that it borders on saying good people go to Heaven when they die.

And in some ways, it makes the conversation almost meaningless. Even if it does happen, it's not going to happen in the next dozen lifetimes. We're so far away from where we need to be scientifically and technologically that it will take generations of forward progress to even dream of achieving it. And looking forward that far may lead people to neglect the problems of the moment.