16 Comments
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Jurien's avatar

This is such a an incredibly insightful read about how all design is not good design all the time. I really wonder what kind of advanced society they could’ve built without Western conquest

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David White's avatar

Are you serious?

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Melmoth Wanderer's avatar

Easy enough to excuse, but serious trade goes together with wheeled transportation. Unless the society is archipelago based which it wasn't.

No need to transport goods in a Command Economy. The Peons are the goods. And they transport themselves, under duress.

A perfect system. For a while.

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Michael van der Riet's avatar

You know how they are attempting to restrict AI to protect human jobs? Well...

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FlyingAxblade's avatar

hooyay! in english: this is on the MINDS platform.

°Cherishº is the new love, be well.

the reason I put the two different beads on "Cherish: fondly remembered, best left unspoken, not unsprainted." is ° & º require two hands to make. but the [ALT] key has to remain down.

Totally, I could manage at great expense of dexterity vs. time loitering, but I've found that I think 8x faster than I type. iffin i'm typing. & 5x that if imma making paint/draw. & I can do a word & know that word by a collage. in 1/3 of that 5x #! = 40/3 = a 13 .mostly. Depends on if Imma thinking about math or relationships. Ya know? I apply math to language. as physical speed of thought related to the circumfrance of the Earth w/ layovers, not racing! I type 20+ words per minute while actively thinking, well better than 60 wpm if merely relating in cohesion what I already have honestly achieved for personal truths.

{They gave up lipstick ;^}> (for muzzles 8^)

*May God nod towards thee & thine!* [insert meme img here: ammo & lipstick pile {choose today whom you will serve}] kek. imma go make that. now.

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Bill Tirrill's avatar

If you used a Mac you'd have an accessibility option called Sticky Keys that would hold that key down for you.

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BOCN's avatar

A similar thing happened with the engine. People like Al-Jazari and Taqi Al-Din had invented an early version of the steam engine in the Muslim world, but it was only used to turn the spit that effectively roasted a sheep for a banquet. Unlike Europe, they didn't have the ripe technological vacuum required to put it to real use.

"Necessity, it turns out, isn’t really the mother of invention; it’s the mother of the process that turns an invention into a product..." - Tamim Ansary.

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FlyingAxblade's avatar

this is now on the MINDS platform. which, I admit I read during https://www.minds.com/newsfeed/1791904613008416768?referrer=flyingaxblade this video which I disagreed with.

so I like your post better than this famous channel (not me, the thing I promoted to those who are not Larkin listeners.)

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Ian Sawyer's avatar

I would suggest that another major reason why the wheel wasn't invented earlier is that there's nothing in nature that rotates; hence, there was nothing for our early ancestors to copy or base a new invention on.

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BOCN's avatar

Read The Horse, The Wheel and Language some years ago. Great book.

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Bill Tirrill's avatar

I think attributing the lack of wheels to a lack of precision tools is way off base. A very much simpler design attaches the wheels solidly to the axle, and the axle revolves with the wheels and is kept in place by ∩-shaped cutouts on the underside of the cart. In fact it appears the wheeled toys were made just this way.

As for draft animals, couldn't they use the llamas?

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jerry's avatar

Very limited article from a cultural standpoint. New World cultures did not have tons of mono-crops or other resources that needed transporting. They lived more sustainably by choice, generally in smaller communities, rather than more comfortably like Western-style civilizations.

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David White's avatar

Weaving and spinning?? Sorry, 80% of North America is flat. No excuses. You can’t use Pikes Peak as a reason. N/S America civilization sorely lacking in most scientific areas, also languages.

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James R. Carey's avatar

With your "necessity is the mother of invention" phrase, the proverbial nail has been hit squarely on its head. We respond to change. Initially, our response is likely to be maladaptive. Hopefully, we figure it out, and then our response is adaptive.

Who needs a larger-than-band-sized social system comprised of a handful of culturally homogeneous hunter-gather families when one oversized band can simply divide in two and spread into previously unpeopled fertile terrestrial territory? Nobody for thousands of generations and until about 400 generations (100 centuries) ago when the increasing population density curve crossed the decreasing availability of unpeople fertile terrestrial territory curve, and only then did our ancestors need to invent civilization.

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George Hicks's avatar

This article misuses the word "simplistic" in the 2nd sentence. The definition of simplistic given by Merriam-Webster is: "excessively simple or simplified : treating a problem or subject with false simplicity by omitting or ignoring complicating factors or details". I stopped reading right then and there.

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Big Think's avatar

Hello George, thank you for flagging this. We are human and far from perfect, sometimes errors sneak through. We have corrected the misused word.

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