RE: Plausibility of ancient extraterrestrials
July 17, 2023 at 4:14 am
(This post was last modified: July 17, 2023 at 4:22 am by Anomalocaris.)
Ancients people could have figured out a few things we previously thought of as modern inventions. But we need to have some perspective on just how significant a revelation that is. It is easy and at times tempting to sensationalize and implicitly grossly exaggerate what it said about what the ancient actually had.
The key things that separate the modern age of scientific discovery from previous age of some smart guide having an occasional lonesome lightbulb moment is modern age of discover is based on the developement of a systematic approach to discovery, a institutional structure that tremendously broadens the basis of talent which can be applied to the discovery, a institutionalized structure that greatly increases the probability that any clever people would be able to readily built upon the work of previous clever people rather than keep reinventing the wheel each time, and a highly developed and multiply redundant system that progressively filters the wishful thinking, willful deceit and honest mistakes from thinkimg that actuallly correlates to reality upon which concrete things can be built.
The popular perception of a few mad geniuses plus a couple of Sheldon coopers is not what made the modern era of discovery possible, which is why the ancient had no chance in hell of having equaled the modern ear of discovery.
Even if there were a few very clever discoveries thousands of years ago which we had previously overlooked, we are as surely correct as we can be about the fact that they had none of the things which are required to make for a period of high discovery output such as the one we developed since the 1700s.
The key things that separate the modern age of scientific discovery from previous age of some smart guide having an occasional lonesome lightbulb moment is modern age of discover is based on the developement of a systematic approach to discovery, a institutional structure that tremendously broadens the basis of talent which can be applied to the discovery, a institutionalized structure that greatly increases the probability that any clever people would be able to readily built upon the work of previous clever people rather than keep reinventing the wheel each time, and a highly developed and multiply redundant system that progressively filters the wishful thinking, willful deceit and honest mistakes from thinkimg that actuallly correlates to reality upon which concrete things can be built.
The popular perception of a few mad geniuses plus a couple of Sheldon coopers is not what made the modern era of discovery possible, which is why the ancient had no chance in hell of having equaled the modern ear of discovery.
Even if there were a few very clever discoveries thousands of years ago which we had previously overlooked, we are as surely correct as we can be about the fact that they had none of the things which are required to make for a period of high discovery output such as the one we developed since the 1700s.