***terpri__ is now known as terpri
***terpri_ is now known as terpri
<OriansJ`>christianbundy: well there is the big problem; complexity. <OriansJ`>I could point you at libresilicon and I could point you at various chemistry books on how to create various chemicals needed in lithography but there is alot of hidden complexity involved in getting the purity to the level required for lithography <OriansJ`>Just like I could point to information of basic crystal growing or metal extraction from ores but the silicon crystals to grow to the needed size or obtaining the ores are quite hard problems in themselves. <OriansJ`>at the heart of all technology and civilization is the questions: how to obtain the raw materials needed and how to outcompete a rival civilization that also probably wants those exact same resources. <OriansJ`>Hence, why knives and spears were invented long before the plow <OriansJ`>It is also why many technology books fail to include social systems or economic systems that are required to create a certain technology. <OriansJ`>So all collections of knowledge we have about technology must by definition limited in complexity to having a set of (perhaps unreasonable) assumptions about what resources you have available. <OriansJ`>One needs land to grow food from the sun but one could use nuclear power and grow far more food in just a single acre (vertical aquaponics with LEDs) if one assumes a different set of givens. <OriansJ`>There also is the problem of connecting technologies in any civilization bootstrapping. <OriansJ`>eg it is easy to bootstrap a C compiler from hex0 but it is a bitch to bootstrap GCC from a minimal C compiler. <xentrac>spears are handy for killing mammoths too. although I guess you could say the mammoth is a "rival civilization" monopolizing the "raw materials" of protein, fats, and carbohydrates present in area plants <xentrac>and knives are handy general-purpose tools in general; the latest episode of How To Make Everything uses a bronze knife to make noodles, for example <christianbundy>OriansJ`: I agree, and there's *tons* of complexity once we get to the "let's build a computer" bit, but I'd imagine that we could bootstrap ourselves from a collapse into *at least* sustainable agriculture pretty quickly if we had the recipe. <xentrac>christianbundy: my uncle tried that in the 1970s and found out that agriculture is a lot harder than it looks <xentrac>I mean maybe he didn't have the recipe. but it wasn't for lack of looking. it's just that you have to learn a lot of skills to run a farm successfully <xentrac>don't forget that it can take many generations to notice that your agriculture isn't sustainable. remember that the deserts of Iraq were once the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia, breadbasket of the world --- for millennia <xentrac>better measuring instruments and ecological theories can help with that <christianbundy>xentrac: I'm not aiming for perfect, I'm aiming for "better than nothing". <xentrac>"nothing" is a pretty high bar in a lot of places. why should I waste my time planting seeds when there are so many ngongogo nuts in the world? <xentrac>for the first several millennia agriculturalists were sicker, more malnourished, and probably less free than their hunter-gatherer ancestors <christianbundy>xentrac: I mean, if you're in a region where they grow then you should absolutely do that and trim a bunch off of your dependency graph. <xentrac>heh, I love how the end of that page says "See also: ยท Post-scarcity economy" <xentrac>I don't think there's anywhere that has enough food growing naturally to support the modern average human population denstiy <xentrac>if there were half a billion humans then maybe <xentrac>anyway, I think it's a solvable problem, and one worth solving, but it's not trivial to solve <lfam>It's important to note that the Baghdad region was irrigated by canals that were destroyed when the city was sacked in the 13th century <lfam>After the city was destroyed, the people there never found the resources to rebuild the canals <xentrac>destroying canals is a nontrivial effort <lfam>I think it's an interesting case of how "big effects" can be caused by relatively small actions <lfam>Those canals had existed for thousands of years <lfam>It's not something we can be "sure" about, in terms of cause and effect <lfam>Anyways, sorry to barge in. I just think they are really interesting examples of the power the humans have over our environment... when we choose to exercise it <vagrantc>lfam: and all this time i thought it was the salination of irrigation over time in a dry arid region <lfam>I'm sure that did not help, but it seems they had kept it under control for a very long time <vagrantc>notably, it seems civilization hasn't learned that lesson, given where most food is produced these days <lfam>I was just reading about the Salton Sea last night <xentrac>in a sense salinization makes irrigation addictive <xentrac>I was going to say, "I wonder why that kind of canal destruction has never happened in China?" because the Grand Canal is largely 2500 years old now, but I guess the Baghdad canals were older than that when they were destroyed