If you had access to a time-machine and could transfer one piece of knowledge to an influential ancient (i.e. Plato), what would you tell him?
Something practical, like pasteurization, would almost certainly improve millions of lives, but it wouldn’t necessarily produce people with values like ours. I can imagine a bishop claiming heat drives demons from milk.
Meta-knowledge, like a working understanding of the scientific method, might allow for thousands of other pasteurizations to be developed, or maybe it would remain unused throughout the Dark Ages.
Convincingly arguing for a philosophical conclusion, like materialism, might prevent the horror of the crusades, or maybe the now unaddressed emotional need for community would sooner be channeled into nationalism and hasten the coming of the world wars that terrorized the early 20th century.
Each side has its pluses and potential pitfalls. Which would you choose?
And should that therefore be the main thrust of your rationality-promoting conversations today?
If you had access to a time-machine and could transfer one piece of knowledge to an influential ancient (i.e. Plato), what would you tell him?
How to make a movable-type printing press. They’ll figure out pasteurization and the scientific method on their own eventually, but without a press, they’ll lose knowledge almost as fast as they gain it. And as an added bonus, it introduces the concept of mass production.
This requires a lot of work. I’m not sure that they had the metallurgy to do this. The antikythera mechanism suggests that the answer is yes. But the printing press as a whole requires a lot of different technologies to come to together. The screw press, without which moveable type is highly inefficient, was not around until around 100 CE or slightly earlier(I’m under the impression that late medieval versions were generally better and more efficient than Roman era screw presses but don’t have a citation for that claim. If someone can confirm/refute this I’d appreciate it). You also need to explain how to make a matrix for printing (again, otherwise efficiency issues kill things badly). Also, one needs to introduce the idea of a book/codex. Prior to that, the use of scrolls and other writing systems make a printing press less practical. This is another innovation from the Roman period. So one could probably have success introducing a printing press around 150 or 200 CE but the chance of successful introduction drops drastically as one goes further back in time.
Jared Diamond has suggested that even if something approximating the Gutenberg press were introduced early on the lack of supporting technologies might make it difficult to catch on. This connects with objects like the Phaistos Disc which used a standardized form of printing around 1600 BCE but the technology did not apparently spread far (or if it did spread far has left no substantial remnants elsewhere and did not stay around).
I don’t think screwing up permanently becomes a real concern until the invention of nuclear weapons, and that’s such a long ways ahead of the starting point for this exercise that I don’t think we can influence how it goes.
Surely we can have nontrivial influence both on variables relating to specific technologies like nukes, and on general variables along the lines of “caution about technology”.
If you had access to a time-machine and could transfer one piece of knowledge to an influential ancient (i.e. Plato), what would you tell him?
What counts for “one piece”? I’d like them to know enough math and rationality to be able to think sane thoughts, and explain the problem of Friendly AI, before technology is advanced enough to threaten.
Value-sorting hypothetical:
If you had access to a time-machine and could transfer one piece of knowledge to an influential ancient (i.e. Plato), what would you tell him?
Something practical, like pasteurization, would almost certainly improve millions of lives, but it wouldn’t necessarily produce people with values like ours. I can imagine a bishop claiming heat drives demons from milk.
Meta-knowledge, like a working understanding of the scientific method, might allow for thousands of other pasteurizations to be developed, or maybe it would remain unused throughout the Dark Ages.
Convincingly arguing for a philosophical conclusion, like materialism, might prevent the horror of the crusades, or maybe the now unaddressed emotional need for community would sooner be channeled into nationalism and hasten the coming of the world wars that terrorized the early 20th century.
Each side has its pluses and potential pitfalls. Which would you choose?
And should that therefore be the main thrust of your rationality-promoting conversations today?
How to make a movable-type printing press. They’ll figure out pasteurization and the scientific method on their own eventually, but without a press, they’ll lose knowledge almost as fast as they gain it. And as an added bonus, it introduces the concept of mass production.
This requires a lot of work. I’m not sure that they had the metallurgy to do this. The antikythera mechanism suggests that the answer is yes. But the printing press as a whole requires a lot of different technologies to come to together. The screw press, without which moveable type is highly inefficient, was not around until around 100 CE or slightly earlier(I’m under the impression that late medieval versions were generally better and more efficient than Roman era screw presses but don’t have a citation for that claim. If someone can confirm/refute this I’d appreciate it). You also need to explain how to make a matrix for printing (again, otherwise efficiency issues kill things badly). Also, one needs to introduce the idea of a book/codex. Prior to that, the use of scrolls and other writing systems make a printing press less practical. This is another innovation from the Roman period. So one could probably have success introducing a printing press around 150 or 200 CE but the chance of successful introduction drops drastically as one goes further back in time.
Jared Diamond has suggested that even if something approximating the Gutenberg press were introduced early on the lack of supporting technologies might make it difficult to catch on. This connects with objects like the Phaistos Disc which used a standardized form of printing around 1600 BCE but the technology did not apparently spread far (or if it did spread far has left no substantial remnants elsewhere and did not stay around).
We don’t want them to advance quickly; we want them to advance with a low probability of screwing up permanently.
I don’t think screwing up permanently becomes a real concern until the invention of nuclear weapons, and that’s such a long ways ahead of the starting point for this exercise that I don’t think we can influence how it goes.
Surely we can have nontrivial influence both on variables relating to specific technologies like nukes, and on general variables along the lines of “caution about technology”.
I like this answer a lot. This would change a lot of incentives for the better.
What counts for “one piece”? I’d like them to know enough math and rationality to be able to think sane thoughts, and explain the problem of Friendly AI, before technology is advanced enough to threaten.