*Topic heading taken in part from the URL This essay addresses something I've been considering for a long time, particularly in the context of markets and governance. It feels like the historical...
*Topic heading taken in part from the URL
This essay addresses something I've been considering for a long time, particularly in the context of markets and governance.
It feels like the historical window of accountability has shrunk to the next quarter, the next election - time-frames so short that the actual benefits or drawbacks of current actions can't be taken into account.
The availability of data in the current era is making things worse, not better; we're collecting more information in a given day than may have been recorded in entire centuries of written records prior to 1950.
This results in the "compression" the article refers to; the scrutiny of the now at the expense of perceiving yesterday and tomorrow in context.
While the article doesn't address the problems of individualism versus collective action directly, we build institutions to take care of continuity over generations. The traditions of these institutions (for better or worse) are attempts to codify and provide mechanisms of stability through historical change.
This article is along the lines of thoughts I've been having lately. I've taken an interest in ancient history and prehistory, and my latest read is Fingerprints of the Gods. Say what you will of...
This article is along the lines of thoughts I've been having lately. I've taken an interest in ancient history and prehistory, and my latest read is Fingerprints of the Gods. Say what you will of its credibility, but my reading has made me reconsider what a long time actually is. We talk about events of decades ago as though they were from a bygone age and in the big picture it might as well have been yesterday. It's an interesting dichotomy. We move and change so quickly that in a sense we really can think of passing years and decades as a change of eras, but at the same time mankind has been here doing stuff and living lives for what, a couple hundred thousand years at least? Our species has probably forgotten more than modern man knows today.
It's been a long time since I've read Fingerprints, so I don't know if it was mentioned in that book specifically, and while I entertain the idea of an advanced predecessor civilization but don't...
It's been a long time since I've read Fingerprints, so I don't know if it was mentioned in that book specifically, and while I entertain the idea of an advanced predecessor civilization but don't necessarily embrace it, I was quite convinced by the argument for the age of the Sphinx. The rainfall-weathering on the Sphinx-enclosure as determined by Dr. Robert Schoch, indicating its existence during a time of heavy rainfall not present during in Giza 4,500 years ago, but further back towards 12,000 years ago, seems to me entirely plausible. The archaeological record is far from complete, and with the dating of Gobekli Tepe going back to the 10th-millennium BCE, it seems perfectly reasonable that the Sphinx—or parts of it—could be that old as well.
Our brains have been biologically modern for the past 60 or 70-thousand years, there's no reason for me to believe that the development of civilization needs to be as recent as we currently believe it to be. We can only say how far back we have confirmed it to have existed. There's a difference between not having enough evidence for something, and for that same thing to be impossible. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all of that. It may well be the case that tomorrow, or in a hundred years, we'll excavate some new site which will force us to seriously reconsider the timeline of early-civilization.
*Topic heading taken in part from the URL
This essay addresses something I've been considering for a long time, particularly in the context of markets and governance.
It feels like the historical window of accountability has shrunk to the next quarter, the next election - time-frames so short that the actual benefits or drawbacks of current actions can't be taken into account.
The availability of data in the current era is making things worse, not better; we're collecting more information in a given day than may have been recorded in entire centuries of written records prior to 1950.
This results in the "compression" the article refers to; the scrutiny of the now at the expense of perceiving yesterday and tomorrow in context.
While the article doesn't address the problems of individualism versus collective action directly, we build institutions to take care of continuity over generations. The traditions of these institutions (for better or worse) are attempts to codify and provide mechanisms of stability through historical change.
This article is along the lines of thoughts I've been having lately. I've taken an interest in ancient history and prehistory, and my latest read is Fingerprints of the Gods. Say what you will of its credibility, but my reading has made me reconsider what a long time actually is. We talk about events of decades ago as though they were from a bygone age and in the big picture it might as well have been yesterday. It's an interesting dichotomy. We move and change so quickly that in a sense we really can think of passing years and decades as a change of eras, but at the same time mankind has been here doing stuff and living lives for what, a couple hundred thousand years at least? Our species has probably forgotten more than modern man knows today.
It's been a long time since I've read Fingerprints, so I don't know if it was mentioned in that book specifically, and while I entertain the idea of an advanced predecessor civilization but don't necessarily embrace it, I was quite convinced by the argument for the age of the Sphinx. The rainfall-weathering on the Sphinx-enclosure as determined by Dr. Robert Schoch, indicating its existence during a time of heavy rainfall not present during in Giza 4,500 years ago, but further back towards 12,000 years ago, seems to me entirely plausible. The archaeological record is far from complete, and with the dating of Gobekli Tepe going back to the 10th-millennium BCE, it seems perfectly reasonable that the Sphinx—or parts of it—could be that old as well.
Our brains have been biologically modern for the past 60 or 70-thousand years, there's no reason for me to believe that the development of civilization needs to be as recent as we currently believe it to be. We can only say how far back we have confirmed it to have existed. There's a difference between not having enough evidence for something, and for that same thing to be impossible. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and all of that. It may well be the case that tomorrow, or in a hundred years, we'll excavate some new site which will force us to seriously reconsider the timeline of early-civilization.