Cognitive Revolutions
"Science also progresses by improved instrumentation and better recordkeeping. Star charts enabled celestial navigation. Gregor Mendel's careful counting of pea plants led to modern genetics. Johann Balmer's documentation of the exact spacing of hydrogen's emission spectra led to quantum mechanics. Things we believed to be beyond human kind—the
... See moreMemecoins as a measure of attention (+ popularity)
How to Invent Everything | Ryan North
youtu.beThis talk explores technological innovation and and the first periods in history when they were possible to discover.
Language persists information within communities. Writing persists information across generations.
Spoken language distinguished our common anatomical (200 Kya) from our behaviorally (52 Kya) human ancestors.
Writing requires only basic tool use — etching on a solid medium.
First evidence of writing is from 5.2 Kya.
Imagine all of the information that was lost to time, as well as innovations that were delayed.
Language is our way of giving legibility to ideas.
Only legible ideas survive.
An idea risks signal loss each time it is transmitted. A great idea survives the distance, becoming more legible the further it gets from the source. They survive the common sense test.
Great ideas also retain (or attain) legibility the longer they remain still. An idea at
... See more