What if the Industial Revolution started in the 1st century?

Discussion in 'Intelligence & Machines' started by dre38w, Mar 4, 2008.

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  1. USS Exeter unamerican american Registered Senior Member

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    We have to escape this planet!

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  3. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    We have to leave this planet alone but we can never escape ourselves

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  5. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    They use a lot of early 20th century technology, as long as it's work-related for men. They even use tractors on their farms. They just won't use anything that makes work easier for women, like refrigerators and ranges. Or anything that makes life more fun.
     
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  7. kmguru Staff Member

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    I think originally Amish tried to live a Bio-sphere type life (without outside trade). But that did not work. So they are now living a circus life - dependent on outside trade and visitors.
     
  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The Amish never tried to live in complete isolation from the outside world. They just want to avoid being influenced so much by it that they lose their identity, or become dependent on it. Amish villages are widespread across several states (there's even one in Maryland, south of Washington DC) so there's no such thing as a contiguous Amish community anyway. There is no hierarchical religious structure so practices vary from village to village. In general the village elders review advances in "English" technology periodically and rule on whether it can be used. They reject anything that would make them dependent on us "English," such as appliances requiring electrical transmission from outside, but they use batteries and gasoline-powered farm equipment, and a few villages have kerosene-powered refrigerators. (Yes I know that seems to make them a little dependent on us since they don't have their own oil wells. Or maybe they do. There are lots of Amish in Pennsylvania!)

    The Amish are frugal businessmen and have amassed considerable capital, which they--duh!--deposit in "English" banks. I've seen reports that they own stock in many corporations and have a very high per-capita net worth. They don't frown on the use of tobacco, as long as it's not in the form of cigarettes which are just too decadent, but they don't use alcohol or even comfortable furniture. They are more rigorous pacifists than the Quakers, and they believe no one needs more than an eighth-grade education.

    Since the Amish are descended from 18th-century Swiss immigrants, maintain the purity of the bloodlines by rigorously discouraging outmarriage, speak an odd dialect of German separated from the old country by 200 years ("Deitsch" or "Pennsylvania Dutch," although they are fluent in English), and unquestionably maintain a distinct culture, they are considered an ethnic group.
     
  9. kmguru Staff Member

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    I suppose it is no different than ebonics culture where they believe education does not help...but street crime does....and no "English" people are able to change that....
     
  10. dre38w Registered Member

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    I'm contradicting my post here BUT...

    If the Industrial Revolution did happen back then, would the Hitler Holocaust even of happened? History would most likely not have been the same. Tragedies that happened in the past and key points in history probably wouldn't have gone down the way they did. Different disasters and different key points that would have changed the future eras would have happened instead.

    Yes, the fossil fuels would have disappeared a very long time ago. But humans adapt. They fight to exist. It's in our nature to survive. But because we fight to exist I don't think we would be living the Amish way. It would be more of an Apocalyptic world. Due to fighting over the limited fossil fuels. It would be Fallout 3 combined with Frontlines: Fuel of War. (Video games) Humans are so quick to fight each other over something that could be resolved through compromise.

    And not only that, people are panicky and irrational. If chaos happens, people freak out and tend not to listen to reason. When people think the end is here they go crazy. When people don't feel like they can control what is happening to them and feel that all hope is lost, they tend to resort back savagery. But that's not all people it's just most.

    But if we were to find another planet to live on, we would need to build large space crafts that can hold millions of people, even billions. Depending on how many are left. And the ships would need to sustain life for months. Maybe years. And living on Mars? Even if life can survive on the red planet we, as humans, would still need an artificial ecosystem of some sort. That would require a huge amount of cooperation and people would have to be willing to build it without asking for money or something in return for the parts, the research, and the labor. And would we even have time to build it? That brings me to my next point.

    There are a few variables to take in to consideration. Who's running the governments at the time? And IF they are "bad" people and a mass population wipe out occurs; the ones left, would they band together to survive or would they do the complete opposite? Or, if they are "good" leaders, would they be able to stop the madness and find a way to adapt and survive?

    But there is always the possibility that none of that happens, and science, technology and human beings advance to a point we could never imagine. Would we find a way to break the laws of physics? Would we find a way to cure currently incurable diseases? Would we find a way to undo all the pollution we've scarred the world with? Would we find a way to end all the suffering and hunger? Would we find a way to end poverty? Would we find peace?

    No one can tell the future. All we can do is theorize.

    Oh, and I can't believe I spelled "Industrial" wrong. Yikes.
     
  11. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    Post-industrial society on Earth by the 5th or 6th century instead of now--there's a thought--possibility of space travel by, say, the 3rd Century AD. The Roman Empire abandons Europe to the barbarian invasions and sets itself up on Mars, maybe...

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    The planets get terraformed by now, and the Solar System gets entirely overcrowded by the 21st C. So we go out and crap all over the nearby planets--there was a poet who said we'd shit on the stars if we could reach, and I daresay he was right.
     
  12. Digmaster Registered Member

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    Considering the rate at which we seem to be rewriting commonly accepted theories, I would be very much surprised if relativity was not thrown out in 100+ years, in favor of a slightly changed theory that would allow for so much more.
     
  13. The Breaker Registered Member

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    It's unlikely that a theory which has been as rigorously tested and shown accurate as general relativity will be thrown out. Tweaked or refined, almost certainly. This will probably have to happen so that a successful theory of quantum gravity can be validated, but completely thrown out, almost certainly not. Most of the current theories of quantum gravity, string theory for example, do not throw out general relativity, they just explain what gives rise to it.

    To stay on topic, if the industrial revolution had occurred in the 1st century I find it extremely unlikely that we would have died out by now, just like I find it unlikely that we will die out in the next thousand years. Run out of oil? Probably, but once we run out of oil, we will find another source of energy to replace it.
     
  14. kmguru Staff Member

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    I remember in my business strategy meetings, we have this graph that goes either down, stays level or upward, from the present. Never a wiggle....so why this time it will be any different?

    Take your pick....you have only three ways....
     
  15. The Breaker Registered Member

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    I've thought a little more about this subject and come to a different conclusion. If the industrial revolution occurred in the 1st century we would have almost certainly created AI more intelligent than a human being. I think it likely that not long after that point we will not longer be relevant.
     
  16. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps, therefore, the only way the Human race could remain relevant, in a world controlled by more intelligent AI androids and gynoids, would be to blend with the dominant race--i.e. the Human and AI races both become partly biological, partly mechanical, and both share in the higher intelligence of the AI race.

    That might sound like pie-in-the-sky optimism, but consider this; the AI race, for all their higher intelligence, are going to be initially in much smaller numbers than the Humans. So they've got two options; 1) exterminate all Humans, and remove any possible competition. 2) blend the Human and AI races, and raise the average intelligence of the Human race to make them smart enough to become peaceful instead of warlike, so they're more likely to sit down and negotiate a way out of trouble, rather than kicking the crap out of everything as they usually do. I suggest the AI's would be more likely to take the second course because if they didn't, they themselves could be obliterated by the Humans (who would be terrified of option 1 becoming reality, because they've been raised on a generation of Terminator movies). So on the old principle that a rising tide lifts all the boats in the harbour, the AI race help us lift ourselves out of our own swamp.
     
  17. kmguru Staff Member

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    AIs will not exceed human capabilities for say about 50 years. In the meantime, we should be able to enhance humans to increase our abilities 100 fold. As the AIs supercede in capabilities, I am sure there will be a merging of the two specis....after all, inteligence understands intelligence.
     
  18. Xylene Valued Senior Member

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    People do tend to have an irrational fear of creatures that look too much like themselves, but which they know to be artificial or alien--as long as people see a noticable difference in an alien or artificial race, they wouldn't have too much trouble with them. I don't know why people are like that, but it's just something to do with their psychology.

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  19. X-Man2 We're under no illusions. Registered Senior Member

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    Speaking of the Amish,my wife is an ice cream vendor.She drives around in a van playing her music until people signal her for a buy.On her route is many Amish who buy ice cream from my wife and while she is there at the Amish farms they are ALWAYS drinking beer and smoking hand rolled cigarettes.I honestly was taken back when she first told me about this.I always thought just the opposite and I assume many other do to.And then too while she is there she is asked numerous time if she will drive down the street to the liquor store to pick up cases of beer.Hell even the young boys drink and smoke.It is so strange.We are in Indiana.And then my Step Mom grew up around the Amish.She used to tell us about how the Amish girls would sneak out at night to go hang out with the non Amish girls.The Amish girls would put make-up on and drink and party withe rest of the gang.Finally,my best friend has 2 Amish neighbors who live 2 houses down from him in a housing addition.These Amish drive their own cars,have electricity etc.I guess the Amish way is slowly deteriorating with each generation.This is a true story.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2009
  20. kmguru Staff Member

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    It is the Mormons who are not supposed to drink or smoke. Amish culture may be different...simpler life does not mean excluse beer or smoke. If you can grow tobacco...you should be able to smoke it....
     
  21. theobserver is a simple guy... Registered Senior Member

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    None of us would have been here today. Earth would have been a destroyed in 500 years.
     
  22. dixonmassey Valued Senior Member

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    >These Amish drive their own cars,have electricity etc.

    That's what I've seen - an electrified Amish home. Also, Amishes ride car/buses and consume shit load of fast foods. Honestly, in the (crowded) part of Indiana that Amishes call their home adhering to old ways looks like a masochistic torture, driving a buggy on those roads, yack. I think entire American infrastructure was designed to make Amish leaning (or simply walking) people's life miserable. It's not like Amishes preserved entire villages in a single piece. They are spread thin among non Amish population and they DO fuck their cousins, as a consequence - degeneration, slow but steady. They need fresh blood, but becoming an Amish is a tricky thing.
     
  23. baftan ******* Valued Senior Member

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    suggestions:

    10 000 AA (after agriculture)
    100 000 AA (after africa)
    4 000 000 AA (after ape)...
     
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