What would your contribution be for a book put together to restart a a civilization?
What would your contribution be for a book put together to restart a a civilization?
The title is a bit over dramatic but, per the title, if you could contribute with one piece of knowledge to a book that every single individual should learn from in order to kickstart a civilization, what would be yours?
My personal choice would be the process of soap making, from scratch.
Professional scientist here. I would take a table of logarithms. In a world without computers, the logarithm table and slide rule are the essential tools of how things got built. We built the Golden Gate Bridge and put a man on the moon using nothing more than log tables.
Any one person can remember the gist of the scientific method and write it down on a page. To write down a quality logarithm table you would need 500 pages.
Two lines:
"Axiomatically, those with the greatest material wealth will do everything to enrich themselves further. They must fail."
The scientific method, we’ll be able to extract most information of the world around with just that and time
'In the beginning the Universe was created.This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.'
This exercise recurs regularly and there have been a few formulations.
One of the big ones is atomic theory. It took a long time to figure out - and I’m intentionally discounting the Greek version and monads here because I’m talking about actual atomic theory and not a philosophy of essences.
Darwinian evolution and Mendelian genetics are a second option, especially if you could squeeze in things like the germ theory of disease.
I’m not familiar enough with pure math to say that there’s one concept that would have let the Greeks or Mesopotamians develop the calculus millennia earlier than we did, but that would also massively accelerate scientific progress.
- Crafting bows to hunt. Wood selection, shaping, tillering, natural bowstring materials.
- Some edible wild plants
- Some basic farming knowledge
- Some construction/shelter repair techniques
- Algebra and concepts of calculus, and why they're useful
- How to preserve foods
- Basic concepts of electricity's importance and how to make it, but someone would need to explain how to go from raw material to a functional wire, find some rare earth magnets, and figure out how to make LEDs or something else worth using the electricity for.
- The scientific method
- Concepts of how to engineer/design a solution to a problem
- Troubleshooting techniques
- Some basic concepts of boat stability and construction
- Some concepts of modern psychology
- Concepts of critical thinking and rejection of groupthink
- Basic physics. Loose explanations of kinematic equations, gravity, friction, pendulums, air resistance, aerodynamics, basic concepts of rocketry and flight/parachutes/gliders
- Evaporative cooling? I could describe the concepts of modern air conditioning, but that doesn't seem useful yet.
- I could probably work out how a windmill works, how to make a wagon, how to purify water, how to make water-tight storage.
- Germ Theory
- The Paradox of Tolerance
- How pasteurization works
- Fermentation, concepts of distillation
- Basic oral hygiene? Habits of at least rinsing sugar out of your mouth afterwards, if brushes aren't available.
- Use of alcohol and heat as antiseptics. Suggestion to use honey in a pinch
- Basic concepts of how magnifying lenses work and why they're important
I’m so far from an expert it’s not even funny but I’m a hobbyist for old valve (tube on the other side of the Atlantic) electronics. You need an industrial base to make semiconductors but if you can do flamework with glass and build a good enough pump that opens the door to amplifiers, radio, telecommunications, and even crude computers which in turn opens the door to a lot of creature comforts and social improvement that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
I wonder if a book along these lines already exists. The nearest I can think of is The Art of Manliness website.
I would probably buy a book that covered a lot of the basic skills needed for a society if it were done well. I want to try a lot of those things like smelting, house construction, metalworking, etc. I'm sure books exist for each of these but I doubt one book tries to give overviews of all.
Also an interesting question: What ARE the skills needed for a civilization? Start from skills needed when dropped off alone in the wilderness and work your way up to "needing" bureuacrats.
how to make good anesthetics. the horrors of medical interventions without anesthesia blows my mind.
maybe something about dentistry too.
I can't help but feel soap making itself wouldn't be as much use as why/when to use it?
Mixing oil with the ashy water (which is as simple as soap's gonna get) is reasonably easy to do and so useful that even without a civilisation people would probably be doing it either through discovery or by keeping doing it?
I think things like "how to build a wooden bridge so it will hold a laden cart and not fall down" are more likely to be lost without civilisation while still being incredibly useful (although I can't say I'd be very good for that)
I might add a section on refrigeration methods like zeers or wind towers/yakhchāls if the civilisation would be somewhere hot and dry, otherwise maybe something on using rivers for powering looms, mills etc.
Since I mentioned it in a response to another poster:
I would include everything I know (or had access to for the sake of this scenario) about germ theory. Admittedly my own off-hand knowledge is not much, but basic hygiene and sanitation and how to avoid getting sick would save a lot of lives. What germs are, how vaccination works, etc.
Who's ready to learn a lot about fermentation?!
Some of the inventions that historically took way longer than you'd expect: the shoe, the wheelbarrow, and the stirrup.
Also archival techniques so that history's not as messy the next time around.
Caring for animals in a humane way. Post apocolypse civilisation will be kind to our fluffy friends.
...print stills from primitive technology into a picture-book...
No person can grant you rights. Rights are those things you are capable of doing for yourself providing it doesn’t infringe on the liberty of another. You are physically capable of speaking and thinking. Of moving, of tending to property, of attempting to defend yourself, your family, those who request assistance, and your property. You can build anything you have the knowledge and means to build. You have the right to determine your own safety, this includes what you ingest and any precautions you opt out of. What is not your rights are anything that limits the liberties and rights of another person or property.
The meaning of life is very very simple, love yourself and those around you as much as possible and have as much fun as you can. If it doesn't hurt anyone or anything and you have fun doing it, do it a lot. When you genuinely love everyone around you, living becomes a lot easier and the meaning of life becomes simple.
Laws of Electromagnetism
Fire safety, fire prevention, fire fighting. Y'all got the rest covered already. These things were and still are learned the hard way. No reason for us to repeat the experiments with more lives.
Combination of food safety and basic food recipes/methods of cooking for every biome.
I would need to do a lot of adjusting for being made over a fire and do a whole lot of temperature, time, pot used, and ingredient amount/type used, but I could provide a cheesy tuna noodle casserole recipe.
Obviously this restarted civilization probably wouldn't have canned goods, an oven, a stove, a 9x13 glass pan, a clock for timing, and spray oil, so I would have to adjust the recipe to account for all of that before submitting it for that type of book.
Though, what I assume would be the hardest ingredient to come by would definitely be the cream of mushroom and cream of chicken.
Edit:
Looked up what exactly goes into cream of mushroom and it still probably would be the hardest to get due to the diversity of ingredients depending on the recipe.
All these tasty nutritious facts are great, but they're doomed without a robust immune system.
They need to know how there's a drunkard's walk or one-way tropism for wealth and power to accumulate in the hands of the few, how the noblest intents get degraded and corrupted over time, how rich people get to make the rules and thereby get even richer, giving them even more control over the rules.
How this is what killed our civilisation in the first place, and how it will kill theirs if they let it. How you need to water the roots, not the leaves, unless you want the whole tree to collapse.
What rent-seeking looks like, how tribalism works, how propaganda and psyops and PR campaigns work, what narcissists and sociopaths are like, what abusive relationships look like (since they use the same tactics), how to spot demagogues, grifters and think-of-the-children paternalism. How internecine conflict is encouraged and used to distract from actual oppression. How the church maintained a vast grip on power for millennia just by manipulating shame, fear and self-righteousness.
How you can (and should!) make a bunch of rules to slow or mitigate this, but cancer finds a way; it will worm its way past your defenses in time. And when it does, you can't fix it from within the system, pretty much by definition, because it subverts the law and the entire social contract to protect and serve itself.
How the only fix is to step outside the law, step outside the system and root it out the hard way, from the top down. You can't put a formal trigger condition on this, as the failure mode will game its way round it: just say that when you need it, you'll know.
The sign of a ball with three rays shall be repulsive for thee, thou shalt not enter any shelter nor edifice with the sign of a ball with three rays, nor destroy spoken buildings.
And to react to @bool@lemm.ee I would probably be able to write some primitive method of computing the logarithms.
Don’t. Civilization kinda fucked the planet and is the reason you live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Does it count if I have been keeping a copy of all the Kiwix releases and could submit those documents? It would certainly be one hell of a kickstart.
Otherwise, screw civilization... Here's how you build and tune a trebuchet (yeah I have a bit of experience with the construction, as long as someone else supplies the rope).
Building basic flying machines.
Can't go wrong with the Old Testament, amirite guise?
I'm not sure there is anything I could contribute that someone else couldn't. Probably basic germ theory?
As many works and studies about morality and ethics as possible, because god knows we threw those out the window long ago, and it's biting our asses now. I'd also add an emphasis on John Rawls' works, particularly "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical" and "A Theory of Justice".
My contribution is a very practical tip for parents: When you need to carry a kid sitting on your shoulders, first pick them up and have them sit with both legs on your right shoulder. Then, with your right hand, grab the kid's right leg, and with your left hand grab the kid's left leg and lift it over your head to place it in your left shoulder. Mirror the maneuver if necessary. The result is a quick lift-sit-and-switch technique, and fewers kicks to the head.
Never trust someone who says one thing but tries to do another, or who's inconsistent on something while saying they're not.
Some basic concepts of medication - clean wounds (preferably with alcohol, because it kills germs), understand how germs spread, and know the basic ideas behind vaccines. If society had known these things 1000 years ago, it would've saved billions of lives.
How to make fire
I would write an overview of extended mind theory, an introduction to human cumulative culture, knowledge engineering and TRIZ.
The history of human civilization is riddled with challenging problems, solving which takes more than multiple human lifespans worth of effort. Having a good learning resource about the most advanced methods and tools for navigating these problems would be a huge help, I think.
I’d put the National Electrical Code out there. It doesn’t tell you how to do everything with electricity, like generating it, but it does give a lot of details of how to wire things safely.
I would explain how to replenish the world. "Bad news everyone, sex causes children...".
Is there a book called "Living off the Land for Dummies"?
It's hard to choose "one piece" of knowledge, so I would try to persuade whoever is writing the book to include the time traveler's cheat sheet. https://i.imgur.com/O6vSrvq.jpg
I didn't make it, but includes a lot of information that didn't have an intuitive path to discovery, but a lot of practical benefits for humanity. If I were to add to it I would try to include at least descriptions of a few other things:
- batteries
- engines
- simple computers (although this may be more involved than the earlier parts combined, so perhaps just simple logic gate diagrams)
- genes
- a guttenberg press
- lenscrafting
- a world map
- calculus
- special and general relativity (also complicated certainly, but could be useful later)
- and basically as many physics equations as I can think of
Paper making and double entry accounting
hmm, lemmy acting weird, test post (will delete or edit in a sec)
Explain the concept of a train and tram.
