The opening story with Steve, Bryan and Irene had me cracking up "don't be amateurs, I know the future, I always do!" from the cat's perspective was perfect😂 But honestly, what got me thinking was this whole idea that ancient people weren't being "primitive" when they looked to stars and bird patterns for decisions. Like, they were dealing with genuine uncertainty and using the best tools they had. We do the same thing now, just with different tools. We check weather apps, market trends, statistical models. Same impulse, different data sources. Also never thought about why we still use 60 for time. That's one hell of a lasting legacy from people who just needed to know when their river would flood.
You make a very important point, Bechem, and it was very humbling for me to even express that. People have tried to make the best the tools and means they had, to deal with problems including uncertainty, and many groups in the past used ingenious ways to work with them that we, in our perhaps smug sense of superiority but at least our vantage point of better technologies, tend to not sufficiently appreciate. And that where we are right now is just a work-in-progress in the long march of the story of humanity.
The opening story with Steve, Bryan and Irene had me cracking up "don't be amateurs, I know the future, I always do!" from the cat's perspective was perfect😂 But honestly, what got me thinking was this whole idea that ancient people weren't being "primitive" when they looked to stars and bird patterns for decisions. Like, they were dealing with genuine uncertainty and using the best tools they had. We do the same thing now, just with different tools. We check weather apps, market trends, statistical models. Same impulse, different data sources. Also never thought about why we still use 60 for time. That's one hell of a lasting legacy from people who just needed to know when their river would flood.
You make a very important point, Bechem, and it was very humbling for me to even express that. People have tried to make the best the tools and means they had, to deal with problems including uncertainty, and many groups in the past used ingenious ways to work with them that we, in our perhaps smug sense of superiority but at least our vantage point of better technologies, tend to not sufficiently appreciate. And that where we are right now is just a work-in-progress in the long march of the story of humanity.