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re: Aliens come and take away every man-made object. Humans maintain their current knowledge..

Posted on 11/2/24 at 9:23 pm to
Posted by OweO
Plaquemine, La
Member since Sep 2009
122093 posts
Posted on 11/2/24 at 9:23 pm to
What about this. Lets say one day earth is reset to its natural state and a couple 100,000 people were left behind and have the knowledge that people of today have. A few of them might be really smart, but lets just say for the most part its just average people by today's standards. What would be the first thing that gets established as currency that is accepted by everyone?
Posted by WhiteMandingo
Member since Jan 2016
7910 posts
Posted on 11/2/24 at 11:41 pm to
Whe keep the knowledge
So we know how to produce computer chips and what is needed to make them we just need to start step 1 and mine and build machinery to get the resources to produce the chips
Build a factory to make the processor and start the automation from there move on to assembly ect.
We would also be streamlining the industrial revolution w/ out trial and error.
70 to 100 years easy if we aren't trying to fix housing and medical issues
Posted by FutureMikeVIII
Houston
Member since Sep 2011
1760 posts
Posted on 11/2/24 at 11:55 pm to
quote:

I may overestimate humans, but we have historical evidence that you severely underestimate us.


The historical evidence says it’ll take at least 150,000 yrs to get here.
Posted by FutureMikeVIII
Houston
Member since Sep 2011
1760 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 12:05 am to
quote:

So we know how to produce computer chips and what is needed to make them we just need to start step 1


Goddamn, easy peasy then.

Step 1) make computer chips.

Step 2) create complex economy and define profit

Step 3) profit
Posted by Bard
Definitely NOT an admin
Member since Oct 2008
59180 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 12:12 am to
quote:

Humanity knows how to do all this already.


You're conflating the entirety of human knowledge with the knowledge of any given individual. Just because something which was discovered by some person at some point doesn't mean everyone knows it nor knows it forever. I could walk through the Mall tomorrow and 8 or 9 out of every 10 people I asked likely wouldn't know how to create fire from friction or how to make a gill net.

And just because there are those who do, does not mean they have other skills which would be necessary to get humans back on track, like identifying ore veins in rocks, smelting that ore down into usable ingots, etc.

Along with that, I don't think you understand how much is involved in getting a dependable line of food set up, much less the time it takes to build even a basic shelter (like a lean-to or wikiup), to make basic weapons, to make basic tools, to chop enough wood to keep your fire going, to chop and shape wood to make a more secure shelter, to build a shelter with a fire pit that won't end up burning your shelter down, etc.

Starting with nothing more than a stick they just found on the ground, just getting to that level would take even experienced survivalists a good week or two and most people aren't experienced survivalists.

quote:

Even if the clueless and useless die in short order, as a species, we would recreate this stuff on the macro level much quicker than a few hundred years.


What do you mean "on a macro level"? There would be no macro level for quite a while. There are no roads, no bridges, no boats, no maps, no GPS, no communication beyond your immediate area; there's nothing. Along with that, the deaths which would follow such an event would be so astronomical as to leave humanity relegated to only smatterings of completely (or mainly) disconnected outposts throughout the world. It may be that the nearest person or group is a dozen miles away, but you won't know it until you have the luxury of enough time to roam that far (which you don't have if you are constantly hunting, foraging, cooking and chopping wood).

quote:

Imagine the desire, knowing what we know is possible, to get back to the old ways. Motivation would be infinite.


The only desire for a long time would be getting enough to eat, establishing a secure shelter, weaving and making some form of clothing, and creating and refining the tools focused on those ends. Memories of times gone by doesn't fill the belly, food does. It takes thousands of calories per day to keep a person in a survivalist scenario like this going and it takes many hours to forage, trap and/or hunt enough food (much less prep a fire and then cook the food) to meet that need with little more than a pointy stick.
Posted by AmosMosesAndTwins
Lake Charles
Member since Apr 2010
19013 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 12:19 am to
quote:

Whe keep the knowledge So we know how to produce computer chips and what is needed to make them we just need to start step 1 and mine and build machinery to get the resources to produce the chips Build a factory to make the processor and start the automation from there move on to assembly ect. We would also be streamlining the industrial revolution w/ out trial and error. 70 to 100 years easy if we aren't trying to fix housing and medical issues


How are you going to tell China we need all this?
Posted by Poichess
Member since Jun 2019
1123 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 12:53 am to
I share the same perspective as the original poster. We would initially regress and then gradually advance back to the technology we have today.
Posted by Poichess
Member since Jun 2019
1123 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 1:00 am to
History unfolds over the course of two centuries. It would take 400 years to see a return to something like the iPhone 16. Knowledge without the means to apply it is futile. We lack even basic clothing. How are we supposed to cope? Strangle a sheep? Strike it with a rock? That would mark the beginning.
Posted by Poichess
Member since Jun 2019
1123 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 1:04 am to
quote:

Silicon was discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius, a Swedish chemist, in 1824 by heating chips of potassium in a silica container and then carefully washing away the residual by-products. Silicon is the seventh most abundant element in the universe and the second most abundant element in the earth's crust.
Posted by Hobie101
Member since May 2012
1074 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 6:02 am to
Is my garden still intact?
Posted by Matt225
St. George
Member since Dec 2019
1246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 6:14 am to
Depends on if we have to fight over how many genders and what pronouns to use.
Posted by nealnan8
Atlanta
Member since Oct 2016
4682 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 6:15 am to
quote:

Well we went from no computers in the 1950s to 70 years later everyone has one in there hand and it calls people and take pictures.
So 70 years

If you mean consumer computers for personal use, then yes. But the first electric computer was built in 1937. COBOL introduced in 1953 and FORTRAN in 1954. In 1890 a punch card system computer was invented to help the US government tabulate the 1890 census.
Posted by cssamerican
Member since Mar 2011
8201 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 6:37 am to
Just imagine a major US city population getting dropped off in the middle of the nowhere with nothing. Let’s ignore obvious problems such as mass panic, or if it’s winter time for northern cities, or simply a desert city like Phoenix or Las Vegas, where are that many people going to find clean drinking water and food? The amount of death would be unimaginable, I’m not even sure if 1% would survive.

Think about this, if you just took 1,000 New Yorkers and dropped them off with nothing in the middle of the Amazon, a place that is full of resources, and came back 3 months later what would you expect to find? A tropical oasis or corpses?

Anyone here that thinks some technical knowledge about a world that no longer exists is somehow going to prevent an absolute reset of humanity back to Göbekli Tepe is delusional IMO.

Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
42246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:01 am to
quote:

Probably... the knowledge was the only thing that took time to attain... all the physical material already here


There are no furnaces, no smelters, no hammers, no blades, no anything required to make the thousands of components required make the thousands of things that are precursors to finished components in an iPhone.

At least 1,000 years. Especially because after the first month people will shift from trying to make iPhones to just trying to survive. A year later groups will have been formed. Decades later cities. Centuries later civilizations.

If we even want to make iPhones again I think it is the time it took people to go from the Stone Age until now.
Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
42246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:07 am to
quote:

My kid made a light bulb light up with a potato and some magnets. To think humanity couldn't recreate a phone in under a century with current knowledge requires me to assume the absolute worst case scenario and the worst of humanity.


Does your kid know how to make wire, magnets, and a lightbulb?
Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
42246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:09 am to
quote:

It's a weird fantasy that people would go back to the stone age.


With what fricking metal would we use to not go back to the Stone Age? Pure metal like copper or iron does not exist in nature.

We would 100% be back to the Stone Age for a few hundred years.
Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
42246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:14 am to
quote:

Humanity survived exactly that already. In worse climate conditions.


Not a single person is saying humans would go extinct. Our species would survive and become the dominant species relatively quickly again. But we aren’t making an iPhone without reliving:

The agricultural revolution
The advancement from stone to copper to bronze to iron to steel
The Industrial Revolution
The computing revolution

So basically thousands of years, more likely 10’a of thousands of years
Posted by cssamerican
Member since Mar 2011
8201 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:15 am to
quote:

Does your kid know how to make wire, magnets, and a lightbulb?

The correct question is does his kid know how to find clean water, build fires, shape rocks, and hunt with a homemade spear better than most gun hunters can hunt today? If not, everything else is pointless.

Edit - This kid also needs to be fortunate enough to be in a good location when all this happens. Good weather, abundant natural resources, and few people to compete with at the time. And he still would need the above skills to survive.
This post was edited on 11/3/24 at 7:20 am
Posted by Oilfieldbiology
Member since Nov 2016
42246 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:17 am to
quote:

So we know how to produce computer chips and what is needed to make them we just need to start step 1 and mine and build machinery to get the resources to produce the chips


It takes us decades to do this TODAY!!!! Y’all are insane thinking we could achieve this from pre Stone Age technology to iPhones in a lifetime.
Posted by cssamerican
Member since Mar 2011
8201 posts
Posted on 11/3/24 at 7:29 am to
quote:

We would 100% be back to the Stone Age for a few hundred years.

The estimated population at that time was somewhere between 1 million and 5 million people. So, if we figure that is what the world could sustain with that level of technology, we would be looking at a the survival rate between 0.0125% and 0.0625% of the current population. It’s a total reset, all relative knowledge to construct an iPhone is lost.
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