I strongly disagree with this counterfactual and would happily put up large sums of money if only it were possible to bet on the outcome of some experiment on this basis.
Humans designed lots of systems that have no analog whatsoever in nature. We didn’t need to see objects similar to computers to design computers, for instance. We didn’t even need to see animals that do locomotion using wheels to design the wheel!
It’s just so implausible that people would not have had this idea at the start of the 20th century if people hadn’t seen animals flying. I’m surprised that people actually believe this to be the case.
To be fair, we did have animals that served the purpose of computers. We even called them computers—as in, people whose job it was to do calculations (typically Linear Algebra or Calculus or Differential Equations—hard stuff).
This is true, but if this level of similarity is going to count, I think there are natural “examples” of pretty much anything you could ever hope to build. It doesn’t seem helpful to me when thinking about the counterfactual I brought up.
I strongly disagree with this counterfactual and would happily put up large sums of money if only it were possible to bet on the outcome of some experiment on this basis.
Humans designed lots of systems that have no analog whatsoever in nature. We didn’t need to see objects similar to computers to design computers, for instance. We didn’t even need to see animals that do locomotion using wheels to design the wheel!
It’s just so implausible that people would not have had this idea at the start of the 20th century if people hadn’t seen animals flying. I’m surprised that people actually believe this to be the case.
To be fair, we did have animals that served the purpose of computers. We even called them computers—as in, people whose job it was to do calculations (typically Linear Algebra or Calculus or Differential Equations—hard stuff).
This is true, but if this level of similarity is going to count, I think there are natural “examples” of pretty much anything you could ever hope to build. It doesn’t seem helpful to me when thinking about the counterfactual I brought up.