If I take a stab at making my implicit theory explicit (I don’t promise at all this is accurate), I’d say my first-order variables are all very optimisation based. Eukaryotic revolution, the evolution of human brains, creation of de novo artificial intelligence, are all key.
Then for second order variables I’d zoom to human existence and point to key technology innovations—the agricultural and industrial revolutions are top here.
Then for third order variables I’d zoom into small groups of top thinkers in highly selective environments who did either science or institution building, such as Bell Labs, the Royal Society, The Republic of Letters, Manhattan Project, Founding Fathers, and others.
Of course I give that as a loosely defined descriptive theory. I have not stated how one would go about using it to make falsifiable predictions. I notice that the beliefs that ifnrom this theory do heavily inform how I choose to live my life, so I look forward to future posts about how to test and improve my theories.
When it comes to the industrial revolution you can have multiple explanation of why it happened at that specific time.
A common myth is for example that the Greeks had the steam engine but just didn’t use it for economic purposes because they had slave. That’s wrong. Their copper-wielding ability wasn’t good enough to build technology like Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine.
Precursor technologies are more important than the common myth acknowledges. Whether it’s replacing hand written books with printed books after cheaper paper and durable paper replaced vellum or whether it’s targeted phage therapy replacing antibiotics after gene sequencing made it cheap enough to find out what harmful bacteria are in an ill patient, precursor technologies matter a lot.
If I take a stab at making my implicit theory explicit (I don’t promise at all this is accurate), I’d say my first-order variables are all very optimisation based. Eukaryotic revolution, the evolution of human brains, creation of de novo artificial intelligence, are all key.
Then for second order variables I’d zoom to human existence and point to key technology innovations—the agricultural and industrial revolutions are top here.
Then for third order variables I’d zoom into small groups of top thinkers in highly selective environments who did either science or institution building, such as Bell Labs, the Royal Society, The Republic of Letters, Manhattan Project, Founding Fathers, and others.
Of course I give that as a loosely defined descriptive theory. I have not stated how one would go about using it to make falsifiable predictions. I notice that the beliefs that ifnrom this theory do heavily inform how I choose to live my life, so I look forward to future posts about how to test and improve my theories.
When it comes to the industrial revolution you can have multiple explanation of why it happened at that specific time.
A common myth is for example that the Greeks had the steam engine but just didn’t use it for economic purposes because they had slave. That’s wrong. Their copper-wielding ability wasn’t good enough to build technology like Thomas Newcomen’s steam engine.
Precursor technologies are more important than the common myth acknowledges. Whether it’s replacing hand written books with printed books after cheaper paper and durable paper replaced vellum or whether it’s targeted phage therapy replacing antibiotics after gene sequencing made it cheap enough to find out what harmful bacteria are in an ill patient, precursor technologies matter a lot.