Consider taking the action of simultaneously collapsing all the stars except our sun into black holes.(Suppose you can somehow do this without generating supernovas.)
To me, this seems like a highly impactful event, potentially vastly curtailing the future potential of humanity.
But to an 11th century peasant, all this would mean is that the stars in the night sky would slowly go out over the course of millenia. Which would have very little impact on the peasants life.
This is so spot-on. The peasant wouldn’t feel impacted, even if they understood and were aware of this happening. Even if the peasant would like humanity to have a cosmic endowment, they might not believe we’d be able to take advantage of it. Could you imagine an 11th century peasant thinking of Dyson Spheres?
Inspired by the recent post on impact measures, I though of an example illustrating the subjective nature of impact.
Consider taking the action of simultaneously collapsing all the stars except our sun into black holes.(Suppose you can somehow do this without generating supernovas.)
To me, this seems like a highly impactful event, potentially vastly curtailing the future potential of humanity.
But to an 11th century peasant, all this would mean is that the stars in the night sky would slowly go out over the course of millenia. Which would have very little impact on the peasants life.
This is so spot-on. The peasant wouldn’t feel impacted, even if they understood and were aware of this happening. Even if the peasant would like humanity to have a cosmic endowment, they might not believe we’d be able to take advantage of it. Could you imagine an 11th century peasant thinking of Dyson Spheres?
(This is the subject of the subsequent post, and will continue to be discussed in a few more posts to follow)
That is certainly a vivid mental image!