[ExI] we stand on the shoulders of giants

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of 
> Bryan Bishop
...
> 
> 2009/7/3 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
> > An earlier comment about 1000 humans on an island caused me to 
> > recognize that we, like the ants, carry most of our 
> knowledge externally.
> 
> Spike, I enjoyed your thought experiment thoroughly. I wonder 
> whether or not you are aware of the main project that I have 
> been throwing myself at for the past few months...

This is cool Bryan!  Good luck man.

> 
> > Thought experiment: Q decides to see if modern humanity can 
> be placed 
> > on an earthlike planet devoid of technology to see if we 
> can bootstrap 
> > ourselves back to modernity...
> > Assume a few hundred of us proles and our mates and children...
> 
> Surely you can build tools to help you build more tools. But 
> which tools do you want to build first?...

Ja, which, and how?
...
> 
> These are exactly the right questions. But to what extent do 
> you want to do "pure bootstrapping" from the chemicals and 
> elements in the air, versus using the trash and muck that our 
> modern civilization has left to the dumpsters?...

No trash, no dumpsters, different planet, completely pristine and earthlike,
optimal climate, with all the familiar species of plants and beastage, gnus
and so forth.  Q's final comment: Good luck, GO! 

...
> >
> > Do you have any guess how the first humans melted iron?  
> Don't google 
> > on it, think, how would YOU do it?
> 
> How did they find iron?  ... - Bryan

We don't know how (great)^n grandma did it, but I would look for some orange
soil, assuming that is iron oxide or some kind of metallic ore.  OK found
it.  Now what?

We would all specialize in something.  I would immediately recognize that we
are never going to get far without iron, in order to hew wood, slay
beastage, create machines and so forth.  So I would form the iron group.  We
might also form a knapped flint group for the interrim and as a backup path,
in case we fail ignominiously to ever figure out how our own (great)^n
grandparents took some kind of soil and somehow derived iron from that, and
once they did, somehow formed that into tools.  How did they do it?  

All of us here can drive a car, most of us can buy one with a few weeks of
our wages, some of us can fix one.  But not one here could build a car.  All
of us together could not build a car from raw materials, not even one that
sucks.

spike