Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?
Let's assume you could store a computer along with a few terabytes of external storage inside a faraday cage. In the event of a disaster, you also have the ability to generate enough power to use the computer.
What content/knowledge would you choose to store on the device and why?
78 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 98.1 ms ] thread>“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.” ― Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 1
This should be generalized and augmented to the idea of analysis and synthesis in general, what we could call "general alchemy". That is physical and symbolic isolation & scientific controls help to understand the world, but we also need to figure out the "chemistry" so to speak of how things tend to combine and transform so we can understand the whole ecology of the integrated system.
The freedom to choose among terabytes would take a ton of thought to actually come up with some optimal set. You could probably churn over thoughts on the subject for years.
ring around the rosy pocket full of posy ashes ashes we all fall down
The inscription date was 538 ad, the second year of the plague of Justinian and the installment of the Biship of Rome.
https://dr-stone.fandom.com/wiki/100_Tales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses#The_Gre...
In other words, maybe everyone says only X Y and Z from their field is necessary/the most important, not (just) because nothing else is on their radar, but because when they think of their field, simply just mentally reasoning about X, Y, or Z is all it takes to take into account all the connected associations, without the feeling this reasoning takes much mental space or effort; and maybe this is an interesting mental fallacy.
All seem like reasonable bits of advice from a civilisation that let itself get wiped out,pretty much regardless of the cause.
Now you can include images too!
As many engineering documents as I could find.
Copy of the Great Books.
The Art of Computer programming.
Terabytes would be enough to contain perhaps most written material in English but the above is what I would start with.
Wrapping a phone a bit in aluminum foil didn't work for me. But if I was liberal with how much foil to use, I could eventually keep the phone off the hook.
Will that work to save an ssd from a signal millions of times more intense with a far sharper rise? I kind of doubt it. So that aluminum foil covering my lifes work or dreams is probably as good as 3 day old wheat bread toast after a dedicated electronic nuke is detonated.
I find it funny (but not surprising) that tech people will always put some random science knowledge in there but post-apocalyptic, small scattered communities aren't going to rely on computers and need, if anything, human knowledge which is always relevant and answers on how to govern themselves and how they ended up in the mess.
Basically whatever prevents Lord of the Flies and people dying of dysentery would I think have priority. Also gonna throw Ashley Book of Knots as a concrete recommendation in there because knowing your knots is probably a good idea when the world has ended and that book is a classic
With 1TB, you have already a pretty solid base to rebuild civilization.
Then you can go deeper:
As of last year, all Library Genesis for nonfiction is 40 TB and Scientific Papers are 78.5 TB. Total Library Genesis seems to be 220TB.
Finally, you can go bigger: The total size of archive.org seems to be around 212 PetaBytes. That's some serious storage required.
If I had only one floppy disk, it would be a selection of philosophy books from Socrates, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, La Boetie, Kant, Spinoza, Descartes, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein.
Perhaps a stupid question - does that Wikipedia number include photos? If not, what kind of overhead does that add?
You can download here newest version:
https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/
I've maxi version with images on my Pi and it works locally without internet access. I've also backup in a faraday cage.
Then you can explore it using https://www.kiwix.org/en/download/
I wonder how many cats you'd need? I would think it would be much higher as I assume superfecundation would drastically increase the risk of inbreeding.
Assuming some kind of nuclear apocalypse and you want to rebuild, a bunch of survival info, basic engineering instruction you or a small group could execute, and encyclopedias would be valuable.
But most importantly, the vast majority of your storage space should be for batteries.
- Homesteading, Animal Husbandry, Agriculture
- DIY, Construction, Electronics Repair
- Emergency Medicine, Natural Medicines
- Maps
Wikipedia to start. But IMO that's not good enough as it's not very discoverable, but makes a great 'for further reading.'
Definitely world history content. Lack of written record is probably one of the most frustrating aspects when studying past civilizations.
Definitely books and such on planting, crop rotations, problems, etc.
Books on maths, physics, geography, biology, chemistry, etc. Probably at least 101 level.
Once I covered those bases, I'd probably fill the rest with video, music, and photo content, though I'm not sure yet of what or how much
Project Zomboid has taught me.
I would probably add a few compendiums on Computers/Computing, Philosophy, History of the World, Art, Geology and Astronomy.
Instead adding a book on Ethics :) Not sure I know a good starter book on Ethics actually.
King Fuzi's The Analects
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics
How would humans want to be remembered? We might focus on music, art, dreams, stories, philosophy, rather than technology, although that might be included, too. I suspect that zoology and biology would be particularly important, as this is the unique natural bounty of our world, the product of billions of years of Life living and dying.
This makes me want to write a story about how a world war begins over the selection of content of this Grand Time Capsule that kills us off.
I guess you would make many replicas on the moon for redundancy against meteorites. They could also broadcast signals to space, altough surely they would be relatively shortlived without maintenance.
I would like to read a story about it.
> We have named this collection the Manual for Civilization, and it will include the roughly 3500 books most essential to sustain or rebuild civilization.
https://longnow.org/ideas/02014/02/06/manual-for-civilizatio...
1. The Bible (original languages and modern translations)
2. All of (English) Wikipedia
3. Medical textbooks
4. nand2tetris
5. Anything not already in Wikipedia about fabrication processes and manufacturing, especially the more "exotic" stuff - exactly how transistors work, photo-lithography, that kind of thing
I'm a little uncertain about the ordering of 4 and 5; building computer hardware is hard, but the mental models to use it are also unintuitive. On the other other hand, it only took us ~60 years to invent modern software the first time once we had the hardware, and Wikipedia hopefully already covered the mathematical background, so worst case we could probably reinvent everything else if we could preserve knowledge of how to fab transistors and simple microprocessors.
EDIT: I'm blanking on the name, but isn't there a set of textbooks that's basically "here's how to bootstrap a modern industrial civilization"? That seems tailor-made to this question, without needing to make people wander through wikipedia to stumble on little things like "levers" and "engines".
Why include religion at all, which to me did more harm than good.
Why not include books about how to cooperate and collaborate with other ppl and why it’s necessary for societies to survive.
Don't blame the tools for how people have historically used them. I do, however, agree that it makes sense to include more than just the bible, as almost every sacred text is rich in wisdom.
Take all the good stuff from those religions texts and create a new book using plain language.
> Why include religion at all, which to me did more harm than good.
Well, The Bible has the small advantage of being true.
> Why not include books about how to cooperate and collaborate with other ppl and why it’s necessary for societies to survive.
...like The Bible? I defy you to actually follow the teachings of the NT at least and not get cooperation and collaboration for free.
It’s better to come up with a new book which teaches ppl how to live in harmony and working together without instilling fear, guidelines based on science and using simple language.
You could say the human brain and the scientific process is God’s gift… use it rather than blindly following the words of some powerhungry and controlling folks from the past.
John 8:7 pretty clearly obsoletes that. So yeah, I'm still happy to follow what the Bible actually says.
Why follow a book with contradicting messages?
Why not create a new book with clear positive messages only that doesn’t confuse ppl or doesn’t encourage them to kill or oppress others.
What does it even mean its true? It's so convoluted and inprecise that most of the texts require interpretation and works only as high level metaphors. This claim is as meaningless as calling it the good book.
The Bible is probably available in most languages, so using a few hundred megabytes on that isn’t a total waste if you have the space.
We take words for granted, but so much of the shared experience of humanity is embedded in words themselves.