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Comment by timdiggerm

3 years ago

From the intro:

> It is crazy if you think about it. People have been using this process despite not knowing what was actually going on for thousands of years!

Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever

6 comments

timdiggerm

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mayormcmatt  3 years ago

Just yesterday I started watching the video series promoting Bill Hammack's book "The Things We Make" in which he discusses how many incredible ancient structures were built using rules of thumb rather than an actual understanding of the science /math underpinning their strength. Truly fascinating.

https://youtu.be/_ivqWN4L3zU

lemming  3 years ago

Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever

Or a lot of modern medicine right now. Lots of useful drugs are discovered totally by accident: "Oh look, my patient took this for foot sores and it turns out it helps his hair loss", and then the drug gets used forever more, despite having really no idea at all why it should work. We don't even really know how paracetamol works.

danjoredd  3 years ago

Its pretty crazy. I wonder how many things like that we do now...using a process without really understanding what is happening. Computers, cars, and technology are easy guesses but I am willing to bet there is a lot of "non-tech" stuff that we do like that. Doing something with a proven process, but never really understanding why that process works.