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by pitspotter2 1682 days ago
The hilarity illustrates an important point. We never just make a thing. A recipe or blueprint is a convenient fiction. Rather we participate in a dynamic evolving process which itself evolved through many cycles of copying, repetition and debugging. Even the first version wasn't strictly original because the idea was borrowed from elsewhere. 'Oh you work at the olive press. How would you like a job with this new-fangled printing machine?' And so on back to the initial and highly controversial creation of the Universe.
2 comments

You might not do great to start with computers, and instead, do better to start from the dawn of civilization.

https://www.howtoinventeverything.com/

What I got from this is that I could make homemade coal by myself, MAYBE. I don't know if there's any climate on Earth where I could eek out a net energy return on primitive crops. If there was no one telling me what to do, I would surely starve in early agricultural times. But hey, that's what the Pharaoh's for, amirite?

Basic bronze tools are a mind-numbing mess to mentally process.

You might like this video "I tried blacksmithing and only got slightly burned": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2HUg144liM

https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page also feels relevant

It's interesting to imagine the human experience of reality when living in such times.
Take a look at the Toaster Project if you want to see building an item from scratch carried through all the way: http://thetoasterproject.org/