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Schedule for Today
9am-10am: Reading and vocab check
10am-11am: Niall’s History of the History of the Irish Revolution part 1 of 2
11.20am-12.20pm: Group Task Check
12.20pm-1pm: More English Language Cementing
1pm-1.20pm: Work on tonight’s readings if there is time
Niall’s History of History
As we are into our final week together, I thought I’d throw some of my own research at you. I used to give lectures on this sort of stuff at St. Andrews University for free
Personally I think this sort of stuff will save human civilisation from extinction, but there is very little support out there for it
In other words, most people think I am a crackpot ...
Niall’s History of History
The proper term for the History of History is Historiography
This is a very fashionable trend in the study of History right now, starting from E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History?
However my take on it is deeply unpopular in the field of History because I am “too quantitative” and Historiography is almost entirely sociocultural analysis ...
Niall’s History of History
Before we can explain the Irish revolution, we need to understand time ...
So, what are THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTIONS ever in human history?
For convenience, I have labelled time in the format “tEn” = “t x 10n” where n is the number of zeros, so4.3e6 = 4.3 x 106 = 4,300,000 years
Milestone Years before 2008 Creative Step
1 1.37E+10 Universe Begins
2 8.30E+09 Milky Way Forms
3 4.50E+09 Solar System Forms
4 4.00E+09 Life Begins
5 3.50E+09 Photosynthesis Invented
6 2.25E+09 Eukaryotes & Oxygen
7 1.20E+09 Sexual Reproduction
8 8.00E+08 Predation
9 5.40E+08 Cambrian Explosion
10 3.63E+08 Modern Biodiversity Reached
Table 1: Major Creative Steps (Milestones) before 2008
11 2.51E+08 Dinosaurs & Mammals
12 1.30E+08 Flowers
13 6.55E+07 Dinosaurs End, Birds Begin
14 3.50E+07 C4 photosynthesis
15 1.50E+07 Hominidae
16 6.30E+06 Pan/Homo split
17 3.90E+06 Australopithecus
18 1.75E+06 Humans Begin
1.40E+06 Knife
19 7.90E+05 Fire for cooking
20 4.00E+05 Pigments & Spears
21 2.00E+05 Burial & Composite Tools
22 1.10E+05 Lithic Blades
23 5.50E+04 Ships & Bow/Arrow
24 4.30E+04 Mining
25 2.60E+04 Ceramics
26 1.70E+04 Rope
27 8000 Irrigation
28 5000 Writing
29 2000 Greek Philosophy/Christianity
30 1188 Islam
31 510 Printing Press/Renaissance
32 296 Steam Engine/Libertae
33 135 Electricity/Mechanisation
34 80 Quantum/Holism
35 40 Computerisation/Systems
History of our World in Milestones
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Weird huh?
One might think from this graph that a point is coming when technological advances will become so rapid that we reach a “technological singularity” (e.g. Ray Kurzweil)
Ray Kurzweil and those like him is full of shit
This has nothing to do with technology ...
Fields of perception
If you try making ANY list of the most important advances in something long lived and which is still advancing today ...
For example, try writing down the most important single tracks in rock music
Or creative advances in the use of language or mathematics
Fields of perception
It turns out that you will ALWAYS get thirty-five or thirty-six items
And these items will ALWAYS have a smooth line when plotted logarithmically over time
So what is going on?
What happens if you regress that timeline down to zero?
History of our World in Milestones
Un
ive
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Syst
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Fields of Perception
It turns out that there are ALWAYS forty or forty one steps in that progression, it’s just that the most recent five are unknowable to us (too recent to discern)
So how come any of this matters?
Fields of Perception
What’s the ratio between the largest and smallest observations? Distance: Size of the universe = 4.4e26, size of
an electron is 2.8e-15. Ratio: 1.57e41 Time: Age of the universe 4.33e17, lifetime of a
top quark 1e-24. Ratio: 4.33e41 Forces: Ratio of electrical to gravitational forces
between a proton and an electron: 4.4e40
What’s so special about powers of forty then?
Fields of Perception
It turns out that WE – as in, us humans – can only perceive about forty levels of significance
It’s a cognitive processing artefact, and no technology can EVER remove this problem
So why is this important?
Marketing and Sales
You all know from walking into any shop that consumer choice is king
Yet so much choice is so overwhelming (more than forty) we do things like REDUCE the choice down to price or branding
The key to success in life is REDUCING choice down to less than forty options
Choice
What makes some of us succeed and some fail is how we do that choice reduction
For example, in the SNOs Group 3 likes to reduce uncertainty whereas Group 4 likes to reduce costs
Neither is right and neither is wrong. Both are good choices
The Irish Revolution
Which brings us to the Irish revolution ...
Why did the 1919-1922 revolution succeed when all previous revolutions failed?
1569-1583: Fitzgeralds revolution 1594-1603: O Neill revolution 1641 1803 1867 1916 Easter Rising
The Irish Revolution
If you start to think in terms of powers of forty then the 1919-1922 revolution starts to look different to previous revolutions
It all has to do with information ...
Because REDUCING CHOICE is really all about reducing INFORMATION
Which is why, in my opinion, the 1919-1922 revolution was the first information war in human history
But more on that tomorrow!