Does Terra of IY 1106 really know anything about 1969AD?

[Ishmael]

Not so. The controversy was over which world was the original homeworld and how the other human races had wound up on the other worlds.

not for some 290,000 years prior to the Vilani coming across evidence of another human race did they even know other human races existed. Prior to spaceflight and encountering another human races, all archeological evidence would have proven that they did not exist earlier at the time of the ancients' presence. All evidence from biological sciences would have proven that they were not native to their own world. Their own legends and myths describe god-rulers from that time. 290,000 years is a long time for religions, origin myths and customs, and cultural beliefs surrounding the origin of their race to form. Hence it would be natural for them to view some form of creationism or brought-by-ancient-astronaut ideas as the probable origin of their race, not evolution as the evidence available to them would have shown that they did not evolve on their homeworld.
Even when they observed that evolution did apply to the lifeforms native to the world, it unquestionably did not apply to them in the same fashion.
The complete idea that they were only one of several groups spread from a common human stock could not have been realized until the Vilani had encountered several separate human races and completed some research showing that the other races also were not native to their own homeworlds. But that was only very recent when compared to the age of the Vilani race.

Well, in that case I will paraphrase a comment from my previous post: You are far too ready to jump from "might" to "unquestionably did".

some examples of statements I've made
"....On the other hand, Darwin's work might even be trivialized as a quaint theory ...."
"....for them, there might exist some fairly strong evidence that
"....So perhaps Darwin isn't deleted ( Streisand Effect ), but simply not mentioned at all....."
"....As a result, non-solomani historians may put more credence...."
Your statement here is demonstrably false.

That's another way of stating what I said, yes.

The full contents of my statement, and not just a single line taken out of context;

Psychohistory is a model and forecasting tool only. The 'experiment' "was conducted as a part of the Psionics Suppressions.". It was obviously used to forecast the outcomes of different scenarios involving psychological manipulations*. PsyOps involved the public revelation of scandals ( possibly fabricated ), propaganda, and "various institute charters were cancelled, leading figures jailed or otherwise repressed, and restrictive laws passed limiting or prohibiting the practice of psionics".
"....the suppressions succeeded far better than even the Imperium had envisioned..."
The psychohistory experiment was a failure in that it did not provide an accurate prediction for the outcome for the suppressions causing the suppressions to go further than intended.

parts within the quotation marks in my statements were taken directly from traveller.wikia.com library data concerning both 'psychohistory' and 'psionic suppressions' and is not another way of restating what you had said.

I said reputable encyclopedias. You know, with the absence of censorship and the peer review and the fact checking?

Real world experience suggests that there is no place that exists "...with the absence of censorship and the peer review and the fact checking..."
And disreputable texts are also part of the historic record.

Once again I will point out that future historians are unlikely to be any stupider than the present-day crop.

And future humans will be just as mistake prone. Future politicians, propagandists, ad-men, editors, and the patrons who support archivists and historians will be just as biased and slippery and willing to distort facts as they are in today's real world.

Of course I made them up. They express my estimate of the balance of historians who will be passionate enough about 3000 year old events to be totally biased vis-a-vis historians who will be dispassionate enough about 3000 year old events to be reasonably objective.

Deliberately manufactured data, stated as if fact?
First the numbers stated refer to "...available sources..." ( which I take as meaning, the historical records ) and yet in your last post, they refer to "...historians..." ( which are, strictly speaking, not sources of historical information, but only interpreters of it ).
As the overall topic is the veracity of historical records, I find this to be lol-worthy.
Irony, FTW!

And you've not made it clear which percentage you feel are biased versus which percentage you feel are objective. I'd say that the greatest number of either sources, or historians are biased. I've already posted many posts back a number of factors that might cause such bias.
Here is yet another link to some information concerning bias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

It's implicit in your claim that it's conceivable that history could be falsified to the extent that you're suggesting is inevitable. If a particular result can only come about in one way, then espousing that result implies espousing that way.

Just as I never said "eveybody will" , I never implied that such is inevitable. I merely question your position that all historical records, after 3500 years of political turmoil, war, collapse and rebuilding, will be accurate and "long-held widespread knowledge" which is what you espouse ( by your own logic here ) to be inevitable.
Nor did I ever say a particular result can only come about in one way. In fact I've provided a number of reasons/ways that allow for historical record might be inaccurate or even unavailable, often with real world references. You are the one who is bantering words like "everyone will", "unquestionably did", and "is inevitable". I suppose you find dong that sort of thing to be easier than actually supporting your own arguments with real world data.

Oh, I get it. By cherry-picking one line out of context, you're trying to demonstrate how a biased scholar can arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposite to that of the text he's referencing. Very clever. But not quite clever enough. You see, if the entire passage is available too, other scholars can easily spot the mistake and draw their own conclusions.

wrong
I drew out the line that was directly related to my line of reasoning ( lists of who issued what edicts, etc. were irrelevant in my argument ) AND provided the link to the source of my line choice so that anyone could see the entire text of that particular article.
But, as you have said, "...other scholars can easily spot the mistake and draw their own conclusions."
Therefore, here are links to all 4 pages of library data from traveller.wikia.com where I drew my information about both the psionic suppressions and psychohistory.
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psychohistory
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psychohistory/secret
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psionics_Suppressions
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psionics_Suppressions/secret

Your mistake is that you are either incapable, or unwilling to separate the suppressions, which would have happened regardless, with pyschohistory. You then treated them as interchangeable, and did interchange them freely depending on what was most convenient for support your own position while attacking mine. As a result, you actually posted that the Psionic Suppressions "They didn't succeed." which is a direct contradiction to canon publications. That might be fine for YTU, but we're discussing veracity of historical record within the OTU.

I doubt that I'll continue.
Your penchant for stating personal opinion as fact, fabricating data as fact, putting words in my mouth and tossing in a couple of unprovoked examples of snark has made this into an unpleasant chore and not a hobby.
I once commented that I felt the position you were taking in this was 'unreasonable and boring'. You acted as if I said you were unreasonable and boring. As it turns out, you were right about that after all.

"The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. "
Mark Twain

 

[rancke]

To others who have been following this discussion.

When a discussion deteriorates to the point where your opponent accuses you of intellectual dishonesty, conventional wisdom is to just walk away.

There are several reasons why I don't want to do that, though. First, and least creditable, I don't like to walk away from a discussion. There's an old Danish proverb to the effect that "he who is silent acquiesces", and I always feel reluctant to give the impression that I agree with something I don't. Secondly, I don't like the idea of letting such an attack be the last post someone who is browsing the thread reads, maybe giving people who don't bother to go through the whole discussion the impression that what it says is true. Third, I can't help thinking that there must be some terrible misapprehension at work somewhere. The alternative is to believe that my opponent is himself being dishonest and using this attack to avoid having to admit that he was wrong, and I really don't want to believe that about a fellow Traveller fan.

And fourth, there's the possibility that it is actually I who is in the wrong. Not, I assure you, deliberately, but if I'm the one who's making a mistake, I'd really, really want to get it into the open and clear the air.

So I'm going to ask for third party imput. Am I wrong to interpret the text

"Its not about deleting or changing available information.....its about social engineering to change the population's beliefs concerning which information is true and which is false. The Psionic Suppressions, and the hiding of the true nature of those suppressions, are proof the the Imperium is quite capable of that."​

to mean

"The Psionic Suppressions, and the hiding of the true nature of those suppressions, are proof the the Imperium is quite capable of social engineering to change the population's beliefs concerning which information is true and which is false."?​

And am I wrong to insist that despite including the line "....but the suppressions succeeded far better than even the Imperium had envisioned....", the entirety of the four articles about the Psionic Suppressions and Psychohistory referenced[*] shows, clearly and with no room for doubt, that the experiment was not a success and that the Imperium is not capable of social engineering to change the population's beliefs concerning which information is true and which is false? And also that, capable or not, the Imperium has not, in fact, ever done any such thing on a large scale, except that once?

[*] http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psychohistory
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psychohistory/secret
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psionics_Suppressions
http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Psionics_Suppressions/secret
​

There were a crop of lesser arguments in the last post. Ordinarily I would be happy to refute them, but as the situation is at the moment, I don't see much point. I will point out, though, that my silence is not acquiescence. However, if there is any point where you feel that I'm not only wrong in the ordinary way of our discussions but egregiously and inexplicably wrong, please do point it out to me.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Firstly, let me state that my point here (like my previous ones, though I wasn't explicit before) is not necessarily about the future described in the OTU, but about the prospects for all humanity's possible futures. Even the OTU future may lie at the end of a twisted and broken path.

Well, I am talking about the OTU, and I make no bones about it.

Your statements quoted here seem to assume that humanity's future will inevitably follow the path of free speech and free thought to a glorious intellectual future when the whole of humanity's history will be an open book for all to read.

Not inevitably, no. What I do think is that the plethora of documents extant today means that it will take some pretty drastic events to destroy or falsify to the point that future historians won't have access to them, and that there is no canonical evidence of any such events and no plausible scenario to introduce such events in the admittedly scanty historical timeline. No collapse of civilization prior to meeting extraterristrials. Widespread dissemination of copies of those records. No plausible reason why anyone in the Classic Era would want to falsify the entire history of the 20th Century. And as I've already said several times, I'm sure there will be a number of fallacious beliefs of the "Princes in the Tower" kind. But there's no good reason to suppose that they would be significant enough to distort the Classic Era of 20th Century Earth to the point where it could not be described as "substantially correct and stable".

How many nations, even today, have societies whose education is free of dogma? Is Western Freedom (a questionable concept in itself) the one true path, or will the thought police win out in the end?

The Terran Confederation came out of the United Nations. The Rule of Man came out of the Terran Confederation. The Sylean Federation came out of the Rule of Man and had a senate and a constitution. The Imperium has an Imperial Code of Military Justice that resembles the Unified Code of Military Justice more than a little. Imperial mores pay lip service to Western ideals (the Imperium can afford that, since "everybody knows" that democracy can't work across interstellar distances). Yes, I'm sure the thought police did not win out in the end in the OTU.

Ishmael can answer for himself (if he so chooses), but I suspect that he, like me and several others, is not suggesting that history loss/tampering is inevitable, just that it's quite likely - and more likely as the intervening time increases. It's a natural law called entropy.

Perhaps, but the impression I got was that he was saying that it had to have happened in the OTU because it was inevitable.

As I see it, there's only one person claiming that things are impossible or inevitable here, only one person espousing a result that can only come about in one way, and that's your narrow and uninterruptable golden path to an 'inevitably enlightened' future with its 'impossible to eradicate' history.
Time will tell.

I'm not claiming that it's inevitable. I'm claiming that it didn't happen in the OTU.

I'm also, its true, claiming that it is very far from being inevitable. But mainly I'm claiming that it didn't happen in the OTU.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

even being generous, most primary documentation will have physically decayed after 2000 years, right smack in the middle of the long night.

let's not forget Terra gets trashed in the solomani rim war and then suffers a hundred years of military occupation.

 

[rancke]

even being generous, most primary documentation will have physically decayed after 2000 years...

A lot of it, yes, but even two surviving copies of a book would usually be enough -- one if its provenance is good ("This is a copy of Encyclopedia Brittanica kept preserved by the British Museum"). And there are I don't know how many millions of copies of the Encyclopedia Brittanica (I tried once more to google the print numbers, but failed again). And there are thousands and thousands of different encyclopedias and history books. Practically every country has several encyclopedias (Denmark has at least two current ones and several older ones that I don't know if they've been updated lately). And it has a state-sponsored library that is charged with preserving copies of every book published in Denmark. And there are many hundreds public library branches in Denmark, every one of which has several major encyclopedias and a broad selection of history books and biographies.

Sure, many of these collections are bound to be destroyed in one way or another, by loss of funding or neglect. But there are so many of them. And all you neded is to preserve a couple. And that's before we start looking at electronic versions.

...let's not forget Terra gets trashed in the solomani rim war and then suffers a hundred years of military occupation.

Yes, that could have done a lot of damage. But the description of Terra in 1100 (TD#13, IIRC) shows that it didn't. And the military occupation wasn't nearly as brutal as it could have been either. One thing the Imperium probably didn't do a lot of was looting archives.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

If the physical decay is due to something like the paper actually turning to dust, or disks oxidizing. The amount of copies would be irrelevant, as they would all decay at the same time. Then one looks at diffent worlds copies, copies of copies by 1106 and different translations, there could be hundreds of versions.

 

[rancke]

If the physical decay is due to something like the paper actually turning to dust, or disks oxidizing. The amount of copies would be irrelevant, as they would all decay at the same time. Then one looks at diffent worlds copies, copies of copies by 1106 and different translations, there could be hundreds of versions.

What makes you think that all copies of all books will decay to the point of illegibility at the same time and what makes you think that this time would be 2000 years from now? We have old texts today that have survived 2000 years and more of casual use or being buried in the earth. What makes you think that with modern science, some of it dedicated specifically to preservation of books and archival material, books can't be preserved for far longer than that?

Disks oxidize? I thought deterioration was due to randomization by background radiation. Otherwise, same question. Material that is stored in an inert atmosphere can't oxidize. No oxygen.

And that's without taking into account knowledge preservation projects that use storage material that is specifically chosen to take deterioration problems into account. I've mentioned them before, and I can't understand how people can keep ignoring them. One project is/was planning to engrave the information on glass discs and put it in orbit around Earth. That one admittedly hasn't come to pass yet and may never come to pass[*]. But the technique has already been tested and I have no doubt will be used in some other project if not in this.

[*] Though I'm working on an amber zone or perhaps a full adventure where the mcguffin is the KEO globe, filched by an Imperial Admiral during the Invasion of Terra and subsequently stolen from him. ​

Hans

 

[Dragoner]

What makes you think that all copies of all books will decay to the point of illegibility at the same time and what makes you think that this time would be 2000 years from now? We have old texts today that have survived 2000 years and more of casual use or being buried in the earth. What makes you think that with modern science, some of it dedicated specifically to preservation of books and archival material, books can't be preserved for far longer than that?

Disks oxidize? I thought deterioration was due to randomization by background radiation. Otherwise, same question. Material that is stored in an inert atmosphere can't oxidize. No oxygen.

And that's without taking into account knowledge preservation projects that use storage material that is specifically chosen to take deterioration problems into account. I've mentioned them before, and I can't understand how people can keep ignoring them. One project is/was planning to engrave the information on glass discs and put it in orbit around Earth. That one admittedly hasn't come to pass yet and may never come to pass[*]. But the technique has already been tested and I have no doubt will be used in some other project if not in this.

[*] Though I'm working on an amber zone or perhaps a full adventure where the mcguffin is the KEO globe, filched by an Imperial Admiral during the Invasion of Terra and subsequently stolen from him. ​

Hans

Can you provide concrete evidence that there wouldn't be decay? Personally I don't know of any books that have survived 2000 years, even the dead sea scrolls, an amazing and lucky find are quite deteriorated, not to mention questionable as there is not anything to base them off of.

All I'm saying is that it is hubris to think anything would survive 3600 years, that is an immense amount of time, immense. Bits and pieces yes, the whole story intact? Who knows. This uncertainty, contradictory histories, all should remain, because it is realistic. Ultimately it is for the GM to decide and should in no way be defined as a solid rule.

 

[rancke]

Can you provide concrete evidence that there wouldn't be decay?

OK, now I'm getting annoyed. You're STILL ignoring the factual existence of knowledge preservation projects being carried on today. I can say for certain that knowledge preservation projects of various kinds will be specifically aimed at circumventing deterioration. Can you provide concrete evidence that none of the media used by these projects (such as the aforementioned glass discs or the nickel discs of the Rossetta Project) won't be able to survive for 3000 years? The glass discs are supposed to be able to survive 50,000 years.

As for the mundane books, of course there would be decay. But there would also be preservation and conservation. Can you provide concrete evidence that modern and future preservation and restoration techniques won't be able to preserve late 20th Century books?

Personally I don't know of any books that have survived 2000 years, even the dead sea scrolls, an amazing and lucky find are quite deteriorated, not to mention questionable as there is not anything to base them off of.

I'm assuming you're talking about physical papyrus or paper or parchment remains, not books in the abstract. First archeological evidence of papyrus dates back to 2400 BC. First archeological evidence of paper dates back to 200 BC. Parchment was perfected a couple of centuries BC, but I haven't found a date for the earliest preserved specimen.

Books that are that old and older you certainly have read or at least heard about. The written version of the Illiad dates to around the eighth century BC. None of those early copies survive (as far as I know), but they were copied and those copies were similar enough to be the basis of the stable version we have today.

All I'm saying is that it is hubris to think anything would survive 3600 years, that is an immense amount of time, immense. Bits and pieces yes, the whole story intact? Who knows. This uncertainty, contradictory histories, all should remain, because it is realistic.

I don't think it is realistic at all. I have mostly refrained from arguing about copies and facsimilies, because I think that there's a very good chance of some 20th Century copies surviving for 3000 years -- and not just the ones deliberately written on exceptionally durable material. But just as most[*] copies of Caesar's Gallic Wars are identical except for transcription errors, most copies of Encyclopedia Brittanica, 15th Edition will be identical or nearly so, no matter how many iterations they've been through. The copies that Vilani spies make of those they steal will not have been tampered with; the copies of the facsimilies that Vilani tourists buy won't have been tampered with. The copies that are included in colony databases won't have been tampered with. The copies sent along with long range colony expeditions won't have been tampered with. The copies made down the centuries by the British Museum and the Library of Congress and the Kongelige Bibliotek and hundreds of other major libraries and museums won't have been tampered with.

[*] 'Most' is weaseling. I don't know, but I would be vastly surprised if there actually exists two versions of Gallic Wars that differ in anything but superficial details (I would also assume that there are several version that do differ -- in superficial details).​

Hans

 

[JustinInOz]

Can you provide concrete evidence that there wouldn't be decay? Personally I don't know of any books that have survived 2000 years, even the dead sea scrolls, . . . ,not to mention questionable as there is not anything to base them off of.

All I'm saying is that it is hubris to think anything would survive 3600 years, that is an immense amount of time, immense. Bits and pieces yes, the whole story intact? Who knows.

I do not think that Hans is arguing for the physical continuance of the medium that carried the message. I think that Hans is arguing that the information contained in the original medium will survive intact. That is the important bit. I do not think that it matters wether or not the message is carried on old paper books, engraved glass disks in orbit, vellum scrolls frozen in a glacier or images depicted on pottery vessels. Decay of the medium will certainly occur. Decay of the message will occur at an infintessimally slower pace.

I have an interest in Viking sagas. Most were composed before 1200 or so. In many cases the oldest manuscript we have is from 1600 - 1700. There may be different versions of the saga. The differences are largely textual in word choice or the odd additional passage or poem inserted. These changes do not affect the central thrust of the piece. What matters is that the information has made it to us.

There was a book called the Popol Vuh that was transcribed from the Kiche Maya in the 1800s. There are many scenes from this story found on funerary vases from 1500 years prior. I consider these ceramics as passing on information when viewed along side the text which was a transcription of oral history. They confirm the antiquity and validity of the transcribed tale.

In the case of the Dead Sea scrolls, a good example is the Book of Enoch. It is considered to be apochrypha by the Rabbis and the Western Christian churches. It can be compared to the same book as held in the Ethiopian Church. These differing versions found in the Qumran caves can be compared to each other. They can be compared to the different version of the Torah and the Bible that we currently have.

I think the phrase that Hans has been using is "substantially correct and stable". You are right to say it is hubritic to expect physical copies of significant amounts of historic corpuses to survive millenias. It is, on the otherhand, humble and commonplace for the information held in these perished media to live on in more recent copies or other information sources.

There have been moments in history where whole literatures have been destroyed. The destruction of books by Qin Shi Huang in 221 BC was notable. I do not see this as proving that similar events were replicated in the OTU. The main stumbling blocks for this arethe level of literacy and degree of state control. In 221 BC literacy was limited to a very small slice of the population. These few readers and writers were easy for the state to find and pull out by the roots. The opposite has been true in the modern age. I posit that the same will be true in the future. Attempts by the early Chrisitian church and the Moslem conquerors to erase previous schools of throught - mainly Greco-Roman - have failed by enough of the manuscripts escaping their fires to reach us today.

I agree whole heartedly with Hans that in future it will be even more difficult to blot out history when information is spread across the stars. I believe that the word impossible has been used. I do not think that this is hubris speaking, it is reason. Many scenarios have been posited to explain how there could be a lacuna in historic knowledge in the OTU. Occam's Razor cuts them down.

 

[Dragoner]

All the evidence is of bits and pieces and if one looks at the Histories by Herotodus, what can be there can be terribly wrong, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars is a prime example of that. So are the Vikings, were they differentiated from any other Germanic tribe or are they merely 19th century romantism about the "noble savage" which reached it's philosophical dead end in 1945 for the most part. People believe in myths, people want to believe in myths, if there are people in the future, they will be the same and to Terra 3600 years in the past will be mythical.

 

[rancke]

All the evidence is of bits and pieces and if one looks at the Histories by Herotodus, what can be there can be terribly wrong, Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars is a prime example of that.

I didn't present the Gallic Wars as an example of truthful history but as an example of a book that has survived 2000 years substantially unchanged. (Though how do you know that it's wrong if you don't know what's right?)

What I'm presenting as substantially accurate is the existing body of 20th Century enclclopedia and contemporary history books as a reasonably accurate picture of the history of the 20th Century. Even the biased ones, because there are also some that are biased the other way and some that are unbiased on some subjects and some that are unbiased on other subjects. Once the passions have faded a bit, historians of the near future will be able to collate a substantially accurate history of the 20th Century. And I believe that that picture will remain fairly stable from now on, at least in the OTU.

So are the Vikings, were they differentiated from any other Germanic tribe or are they merely 19th century romantism about the "noble savage" which reached it's philosophical dead end in 1945 for the most part.

We know quite a lot of facts about the Vikings and their life and deeds, and there's really not a great deal of difficulty in finding books that present our current knowledge in a straightforward manner.

People believe in myths, people want to believe in myths, if there are people in the future, they will be the same and to Terra 3600 years in the past will be mythical.

Perhaps. But it will be a lot less mythical to them than the Roman Republic is to us, because there will be so much more information available. Sure, there will be plenty of "Diana, Warrior Princess" like holoseries, but there will also be serious, scholarly history books and peer-reviewed library data entries.

I note that you're STILL refusing to address knowledge preservation projects as a source of, you know, preserved knowledge.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

Because your glass disk theory destroys your "volume of material" theory, how can it be both? If it is reduced to glass disks, then one idiot with a hammer can do alot of damage to History. The preservation efforts, unless you are talking something like Asimov's Foundation, are in fact unknown if they will be effective. Such preservation efforts are brand new history-wise only arising in the 20th century, which looking at the amount of myths surrounding recent history, the outlook is not so good.

Yes we know alot now about Vikings, through painstaking reasearch and archeology so that far from being hairy horned helmeted pagan beserkers, Viking kings like Cnut the Great were really just medieval Christian kings, sans horns. I doubt the average person knows that though.

 

[rancke]

Because your glass disk theory destroys your "volume of material" theory, how can it be both? If it is reduced to glass disks, then one idiot with a hammer can do alot of damage to History.

Far from it. It supplements it. How can it not be both? All of these various sources of information exist simultaneously. There are millions of books, some of which may survive physically and many of which will be copied again and again, and there are ALSO projects -- plural -- working to preserve knowledge as the primary goal. And it's not just one glass disk left around where an idiot with a hammer is apt to have access to it. It's a number of different storage media stored in a number of different locations designed to safeguard them.

The preservation efforts, unless you are talking something like Asimov's Foundation, are in fact unknown if they will be effective. Such preservation efforts are brand new history-wise only arising in the 20th century, which looking at the amount of myths surrounding recent history, the outlook is not so good.

By the same token you can't say that they won't succeed. Which, seeing as they're designed to overcome forseeable problems and there is no hint in canon of any unforseen problems, the outlook is excellent.

Yes we know alot now about Vikings, through painstaking reasearch and archeology so that far from being hairy horned helmeted pagan beserkers, Viking kings like Cnut the Great were really just medieval Christian kings, sans horns. I doubt the average person knows that though.

Maybe not. He will have no problem finding out if he so desires, though.


Hans

 

[aramis]

The amount of copies would be irrelevant, as they would all decay at the same time.

That's the biggest falsehood, intentional or not, I've seen advanced in this thread.

The decay rate of paper varies incredibly widely based upon a myriad of factors, not the least of which is the stored humidity. Oxygen content as well makes a huge impact, as does exposure to light (because UV causes chemical changes in ink allowing oxidization to chemically break pigments, and often resulting in mild acids which themselves chemically damage the fibers of the paper.)

The decay of paper is not generally caused by molecular decay; it's caused by acid exposure and microbial action, as well as mechanical action. (The half-life of the component atomic mix is for isotope change, not atomic identity change; the carbon-14, for example, remains carbon, but loses a neutron every so often until it's at the stable C-12....) (Molecular decay is a very specific function of unstable molecules which break apart sans external agents...it is fairly rare in paper.) And molecular and atomic decay are both very stable clocks, but since they are in fact trivial factors in book decay...

In point of fact, some chinese paper books are over 2000 years old and still pliable; I've 30 year old books turned brittle and falling apart from a mix of acid degradation and humidity change.

 

[Dragoner]

That's the biggest falsehood, intentional or not, I've seen advanced in this thread.

Really, look at the time span, you then go ahead in the rest of you post to prove what I am saying. The biggest falsehood is that there is any such thing as clear and stable history or whatever, it doesn't exist now, so to say it would exist in the future is wishful thinking. History isn't a science, it doesn't have testable hypotheses, no empiricism as real science.

"History is the lie commonly agreed upon."

That is the truth that upsets people most.

The truth is just as likely to die an early death in some mass market paperback put out by a university press while the huge and ugly lies will be scribed into glass disks and printed into huge glossy multi-volume sets.

 

[Dragoner]

By the same token you can't say that they won't succeed. Which, seeing as they're designed to overcome forseeable problems and there is no hint in canon of any unforseen problems, the outlook is excellent.

Hans

considering it was no problem for the destroyers of books and knowledge to do what they did, it most likely won't even be noticed. nobody knew about it to begin with.

 

[Icosahedron]

Far from it. It supplements it. How can it not be both? All of these various sources of information exist simultaneously. There are millions of books, some of which may survive physically and many of which will be copied again and again, and there are ALSO projects -- plural -- working to preserve knowledge as the primary goal. And it's not just one glass disk left around where an idiot with a hammer is apt to have access to it. It's a number of different storage media stored in a number of different locations designed to safeguard them.
Hans

I understood Dragoner's point as saying, the people who build time capsules obviously believe that the 'information everywhere' ideology will fail, and the only way to safeguard knowledge is to bury it - otherwise why would they bother? If they believe there is too much knowledge out there ever to die out, what is the point of creating a time capsule?

The problem with time capsules though, is that it's all to easy to lose them. As I pointed out earlier, there is supposed to be one in my city somewhere, but I don't know where it is, and I don't know anyone else who knows where it is. The location is probably stored on a magnetic disc somewhere - until the EMP pulse. When the city is reduced to rubble and sand blows over its remains, who's going to remember that 4500 years ago there used to be a time capsule somewhere hereabouts - a few cubic metres of box somewhere deep under a 250 square mile archaeological site that's probably been built over by three successive civilizations.

The best way to create a time capsule would be to bury it with a marker so stupendously huge that the marker would survive anything humanity could throw at it, for millennia, but even then, people would forget the purpose of the structure in time, figuring it was some religious ritual, and even if somebody suggested there might be a time capsule there, nobody with a reputation to protect would believe them...

Not saying I believe in that 'ancient marker' stuff, just making the point that even the most foolproof of time capsules are too easily lost to history to be a reliable means of preserving that history. In the long term they would only be discovered by an incredibly fortunate accident.

Of course, this doesn't apply to the OTU future, wherein history 'happens' to have been preserved.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

Simple answer yes... there are enough time capsules buried at that time.

 

[rancke]

I understood Dragoner's point as saying, the people who build time capsules obviously believe that the 'information everywhere' ideology will fail, and the only way to safeguard knowledge is to bury it - otherwise why would they bother? If they believe there is too much knowledge out there ever to die out, what is the point of creating a time capsule?

The people who build time capsules believe that civilization MAY be destroyed. And so it may. That's why the KEO project plans to put its time capsule on a sattelite in an orbit designed to bring it back to Earth in 50,000 years, out of the reach of most potential man-made disasters. In the OTU, however, no world-wide disasters occurred.

But my main point in bringing up time capsules is that the people who build them evidently believes that the artifacts stored within them will last for 5000 years and more. Personally, I think it quite likely that a lot of these time capsules will be interfered with by future artifact collectors (At which point some of these records become valuable and treasured items in various artifact collections). Though some capsules, like the Crypt of Civilization and the Westinghouse Time Capsules may well be prominent enough to remain undisturbed.

Of course, that would mean that their content wouldn't be available to 57th Century Terra. But I believe that the same materials used in time capsules will be (has already been?) used by major libraries to transcribe documents on to. I likewise expect people to keep on creating time capsules and secure data repositories and for the International Time Capsule Society to keep track of them as best they can.

The problem with time capsules though, is that it's all to easy to lose them. As I pointed out earlier, there is supposed to be one in my city somewhere, but I don't know where it is, and I don't know anyone else who knows where it is. The location is probably stored on a magnetic disc somewhere - until the EMP pulse. When the city is reduced to rubble and sand blows over its remains, who's going to remember that 4500 years ago there used to be a time capsule somewhere hereabouts - a few cubic metres of box somewhere deep under a 250 square mile archaeological site that's probably been built over by three successive civilizations.

That is a problem that the builders of at least some time capsules have taken into account.

According to Wikipedia, Paul Hudson of Oglethorpe University estimates that more than 80 percent of all time capsules are lost and will not be opened on their intended date. But the ITCS estimates there are between 10,000 to 15,000 time capsules worldwide. If 90% of those are lost, that still leaves a healthy 1,000 - 1,500. And that's not counting any capsules created in the 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, etc. Century.

The best way to create a time capsule would be to bury it with a marker so stupendously huge that the marker would survive anything humanity could throw at it, for millennia, but even then, people would forget the purpose of the structure in time, figuring it was some religious ritual, and even if somebody suggested there might be a time capsule there, nobody with a reputation to protect would believe them...

"The contents of Time Capsule I were recorded in a Book of Record of the Time Capsule of cupaloy deemed capable of resisting the effects of time for five thousand years, preserving an account of universal achievements, embedded in the grounds of the New York World's Fair 1939.

The purpose of the Book of Record is to preserve knowledge of the existence of the time capsule for 5000 years, and to provide assistance to the people of the year 6939 in locating and recovering it. Someone perhaps might find a copy of the over 3000 copies of the Book of Record distributed to museums, monasteries, and libraries worldwide." [Wikipedia]


"The 1938 time capsule of cupaloy was lowered at high noon on September 23, 1938, the precise moment of the Autumnal Equinox. Its latitude and longitude coordinates of the burying place as determined by the U.S. National Geodetic Survey was recorded in the Book of Record of the Time Capsule of cupaloy to Coordinates: 40°44′34.089″N 73°50′43.842″W / 40.7428025°N 73.84551167°W / 40.7428025; -73.84551167within an inch (2.5 cm).[13] The time capsule will likely move vertically or horizontally for geological reasons, [13] so an alternate electromagnetic field method is provided for locating. It involves constructing a loop of wire 10 feet in diameter and putting an alternating current of between 1,000 and 5,000 hertz through it with a power of at least 200 watts. Then the detection of a "distortion field" with the use of a secondary loop of wire about a foot in diameter will indicate the exact location of the two metal alloy time capsules, assuming no other large metal objects are in the vicinity. [14]

A 7-ton "permanent sentinel" granite monument [3] made by the Rock of Ages Corporation marks the position where the two time capsules are buried." [ibid.]
​

Not saying I believe in that 'ancient marker' stuff, just making the point that even the most foolproof of time capsules are too easily lost to history to be a reliable means of preserving that history. In the long term they would only be discovered by an incredibly fortunate accident.

If you have a a few devastating collapses of civilization with the razing of buildings and rebuilding on top, then, yes, time capsules are as unlikely to be found again as 5000 year old Egyptian tombs.

However, I believe that places like the vaults of the British Museum will remain unlost and intact for the next 3600 years -- in the OTU.

Of course, this doesn't apply to the OTU future, wherein history 'happens' to have been preserved.

Indeed.


Hans