this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2025
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Showerthoughts
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This is a great point! Humans can put names on things that aren't there, such as holes!
This 'naming of hole-like concepts' may sound trivial, but there have been entire cultures that didn't have 'hole-like' concepts and this stunted their ability to make certain discoveries. For example, the ancient Greeks could not have developed calculus; they did not have a concept of zero that they could use for mathematical manipulation. This shows an unfortunate reality: you can't mentally manipulate ideas that you don't have.
However, once you do have those ideas, they may seem obvious. This is a well documented human bias: the curse of knowledge. Once you understand something, it is very difficult to imagine not knowing that. For us, knowers of pupils, holes, zeros, and chasms, it may seem absurd to not have names for pupils, holes, zeros, and chasms. We take them for granted, when in reality it was not an easy road to arrive at them.
Really makes ya think what obvious things we might be missing. Maybe all you need to make FTL travel possible is to dinglepop all your schleem using a household plumbus?