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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2498 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 14, 2017

Philosophically, sure. But if you want to act on it, you have to know it, and that knowledge isn't eternal.

My bicycle has 27 speeds and tires that run at 90psi. None of the physical laws that governed its construction came into being recently. But without the knowledge of metallurgy, chemistry, manufacturing science and materials technology that have been developed in the past 100 years it'd be a velocipede. I mean, carbon fiber spokes. Beat steel in many many ways, but utterly unheard of 40 years ago. Multiply by everything. However, hydrodynamic bearings? That's steam engine shit. Internal combustion has advanced much slower than semiconductors despite the fact that the laws of the universe have been knowable (but unknown) since its birth.