Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015)
by Retra on Thursday August 04, 2016 @10:47PM
(#12229760)
You're trying to make some kind of argument about what is likely to happen for a single data point defined only by the exceptional circumstances that surround it. More importantly, it doesn't matter what you think is more likely, because there's no way for you to use that information to make a meaningful decision.
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Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015)
by erdevs on Thursday August 04, 2016 @11:54PM
(#12229945)
Not a single data point. First principles and logical analysis.
Let me put it more simply:
Did hunter-gatherer societies invent more artifacts that survived until today or did agricultural societies? This is an objectively quantifiable actuality we could check.
Which societies that we know about today had developed writing surfaces that persist until today? This is something we can check.
Be reasonable. Clearly, based on everything we know today, we're talking about agricultural societies here, not hunter-gatherer societies.
Re:Who’s the First Person in History Whose Name We Know? (2015)
by Retra on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:03PM
(#12236709)
First principles and logical analysis do not tell you anything about circumstantial facts of human culture like "who was the first person to knit a sweater" or "was it a male or female name that happened to be found on the earliest artifact found by 2016."
Now, a male name might be more likely, but that tells you nothing about what it actually was. That kind of analysis is not appropriate for answering such a question. It answers some completely different question.