Re:Are We Losing the Secrets of the Masters?
by VLM on Tuesday October 15, 2013 @10:57AM
(#6553556)
You've also got formally proved knowledge vs gut level guess.
There exists formally proved knowledge that pretty much the ideal liquid coolant for your internal combustion engine is 50:50 ethylene glycol and water. If all that formal knowledge is lost it'll make future progress difficult, but at least gut knowledge that it works would save a lot of time bootstrapping.
This is the origin during warfare of stealing the oppositions machinery and reverse engineering it. If it was faster and easier to work from first principles, the winners of wars would tend to do that instead of reverse engineering.
There exists formally proved knowledge that pretty much the ideal liquid coolant for your internal combustion engine is 50:50 ethylene glycol and water. If all that formal knowledge is lost it'll make future progress difficult, but at least gut knowledge that it works would save a lot of time bootstrapping.
This is the origin during warfare of stealing the oppositions machinery and reverse engineering it. If it was faster and easier to work from first principles, the winners of wars would tend to do that instead of reverse engineering.