Suspension of Disbelief

[Eosin the Red]

A few problems here:

Hey now, these are my peeves don't go trying to spoil them for me

Good call on ME - All I could remember was the first age (which can't really be timed at all but is arguibly a vast span of time).

As to question C:

Outdoor plumbing poses a large number of very serious problems that most right thinking folks seek to avoid.

1. Monsters lurking at the cess pool (or critters in the real world).

2. Injury when the elderly attempt to use the facilities. Subjectively (but I bet there is a study somewhere), a disproportionately large number of elderly are injured even with all the modern amenities while attempting to reach the facilities. I can only imagine how bad it would be if they tried to cross icy terrain. Sure, they could place the offal into a container and keep it overnight but after about 10,000 years someone might clue in that sometimes, if the keep the waste in the house others get sick.

3. Darned inconvient. It sucks walking out into the cold to empty the bladder. It sucked in the 1800s, 500s, and I am sure it still sucked 45,000 years ago.


You could say that I am making a number of assumptions, but in return I could argue that you want to ignore the conditional premise of ---> a society that can carry information forward in some fashion that is at least semi-permenent for the duration of their development. I am sure that you can point out exceptions galore to the basic idea or societies that only develop marginally within a given time frame but that ain't really the point. The point is the credelousness of someone like Galadriel, who has been alive for umpteen thousand years. Her accomplishments include the construction of a mystical barrier covering hundreds of miles, harnessing the true light, and commanding one of the rings of power, but for all her vaunted wisdom from an inconcievibaly long life span, she and her followers still wipe with leaves deep in the forest? (farsical - Tolkien never states what manner of facilities are available to the elves). The point, if not the example, stands.

We can try a middle ground - I am willing to conceed in some cases where there is a little forethought into the reasoning it MIGHT be reasonible for a society to remain at a single technology level for extended periods of time..... If it is well written. I still adhere to the general peeve with the thought that most fantasy writers, in general, do not consider such issues when they create societies that have persisted in a stagnant manner for tens of thousands of years.

Again, I think at times we are speaking crosswise. When I say something like a disaster strikes an area to such a degree that it effectivly drops a culture back two or more steps along the technological food chain, we are in effect talking about massive local change on the scale of terrific volcanic erruptions that kill a significant portion of society (but our little society must retain the ability to convey records. This statement was strictly provided so you don't sneak in that hole.). You can ignore several of those in your past but if you start to look at the ole history books and notice the for the last 10,000 years just about every 500 years or so Mt Killamymother erupts, destroying nearly everyone, then you are faced with some hard choices. Be smart or win a Darwin award.


Now, I can't wait to see what holes you punch in this flippant post.

 

[fusangite]

Outdoor plumbing poses a large number of very serious problems that most right thinking folks seek to avoid.

But you can see how the evidence you are using is defeating your argument. How can you argue the development of indoor plumbing is inevitable in any human society when you can only come up with one that developed it? Imagine trying to make this point in the 1800s! "It is inevitable that any human society will develop indoor plumbing because... we just thought of it the other day... and every other society that has adopted it on an institutional scale (Greece, Rome, medieval Europe) has mostly abandoned it.

The fact is that urinating and defecating are not especially fun activities anyway. They are always going to be inconvenient and unpleasant to varying degrees so I just don't buy that our particular civilization's strategy of mitigating a small portion of this unpleasantness is the inevitable conclusion any society would reach.

You could say that I am making a number of assumptions, but in return I could argue that you want to ignore the conditional premise of ---> a society that can carry information forward in some fashion that is at least semi-permenent for the duration of their development.

The Ancient Greeks assumed that God or whoever was pressing the big red reset button on the side of the world every few thousand years and that what made Egypt unique was the fact that it was immune to this catastrophic loss of knowledge. Aristotle and others argued that the gradual and continuous accumulation of knowledge was, in fact, a defining and unique property of only one society in the entire world. And these guys were a pretty learned bunch. Indeed, it is not until the discovery of the Americas that European society acquired its present-day belief that society gradually accumulates knowledge over time. Up until that time, it was generally assumed, when what we now term "discoveries" were made, they were, in fact the re-discovery of the knowledge our forbears had and lost.

We can try a middle ground - I am willing to conceed in some cases where there is a little forethought into the reasoning it MIGHT be reasonible for a society to remain at a single technology level for extended periods of time.....

It would harm my suspension of disbelief too if a society's technology did not change in any way over a long period of time. That would be silly. Change is in the nature of society. Where I am disagreeing with you is that this change is part of some kind of unilinear progress. In the early Middle Ages, for instance, we lost a huge amount of architectural and geometric knowledge; at the same time, our milling and ploughing tech improved considerably.

Not to sound like a Western triumphalist here, because I'm really not, but I think you need to look at the fact that Western Europe is the only society ever to have gone through the Scientific Revolution. To argue that going through the Scientific Revolution is an inherent property of every human society is kind of absurd when the historical record maintains that it has only ever happened to one. 1,000,000 years in sub-saharan Africa, 200,000 years in Australia, 50,000 years in America, 250,000 years in China did not produce societies with especially similar narratives in terms of the development of either science or technology. And let's not forget that these two things don't have nearly as much to do with eachother as we like to think.

I still adhere to the general peeve with the thought that most fantasy writers, in general, do not consider such issues when they create societies that have persisted in a stagnant manner for tens of thousands of years.

Here I am 100% in agreement with you. That's one of the reasons I hardly ever read fantasy novels.

Again, I think at times we are speaking crosswise. When I say something like a disaster strikes an area to such a degree that it effectivly drops a culture back two or more steps along the technological food chain, we are in effect talking about massive local change on the scale of terrific volcanic erruptions that kill a significant portion of society (but our little society must retain the ability to convey records.

I see the point you are making but my main disagreement with you is that technology develops in a predetermined, unilinear, teleological way. Technology comes into play through social forces that are simply not predictable. You flood an economy with cheap labour and people walk away from their machines if the machines cost more to run. Many industrialists in India lost their shirts buying automated cotton mills in the 19th century because they kept waiting for automation to be profitable but desperate poverty and urbanization, the things caused by automation in Britain, effectively prevented automation in India.

There is no cataclysm to explain the reliance on stone tools in pre-contact Australia. People lived there for a long time and, due to various factors, most of which we don't even know, aboriginal society did not learn to make the porcelain they periodically bought from the Indonesians. The written word is no guarantee either of a society adopting this unilinear course. We find examples like the Mayans who lost their written language.

You can ignore several of those in your past but if you start to look at the ole history books and notice the for the last 10,000 years just about every 500 years or so Mt Killamymother erupts, destroying nearly everyone, then you are faced with some hard choices. Be smart or win a Darwin award.

Look at the Germanic societies that succeeded versus those that failed. The ones that succeeded, the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Swedes, Franks, etc. all insisted on living in agriculturally marginal regions of Northern Europe where crops grew horribly inefficiently and urban population densities could not be sustained. Those that went south to the good places are all gone -- no more Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, etc. Being in a bad place is sometimes what allows you to triumph. Technological failure can sometimes turn into success and vice-versa. Europeans could not have conquered the Americas so effectively if our sanitation, cleanliness and understanding of disease had been as good as in Asia or even as good as in Europe 1500 years previous. If AIDS mutates to become airborne at some point, the prostitutes of Bangkok and Lagos will end up winning the Darwinian lottery.

Now, I can't wait to see what holes you punch in this flippant post.

Well, the only reason I'm doing this is because the more of your assumptions I can tear down, the better time you will have reading people's alternate histories.

 

[Rel]

If AIDS mutates to become airborne at some point, the prostitutes of Bangkok and Lagos will end up winning the Darwinian lottery.

I do believe I've just found the kernel for my next "Post Apocalyptic Campaign Setting."

"When society collapses from venerial disease...
When the next Ice Age begins...

Welcome to the land...




of WHORE FROST!"

 

[fusangite]

I do believe I've just found the kernel for my next "Post Apocalyptic Campaign Setting."

"When society collapses from venerial disease...
When the next Ice Age begins...

Welcome to the land... of WHORE FROST!"

To quote Monty Python, "I laughed until I stopped."

 

[TheGM]

I think you're both missing the point that without competition, humanity does tend to stagnate.

The civilizations that went through long periods without large technological change, historically speaking, were somewhat isolationist - either by choice or geography, and relatively peaceful.

Even in our time we hear stuff like "What was good enough for my grandfather..."

Europe had too many peoples packed too close together to sit on their haunches for any length of time, and hence the rapid changes in those societies. Not so most societies the world over.

The only difference today (and IMHO a major one) is that we've taken that competition out of the realm of warfare and into the realm of capitalism. Now you compete to get more shiny things, and no one has to die.

But plenty of societies were going nowhere before they were touched by European civilization. They had what they needed, there was little or no competition for resources, and they were comfortable with their lifestyle. Whether they were better off without that influence is outside the realm of this board, but the mechanism I think is safe ground.

So few changes over thousands or tens of thousands of years? Why not? It's happened repeatedly in our world.

 

[barsoomcore]

If AIDS mutates to become airborne at some point, the prostitutes of Bangkok and Lagos will end up winning the Darwinian lottery.

Dead Girls by Richard Calder. All this and much, much more. First incredibly creepy and freaky book in a series so creepy and freaky I haven't been able to bring myself to read the third volume.

But plenty of societies were going nowhere before they were touched by European civilization.

Whoa. "Not developing Euro-like technological society" is very very different from "Going nowhere." The truth is it's very very difficult to determine what was or was not changing in many pre-contact civilizations, but certainly we know there was massive change in, say, pre-Columbian Central America.

I don't know that there's much evidence they were "going nowhere" -- but it's clear that the European experience is unique. Which is what fu is saying, I think.

You're saying that societies that didn't experience a similar series of similar changes weren't changing at all, and I think that's unlikely to be true. I'm no history expert but I think you'll find that a tough sell.

 

[fusangite]

I think you're both missing the point that without competition, humanity does tend to stagnate.

Except of course for all the times that competition causes stagnation.

The civilizations that went through long periods without large technological change, historically speaking, were somewhat isolationist - either by choice or geography, and relatively peaceful.

I'd love to meet those civilizations. Care to provide an example?

Europe had too many peoples packed too close together to sit on their haunches for any length of time, and hence the rapid changes in those societies. Not so most societies the world over.

But Europe had a lower population density than China, India or the Mexico Valley.

But plenty of societies were going nowhere before they were touched by European civilization.

Care to name one? If, by nowhere, you mean, "not off this precipice of ecological annihilation" I guess I could agree, but even there, most were on that track already.

They had what they needed, there was little or no competition for resources, and they were comfortable with their lifestyle. Whether they were better off without that influence is outside the realm of this board, but the mechanism I think is safe ground.

Whoa! Whoa! What civilizations had little or no competition for resources!?

 

[S'mon]

>>...200,000 years in Australia, 50,000 years in America...<<

Hi fusangite - are those figures widely accepted yet? I thought they (the paleontological consensus) were still trying to claim humans had only been in Oz 40,000 & Americas 15,000, despite the contrary evidence.

 

[Nellisir]

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond covers all this.

I think you're both missing the point that without competition, humanity does tend to stagnate.

The civilizations that went through long periods without large technological change, historically speaking, were somewhat isolationist - either by choice or geography, and relatively peaceful.

China and Egypt are both decent examples. Many advances that became widespread in Europe began in China, gunpowder and the printing press for example. The difference between China and Europe? China was essentially monopolitical. It was possible for one person (the Emporer) to stifle technological advancement in a particular area.

Other regions have different reasons for not inventing what we see as necessities. Why don't Australian Aborigines have indoor plumbing? Because they're essentially nomadic hunter/gatherers, not settled farmers. Why aren't they farmers? Because there aren't any domesticable crops in Australia, and the only domesticated animal is the dog. The nearest farming population to Australia was the highlands of New Guinea, and the crops grown there weren't transferrable to the lowlands of northern Australia.

The Fertile Crescent region lucked out on domesticable animals and crops. Mesoamerica had some crops, but no large animals; the llama never successfully made the trip from the highlands of South America, through the disease-bearing mosquito-infested jungles of Central America to Mesoamerica, where the wheel had been invented -- for a toy. Southern Africa also had a dearth of domesticable animals -- it took thousands of years for cattle, sheep, & goats to make it south of the Equator.

And indoor plumbing has been around for thousands of years. They're called chamber pots.

Cheers
Nell.

 

[fusangite]

>>...200,000 years in Australia, 50,000 years in America...<<

Hi fusangite - are those figures widely accepted yet? I thought they (the paleontological consensus) were still trying to claim humans had only been in Oz 40,000 & Americas 15,000, despite the contrary evidence.

The archaeological record has pretty conclusively disproven the 15000 figure for the Americas. The Australian situation is more complex and one I don't have much data on. I'm just going by an article I read a couple of years ago about mitocondrial DNA and the terra nulius doctrine. The Americas figure, on the other hand, now hovers between 100,000 and 30,000 with 50,000 emerging as the next best thing to a consensus. A big problem we have dating settlement in the Americas is that the ice-free areas of the coast that people from Asian would likely have reached first are now under water. My understanding is that it is underwater archaeological finds that have been pushing the date back.