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Comment by imranq | Hacker News Reader

"If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."

- RP Feynman, Vol I FLP

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I think it may be more important to tell them about bacteria. But in reality, I think passing down a single sentence is almost completely useless. If that's all that's passed down, they will have to make the exact same discoveries we made, although we may be able to lead them towards these discoveries.

Also, expecting all of future human kind -- more developed than we are now -- to value some sentence passed down by their oh-so-knowledgeable ancestors (us) seems a bit self-centered to me. A more intelligent future mankind will make their own discoveries, and not care much about any single sentence, regardless of who wrote it.

>A more intelligent future mankind

Are you saying human beings are becoming more and more intelligent with each generation?

Do you claim that they aren't?

I didn't claim anything. I just asked a question.

Yes, as we are yet to define intelligence in a convincing manner.

We are getting better at IQ tests. Exactly what that means is up for debate.

That's the problem with benchmarks. For IQ tests, we measure a small subset of skills, and then extrapolate to make conclusions about other, unmeasured skills.

This works fine as long as the tested humans are unaware of the methodology, because extrapolation doesn't work when the subjects have specialized, specifically, in the subset of skills from which we extrapolate. In other words, if we keep measuring intelligence through IQ tests, sooner or later we will only be good at solving IQ tests -- and that's not very intelligent.

Why don't we have a test for big subset?

AFAIK, that is empirically established to be true in the US, and seems largely due to the fact that environmental factors that impede full development of intelligence are being addressed. I'm less aware of research on global trends but it seems likely to be generally the same.

As we measure it, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Secular declines in cognitive test scores: A reversal of the Flynn Effect: https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/2016-dutton.pdf

http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/smart-as-we-can-...

I would go further than that even. Human beings are becoming more and more intelligent by the day. I know things today I didn't know yesterday, and certainly much more than I knew a year ago.

Knowing things makes you more knowledgeable, not necessarily more intelligent.

I don't disagree that knowledge is different from intelligence, but surely there's a connection between the two.

It seems to me that intelligence has more to do with the acquisition of knowledge, than whatever you have in possession. If we define intelligence as possession of knowledge, then a dog is more intelligent than humans in many aspects (eg. it can smell a lot better, so it can recognize who was recently in a room that it enters). But if we define intelligence as the ability to acquire new knowledge, then humans are vastly superior to all other species.

In that way, it seems possession of knowledge is more like a symptom of intelligence, rather than being intelligence itself.

Without any other basic understanding or theory, the simple knowledge might be lost or smeared in translations though centuries.

I think in that event, teaching them how to fish would be more important than giving them a fish.

My suggestion would be something that would promote free thought. "All men are equal and thought, ideas, and speech should never be punished" or something along these lines.

Well, he was just doing a mental exercise on passing the most information, not the most utility.

while I obviously agree those are important ideas, a lot of our knowledge in "science" was done during times when this didn't apply, so I feel like free thought/equality is something that arises naturally as science marches on.

Other than the already mentioned experimental method, IMO the most efficient idea (which also would end up encouraging free thought) would be: "spread knowledge, build libraries, and don't burn books".

Perhaps simply the idea that knowledge could be transcribed onto physical objects and conveyed to other people across intervening time and distance would be a good candidate as the most important idea in human history?

How about:

"Skeptically question the nature of things, doubt your assumptions, relentlessly test the conclusions, and pass on any learnings".

If we only have one sentence, we'd best make sure we cram as much information into that sentence as possible. Finally those years of studying Latin are paying off.

> "Emotions take much longer to change than thoughts." or something like that. (for communication: "Emotional messages need repeating to sink in.")

If a future generation could start off being able to distinguish between their primal brain-functions and their thoughts, they might progress much faster than we do.

What would you do with that knowledge, without also knowing the scientific method? Whereas the scientific method allowed us to discover the atomic hypothesis, and so is more powerful.

Presumably people were doing roughly the scientific method long before anyone popularized some formulation of the scientific method. Heck, animals (probably even plants) do "trial and error" which I would argue is a very basic form of scientific inquiry. In the context of this thought experiment, I think we're supposed to assume that humans are still capable of rational problem-solving, and the sentence we choose to pass on is a more specific piece of knowledge. After all, we're clearly assuming that some basics (like the ability to understand the sentence) are maintained.

Less social animals have a much easier time than we do. Humans are hard wired to not trust the scientific method, as it is harmful for politics.

Before the scientific method, there was the philosophical "the idea that sounds the most convincing is true" method, and the biological "the ideas that my unconscious sensory system implants in me are true" method. It took a fairly long time for people to realize that the former's severe issue with many things sounding convincing could be addressed by carefully designing situations (experiments) where the latter would prune them down.

That's the thing though, they weren't! Occasional smart people did follow something similar, but not with the methodical approach required to produce real results. Up until fairly recently, almost all humans believed that you could divine everything you needed to know about the world from pure contemplation. The idea that your hypothesis is worthless until backed by hard evidence is relatively new, and coincides pretty well with the sudden rapid advancement of technology.

I hoped it has to do something with math, not just "it's atoms". We already know hard key points in our scientific history — next generations could use these initially obscure fragments to prevent spending time on already invalidated methods and theories.

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