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Comment by jkingsman | Hacker News Reader

I think the commenter's point was that a model for detecting events caused by advanced tech before we even get our space exploration training wheels off would be a funny irony.

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kinda the premise of Stargate where most aliens copied other aliens advanced tech. So actually anyone who could build it from scratch was kinda rare.

> kinda the premise of Stargate where most aliens copied other aliens advanced tech

This is how all technology has always worked.

Pyramids, writing, and agriculture with irrigation developed independently in at least two completely separate places on Earth within just the last 3000 years.

And, as a percentage of cultures using pyramids, writing, and agriculture, that would be...?

Irrelevant.

I think you mean "zero". Why would you expect technology to work any differently between planets?

No, I mean irrelevant, as is your newest argument. The functional capabilities of technology between planets is irrelevant to the observation that disparate groups develop similar levels of technology independently.

> The functional capabilities of technology between planets is irrelevant to the observation that disparate groups develop similar levels of technology independently.

That "observation" is false.

No, it's not. The observation that agriculture developed independently along the Tigris/Euphrates, the Yangtzee, the Indus, Sub-Saharan Africa, Mesoamerica, Peru, and several other places is indisputable and proven by the human-influenced domestication of local plants over thousands of years and the lack of any evidence of communication between those cultures when domestication began. If you're simply trying to make the case that no culture which develops a technology matters besides whichever culture ended up most dominant, it's an absurd point because all of them influenced each other bilaterally (that means both ways) when they came into contact. Corn and tomatoes were domesticated in Mesoamerica and wheat was domesticated from a grass in Mesopotamia. All are now worldwide staples. Without agriculture having developed independently in numerous places and NOT being wiped out by other technologies, one or the other of those would not exist. Have you had a Kung Pao chicken satined with corn flour? Or a corn tortilla around steak? Or spaghetti with marinara sauce? None of those combinations was possible a mere 524 years ago.

precisely

This is survival bias. As of 1000 years ago, the answer was an entire hemisphere. So as long as barriers like oceans or space between stars slow the propagation of technology, technology will develop on its own.

> As of 1000 years ago, the answer was an entire hemisphere.

You honestly believe that there was just one culture across the entire geographical and historical extent of the Americas, despite not believing the same thing about the Old World?

Developed independently? Or were both visited by aliens sharing the ideas?

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