Honest question, despite what will undoubtedly come across as snark:
Have we always been so stupid, or is this a recent development?
Have we always been so stupid, or is this a recent development?
We're the stupidest and least capable that it's possible to be to develop all this tech in the first place, because if we weren't, we'd have done it sooner.
IIRC it took us until Blaise Pascal or Fermat to realise the probability distribution of flipping two coins isn't 1/3 HH, 1/3 TT, and 1/3 a heads and a tails.
Witch hunts on spectral evidence was a thing.
I've heard 12th century european sailors sometimes thought that compasses were devilish.
This assumes a linear and only-forward progression of technology, which just isn't true.
That said, it's an interesting way to look at things.
Consider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycon
> When the people gathered in the marketplace of Abonutichus at noon, when the incarnation was supposed to occur, Alexander produced a goose egg and sliced it open, revealing the god within. Within a week, it grew to the size of a man with the features of a man on its face, including long blond hair. At this point, the figure resembling this description was apparently a puppet that appeared in the temple. In some references, Glycon was a trained snake with a puppet head.
p.s. I only know this because I received a secret drop from the Q...