An interesting history graph?

Hans

Philosopher
Hans
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
9,199
Could some of the smart folks here comment on what this chart is about or how was it created, and what is it based on? Was the date pulled out of someone's nether regions. The time scale is interesting.

I'm putting this up to get comments on what history minded people see it in.

main-qimg-d0999c1f254a2190734b8d6dcc217050


Thanks
 
It’s impossible to take seriously. It is predicting a Muslim dark ages, it’s effect on our advances in modern science and a new transhuman rennaissance.

It’s just made up with no units to specify scientific advancement.

Best to dismiss unless you want to talk about the likelihood of a future Muslim dark ages.
 
Hans said:
Could some of the smart folks here comment on what this chart is about or how was it created, and what is it based on? Was the date pulled out of someone's nether regions. The time scale is interesting.

I'm putting this up to get comments on what history minded people see it in.

[qimg]https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d0999c1f254a2190734b8d6dcc217050[/qimg]

Thanks
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The graph is crap. I do not see any evidence that Science et., are in any sense declining or in the process of retreat in Europe, North America, South America, China, Japan etc. The only place this dark age could conceivably affect right now are Muslim countries. The chances of this affecting other countries is frankly minimal for the time being and that is not likely to change anytime soon. I will also point out that the main victims of extremist Muslim terrorism are in fact other Muslims. In fact the perception that Islamic fundamentalism is a dead end does exist in the Muslim world. This perception in my opinion should be encouraged.

The graph was based on nothing more than bile and nonsense. I also note that it is rather centered on Europe ignoring that after the fall of Rome and for at least 700 years the most advanced society on the planet was China, which during this time made significant advances in technology and Science.

Also predicting long term future history is a fools game.
 
Also it is demonstrably incorrect to say that "scientific advancement" stalled after the fall of the Roman Empire. If you look at the collective knowledge of humanity, not just in Europe, it either stayed the same or continued to increase. Other parts of the world besides Europe had flourishing scientific and literary advances for centuries. So it is, in total, bollocks.

ETA: Ninja'd!
 
That graph is an illustration of the Novella Fallacy, also known as the "Making **** up and pulling it out of your ass" fallacy.
 
bruto said:
What is "transhuman" supposed to mean, and what science is going to happen in a "posthuman" time? Little green men?
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Let me Wikipedia that for you.

Transhumanism (abbreviated as H+ or h+) is an international philosophical movement that advocates for the transformation of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology.[1][2]

Transhumanist thinkers study the potential benefits and dangers of emerging technologies that could overcome fundamental human limitations as well as the ethical[3] limitations of using such technologies.[4] The most common transhumanist thesis is that human beings may eventually be able to transform themselves into different beings with abilities so greatly expanded from the current condition as to merit the label of posthuman beings.[2]
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Thanks for all the great responses - from the heart or nearby - and yes I agree with almost everything that was said !

I put it up because it was deliciously crazy.
 
Norman Alexander said:
Also it is demonstrably incorrect to say that "scientific advancement" stalled after the fall of the Roman Empire. If you look at the collective knowledge of humanity, not just in Europe, it either stayed the same or continued to increase. Other parts of the world besides Europe had flourishing scientific and literary advances for centuries. So it is, in total, bollocks.

ETA: Ninja'd!
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And, even in Europe, the idea of no advancement during the "Dark Ages" is incorrect. The term referred to lack of documents from the period.
 
zooterkin said:
And, even in Europe, the idea of no advancement during the "Dark Ages" is incorrect. The term referred to lack of documents from the period.
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What the term referred to depends on who was doing the referring. Petrarch used the metaphor of "light vs dark" to represent good vs evil, referring to the many pagan civilisations in Europe at the time. Baronius was referring to the lack of people writing histories. Gibbon was contrasting the earlier period with the Enlightenment, while Burkhardt contrasted it with the Rennaisance. Modern writers such as Lindberg used the term to refer to pre-scientific times, when religious superstition prevented the advancement of scientific knowledge, but this claim seems to be largely unsupported.

This is why we don't use the term any more. It's meaningless, and always was. We refer to the Early Middle Ages instead.
 
bruto said:
Thanks for that. I figured it's ******** but wasn't sure of the flavor.
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Well... it's not really... well... it's kinda ********, but also kinda not. It's futurism, which is already sort of speculative, but it does seem to be based on extrapolating current trends, so... :con2:
 
arthwollipot said:
Well... it's not really... well... it's kinda ********, but also kinda not. It's futurism, which is already sort of speculative, but it does seem to be based on extrapolating current trends, so... :con2:
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No it doesn't.
 
MikeG said:
No it doesn't.
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Maybe not the full-on posthuman speculation, but near-term transhumanism is in a lot of cases (assuredly not all) based on current research. And if you ask an actual transhumanist they'll tell you that and likely give you citations.

There is, however, a significant component of pure science fiction. That much is absolutely true.
 
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arthwollipot said:
Maybe not the full-on posthuman speculation, but near-term transhumanism is in a lot of cases (assuredly not all) based on current research. And if you ask an actual transhumanist they'll tell you that and likely give you citations.

There is, however, a significant component of pure science fiction. That much is absolutely true.
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Yes, but could someone mark an X on the graph when the Ben Hur chariot race took place.
 
arthwollipot said:
Well... it's not really... well... it's kinda ********, but also kinda not. It's futurism, which is already sort of speculative, but it does seem to be based on extrapolating current trends, so... :con2:
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Actually, being based on extrapolating current trends is the problem with it. When you extrapolate exponentials you get absurdities.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
It's a graph, people!
You cannot argue with a graph.
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Of course we can't argue with a graph, it is not sentient.

We can question just how frakked up the made up data used to make it was, or where the creator was touched by someone they thought might be Muslim in May 2009 and how it's created feelings that they can't express positively, resulting in said graph though...
 
I kind of have trouble with a graph that posits the next 2000 years of human history.

If I were to make a graph of my 10 year-old's son's height from the age of 0 to 20 using this method, it would predict his height in 10 years to be 15 feet tall.
 
I've seen an earlier version of this same chart. It cites a "Capitalist Dark Age", rather than a Muslim one, and the point indicated by the arrow is 26 December 1991. Unfortunately, I found no explanation for this version of the graph either.

Note that neither the cited date on this graph, nor the one on the OP, match the horizontal reference.
 

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So it's basically just a recyclable meme where you predict we're on the brink of catastrophe caused by <people you don't like> and there'll be a thousand years or more of evil stupidity led by <people you don't like> before we get our jetpacks and tinfoil suits.
 
Hans said:
Could some of the smart folks here comment on what this chart is about or how was it created, and what is it based on? Was the date pulled out of someone's nether regions. The time scale is interesting.

I'm putting this up to get comments on what history minded people see it in.

[qimg]https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d0999c1f254a2190734b8d6dcc217050[/qimg]

Thanks
Click to expand...

This appears to be what is affectionately known as "The Chart"* over on https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/,

Only with an addendum (or perhaps The Chart v.2.0?) for Muslims.



*also known as The Stupidest Thing on the Internet Ever

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/10/gods-philosophers-how-medieval-world.html

Scroll down to see The Chart v.1.0
 
Loss Leader said:
I kind of have trouble with a graph that posits the next 2000 years of human history.

If I were to make a graph of my 10 year-old's son's height from the age of 0 to 20 using this method, it would predict his height in 10 years to be 15 feet tall.
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$$$$$basketball$$$$$ coming your family's way!!!
 
Elagabalus said:
This appears to be what is affectionately known as "The Chart"* over on https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/,

Only with an addendum (or perhaps The Chart v.2.0?) for Muslims.



*also known as The Stupidest Thing on the Internet Ever

http://armariummagnus.blogspot.com/2009/10/gods-philosophers-how-medieval-world.html

Scroll down to see The Chart v.1.0
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I could find forums that have a picture of The Chart dating back to at least mid 2007, but I don't know the original source. The original chart only came up to present day and didn't include a future projection.

There is a post on Reddit about this particulate Chart here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/1r7t0i/question_about_the_chart/

There is also a short article at:

https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/wiki/inside_jokes

It appears the source of this particular chart is here:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=1662

Basic bigot stuff about Muslim immigrants destroying the world.

There are other revisions of The Chart that use the format of this chart but with different labels, but this is the earliest version I could find with the future projections, so it may the original.
 
Pope130 said:
I've seen an earlier version of this same chart. It cites a "Capitalist Dark Age", rather than a Muslim one, and the point indicated by the arrow is 26 December 1991. Unfortunately, I found no explanation for this version of the graph either.

Note that neither the cited date on this graph, nor the one on the OP, match the horizontal reference.
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Well I think we can infer the author's intentions based on the December 26th, 1991 date being the starting point of the decline.

The author didn't get that SNES for Christmas they so desperately wanted. Life is only pain.
 
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SuburbanTurkey said:
Well I think we can infer the author's intentions based on the December 26th, 1991 date being the starting point of the decline.

The author didn't get that SNES for Christmas they so desperately wanted. Life is only pain.
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That makes more sense than what I thought. 26 December 1991 is notable as the official end of the Soviet Union. Perhaps the maker of that version of the graph thought that without the USSR modern technology and progress would collapse into a new dark age.

My best guess is that the original of the graph was based on a science fiction story, or used to plot one. The new dark age would have been started by some notional apocalyptic event. I haven't found one that matches the time line exactly, but there are a lot of them out there.
 
The biggest problem I see is it gives no indication of how you arrive at a value for "scientific advancement".

That and all its predictions for the future indicate it has no value whatsoever.


Edited to add: But I love the image of Jesus holding the guns and desperately want to use it somehow for something. :)
 
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Hans said:
Could some of the smart folks here comment on what this chart is about or how was it created, and what is it based on? Was the date pulled out of someone's nether regions. The time scale is interesting.

I'm putting this up to get comments on what history minded people see it in.

[qimg]https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d0999c1f254a2190734b8d6dcc217050[/qimg]

Thanks
Click to expand...

Nonsense. First of all, there really wasn't much of a dark age to begin with. Technological advancement never stopped. It just moved.
 
Lots of technical progress was made between 1066 - 1400 when the modern printing press was invented. After that date technology skyrocketed leading to the industrial revolution in the 1800s.

I suspect the date was altered from 1900 or about that date.
 
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