story Story, Wednesday September 7, 2016

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, Scotty said:

It's also possible that if the natives were found using iron, the Europeans might have considered them to be less barbaric. Like they look at a bronze age civilization and think they're too primitive that they wouldn't be able to grasp any of the more modern knowledge, but if they found an iron age civilization, it wouldn't have taken much to teach them to make steel.

And neither change my point: that the desire and willingness to exterminate a population may or may not exist, but the capability is a separate matter. America is ENORMOUS. Given the relative primitiveness and small numbers of the invaders, they were physically incapable of carrying out genocide on such a massive scale even if they had wanted to. If they had started, they would merely have achieved the same result as conquest used to have in the Indus region: push the tribes into moving elsewhere, which would most likely force another tribe to relocate further away, and so forth, and so forth...

This was how our Indo-European ancestors arrived in Europe.

[mlooney 3,417]

4 hours ago, ijuin said:

Well, my intended meaning was that with iron weapons and armor, it would be less like "shooting fish in a barrel" for Europeans to roll right over them.

If they had phasers and modern body armor it wouldn't matter.  Doesn't stop small pox and it's friends.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, mlooney said:

If they had phasers and modern body armor it wouldn't matter.  Doesn't stop small pox and it's friends.

Mind, modern knowledge of diseases and how they propagate would have helped. It might still not have avoided a massive death toll but there would probably be a larger number of survivors. Unfortunately, they did not know what was going on -- in fact, they had even less experience with epidemics than Europeans.

[mlooney 3,417]

7 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Mind, modern knowledge of diseases and how they propagate would have helped. It might still not have avoided a massive death toll but there would probably be a larger number of survivors. Unfortunately, they did not know what was going on -- in fact, they had even less experience with epidemics than Europeans.

Part of the "Official" Traveller Universe back story is that as Terran's arrived on an Ziru Sirka controlled world, massive plagues of one sort or another would break out, but the Terran's had cures for it and medical teams were part of the landing forces. The theory was that the human stock spread over all of the galexy by The Ancients had zero immunity to any Terran disease, and for that matter had no idea about the germ theory in general, because they all were from planets that didn't have diseases that effected Terran life forms.

[Vorlonagent 442]

6 hours ago, Scotty said:

It's also possible that if the natives were found using iron, the Europeans might have considered them to be less barbaric. Like they look at a bronze age civilization and think they're too primitive that they wouldn't be able to grasp any of the more modern knowledge, but if they found an iron age civilization, it wouldn't have taken much to teach them to make steel.

That's a comforting thought, but I don't personally think so. 

Any significant technological imbalance would have brought out the arrogance in europeans that 1000 years of cross-continent aggression bred into them.

If the Americas had proven impossible to invade and conquer given 15th and 16th century technology, only then would the people there earn the respect of europeans.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Hmm, gets me wondering how a time traveler could save all those civilizations.

Vaccinate everyone on the east coast where the Europeans first arrived?  The first European attempts at settling generally either set up trade on equal terms (or even took what was basically charity), "went native" and joined the pre-existing culture, or were wiped out if they made trouble. Keeping those civilizations strong long enough to set up relations as equals might delay things a little while, but the diseases would still be out there.  Even if the entire continent were vaccinated, that would only protect that current generation.  Even if they'd known the technology to make their own vaccines, they'd need raw materials to work with, which would mean risking exposure to the diseases.

Teaching them epidemiology alone would, as you said, still result in a horrific death toll, especially since we're talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of independent nations and confederations, many of them mobile to one degree or another.  If your hunting frounds and crops for the next season are in an area disease has been occurring, do you choose to starve instead of sicken?

Perhaps the best way to save what we now call the Americas would have been to help the Europeans defeat the key diseases before ever crossing the ocean.  If a time traveler had access to the sort of technology that could vaccinate an entire continent, doing so in Europe might bring the diseases to extinction before they had a chance to spread further.  Of course, who knows what trouble Europeans would have caused if they'd been healthier and more numerous...

[The Old Hack 2,448]

2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, gets me wondering how a time traveler could save all those civilizations.

This reminds me of all the old conundrums of how to prevent WWII. Any viable solution I could think of invariably involved preventing WW1 as well. To do that you needed to go further back... it got quite headachey.

I did find a much simpler way of preventing Hitler from getting into power, one that did not involve shooting him. All you needed to do was to look for him while he was still a painter, pretend to swoon over how magnificent his paintings were and buy them for enough money to set him comfortably up. If you wanted to make sure, surround him with admirers of his art. He'd be ensconced in the burgeoisie and live isolated from the poverty and want that originally lured him into politics. By the time the key years rolled about he would not have the apparatus he needed even if he changed his mind by then.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

It is entirely possible that without the major plague outbreaks, the European Renaissance may have been delayed or prevented.

The effect of the plague was comparable to the Neutron Bomb, for you late boomer types.  A lot of people died.  But buildings were still intact.  Cities were inhabitable.  Gold and silver still filled vaults.  Fields were still ready for planting and harvesting.  Books could still be read.

Once the worst was over and the mess had been cleaned up, the survivors often found themselves in better positions than their ancestors at the start of the outbreak.

This environment was a significant contributor to the emerging age of enlightenment.

[Scotty 1,061]

21 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

It is entirely possible that without the major plague outbreaks, the European Renaissance may have been delayed or prevented.

The effect of the plague was comparable to the Neutron Bomb, for you late boomer types.  A lot of people died.  But buildings were still intact.  Cities were inhabitable.  Gold and silver still filled vaults.  Fields were still ready for planting and harvesting.  Books could still be read.

Once the worst was over and the mess had been cleaned up, the survivors often found themselves in better positions than their ancestors at the start of the outbreak.

This environment was a significant contributor to the emerging age of enlightenment.

There's also the fact that because a lot of the earlier generation died, their ideologies and way of thinking never got passed on to the next, the survivors were left to interpret what they saw in different ways so new ideas emerged.

[EmpactWB 21]

32 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I did find a much simpler way of preventing Hitler from getting into power, one that did not involve shooting him. All you needed to do was to look for him while he was still a painter, pretend to swoon over how magnificent his paintings were and buy them for enough money to set him comfortably up. If you wanted to make sure, surround him with admirers of his art. He'd be ensconced in the burgeoisie and live isolated from the poverty and want that originally lured him into politics. By the time the key years rolled about he would not have the apparatus he needed even if he changed his mind by then.

That way lies madness.

[malloyd 23]

12 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

More examples of that in history. Some enterprising Roman invented a steam engine. But it was extremely primitive and they lacked a lot of the technology needed to make it useful, so they never did anything with it and it was eventually forgotten. (It was also argued that steam power wasn't necessary due to the abundance of slaves available, but I am not sure I am buying that one -- a big point of the steam engine when it was actually developed industrially was that it could produce exponentially more power than muscle power could.)

The "roman steam engine" is Heron of Alexandria's, one of a collection of pneumatic and hydraulic toys mostly invented or described by writers from that city.  Some of the others are pretty cool too.  But it is a *toy* - fundamentally a teakettle on a spit with a spout bent relative to the spit axis - not an engine.  Its fundamental problem is it necessarily spins the boiler - you can't really scale it up much.  When steam engines first started being an industry, a lot of people tried to make turbines work (including most famously James Watt) but were defeated by an inability to build a decently steam tight rotating seal even with 18th century technology.  Tight fitting piston heads and gaskets weren't exactly easy either, but at least the technology of cannon boring gives you a head start on cylinders.  The Romans could never have gotten any useful amount of work out of things like this.

And the story of the whatsit being rejected because of the availability of labor, or it's related form because it would put some people out of work, should always be taken with a very large grain of salt.  It's told about dozens of technologies, real and imaginary, from at least the Roman era stories about "flexible glass".  Though in this case it's sort of true - the biggest one of these things you could build would almost certainly have done less work than a single slave and cost way more in fuel than slaves doing the same job could have possibly eaten.

[malloyd 23]

8 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

And neither change my point: that the desire and willingness to exterminate a population may or may not exist, but the capability is a separate matter. America is ENORMOUS. Given the relative primitiveness and small numbers of the invaders, they were physically incapable of carrying out genocide on such a massive scale even if they had wanted to.

It's worth remembering that Europeans were expanding everywhere else in the world at the same time, and weren't nicer about it, but didn't manage much in the way of population replacement anywhere the natives didn't drop dead from disease.  South Africa is about the closest they came, and it's less European than the Valley of Mexico, and nowhere close to North America.  I suppose the genes of the population of Singapore are less than half indigenous - of course they mostly aren't *European* either, but still, a marginal success.  There aren't many others in the Old World.

 

[hkmaly 490]

5 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

11 hours ago, Scotty said:

It's also possible that if the natives were found using iron, the Europeans might have considered them to be less barbaric. Like they look at a bronze age civilization and think they're too primitive that they wouldn't be able to grasp any of the more modern knowledge, but if they found an iron age civilization, it wouldn't have taken much to teach them to make steel.

That's a comforting thought, but I don't personally think so. 

Any significant technological imbalance would have brought out the arrogance in europeans that 1000 years of cross-continent aggression bred into them.

If the Americas had proven impossible to invade and conquer given 15th and 16th century technology, only then would the people there earn the respect of europeans.

Note that Europeans were near the top point of religion-based arrogance at that time. They would likely consider natives savages simply because they don't believe in Jesus Christ.

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

4 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

Hmm, gets me wondering how a time traveler could save all those civilizations.

This reminds me of all the old conundrums of how to prevent WWII. Any viable solution I could think of invariably involved preventing WW1 as well. To do that you needed to go further back... it got quite headachey.

I did find a much simpler way of preventing Hitler from getting into power, one that did not involve shooting him. All you needed to do was to look for him while he was still a painter, pretend to swoon over how magnificent his paintings were and buy them for enough money to set him comfortably up. If you wanted to make sure, surround him with admirers of his art. He'd be ensconced in the burgeoisie and live isolated from the poverty and want that originally lured him into politics. By the time the key years rolled about he would not have the apparatus he needed even if he changed his mind by then.

And what then? The person who DID get to power was more competent and caused even WORSE war. Or Germany didn't started the war ... SSSR did. Maybe you postponed the war by 20 years ... enough for both sides to develop nuclear weapons. And without the example of Hiroshima, they wouldn't be afraid to use them.

Playing with history is HARD. If you don't get headache, it means you overlook something.

(And, as already proved, you are not only one with similar idea.)

[The Old Hack 2,448]

22 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And what then?

Why, anything whatsoever. By taking Hitler out of the picture I would eliminate ONE possible branch of the future, the one where a genocidal sociopath named Hitler would attempt to exterminate entire peoples. But there would almost certainly be a second world war anyway, most likely in about the same time period. Possibly it would have a Germany led by a less murderous but more competent leader, one who could win the war faster. Or it might end up with some other petty dictator with an inflated view of his own competence. Who can say.

I do not believe another twenty years would pass. Germany was already dead set on revenge. A huge part of Hitler's success was that he promised the Germans their revenge. A too cautious leader would have been overthrown and replaced with a more ambitious one. Remember, the German generals were absolutely fine with Hitler's plans of conquest. They just thought he was being too aggressive and reckless about them.

[hkmaly 490]

12 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

40 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

And what then?

Why, anything whatsoever. By taking Hitler out of the picture I would eliminate ONE possible branch of the future, the one where a genocidal sociopath named Hitler would attempt to exterminate entire peoples. But there would almost certainly be a second world war anyway, most likely in about the same time period.

Oh.

Ok, if your goal is not prevent second world war but just making it better for the specific groups of people who had it worst, you might have a chance. Although even that would likely be harder - Stalin made some instances of antisemitism as well, and there were likely other people who shared Hitlers ideas of who's inferior.

Also, I'm not exactly sure spreading the killing to more groups would be better. And jews might not get own state without the genocide, which could've raised other problems later.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

8 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Oh.

Ok, if your goal is not prevent second world war but just making it better for the specific groups of people who had it worst, you might have a chance. Although even that would likely be harder - Stalin made some instances of antisemitism as well, and there were likely other people who shared Hitlers ideas of who's inferior.

Also, I'm not exactly sure spreading the killing to more groups would be better. And jews might not get own state without the genocide, which could've raised other problems later.

All of this is entirely beyond me. Once Hitler is out of the picture, the dice are flying and might land anywhere at all. As a matter of fact, I believe the computer game Red Alert's backstory was based on someone killing Hitler and this turning out to have been a really bad idea.

[animalia 64]

1 hour ago, The Old Hack said:

All of this is entirely beyond me. Once Hitler is out of the picture, the dice are flying and might land anywhere at all. As a matter of fact, I believe the computer game Red Alert's backstory was based on someone killing Hitler and this turning out to have been a really bad idea.

Speaking of which didn't the allies let hitler live because they were afraid he'd be replaced with someone competent?

[Don Edwards 548]

16 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

This reminds me of all the old conundrums of how to prevent WWII. Any viable solution I could think of invariably involved preventing WW1 as well. To do that you needed to go further back... it got quite headachey.

I did find a much simpler way of preventing Hitler from getting into power, one that did not involve shooting him. All you needed to do was to look for him while he was still a painter, pretend to swoon over how magnificent his paintings were and buy them for enough money to set him comfortably up. If you wanted to make sure, surround him with admirers of his art. He'd be ensconced in the burgeoisie and live isolated from the poverty and want that originally lured him into politics. By the time the key years rolled about he would not have the apparatus he needed even if he changed his mind by then.

There are reasons that never works.

16 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

It is entirely possible that without the major plague outbreaks, the European Renaissance may have been delayed or prevented.

The effect of the plague was comparable to the Neutron Bomb, for you late boomer types.  A lot of people died.  But buildings were still intact.  Cities were inhabitable.  Gold and silver still filled vaults.  Fields were still ready for planting and harvesting.  Books could still be read.

Once the worst was over and the mess had been cleaned up, the survivors often found themselves in better positions than their ancestors at the start of the outbreak.

This environment was a significant contributor to the emerging age of enlightenment.

There's another important point: pre-Plague, peasants were an abundant resource and a noble could abuse them freely up to the point where being an outlaw and bandit, with every man's hand turned against them, looked better to the peasant.

Post-Plague, peasants were scarce - and they were needed to farm the fields, work the mines, etc. - so they had value and if a noble abused them, the next noble down the forest path would be glad to take them in.

The Plague was a huge boost to the equal-rights movement in its VERY early days. When they were still working on getting the average person any rights at all.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

54 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

There are reasons that never works.

A big one is that time travel as so envisioned is a logical impossibility.

[Tom Sewell 268]

Much as I like debates about history, time-travel, and alternate history, this thread is really getting:

1. Seriously off-topic
2. Long in the tooth for a Story thread.

Maybe someone could start a thread in the Off-Topic section?

[The Old Hack 2,448]

51 minutes ago, Tom Sewell said:

Much as I like debates about history, time-travel, and alternate history, this thread is really getting:

1. Seriously off-topic
2. Long in the tooth for a Story thread.

Maybe someone could start a thread in the Off-Topic section?

Sure, you go right ahead!