Week 12: The European Union

Tuesday 12th April

Mr. Niall Douglas

Schedule for Today

9am-10am: Reading and vocab check

10am-11am: Niall’s History of the History of the Irish Revolution part 1 of 2

11.20am-12.20pm: Group Task Check

12.20pm-1pm: More English Language Cementing

1pm-1.20pm: Work on tonight’s readings if there is time

Niall’s History of History As we are into our final week together, I

thought I’d throw some of my own research at you. I used to give lectures on this sort of stuff at St. Andrews University for free

Personally I think this sort of stuff will save human civilisation from extinction, but there is very little support out there for it

In other words, most people think I am a crackpot ...

Niall’s History of History The proper term for the History of History is

Historiography

This is a very fashionable trend in the study of History right now, starting from E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History?

However my take on it is deeply unpopular in the field of History because I am “too quantitative” and Historiography is almost entirely sociocultural analysis ...

Niall’s History of History

Before we can explain the Irish revolution, we need to understand time ...

So, what are THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTIONS ever in human history?

For convenience, I have labelled time in the format “tEn” = “t x 10n” where n is the number of zeros, so4.3e6 = 4.3 x 106 = 4,300,000 years

Milestone Years before 2008 Creative Step

1 1.37E+10 Universe Begins

2 8.30E+09 Milky Way Forms

3 4.50E+09 Solar System Forms

4 4.00E+09 Life Begins

5 3.50E+09 Photosynthesis Invented

6 2.25E+09 Eukaryotes & Oxygen

7 1.20E+09 Sexual Reproduction

8 8.00E+08 Predation

9 5.40E+08 Cambrian Explosion

10 3.63E+08 Modern Biodiversity Reached

Table 1: Major Creative Steps (Milestones) before 2008

11 2.51E+08 Dinosaurs & Mammals12 1.30E+08 Flowers13 6.55E+07 Dinosaurs End, Birds Begin14 3.50E+07 C4 photosynthesis15 1.50E+07 Hominidae16 6.30E+06 Pan/Homo split17 3.90E+06 Australopithecus18 1.75E+06 Humans Begin

1.40E+06 Knife19 7.90E+05 Fire for cooking20 4.00E+05 Pigments & Spears

21 2.00E+05 Burial & Composite Tools

22 1.10E+05 Lithic Blades

23 5.50E+04 Ships & Bow/Arrow

24 4.30E+04 Mining

25 2.60E+04 Ceramics

26 1.70E+04 Rope

27 8000 Irrigation

28 5000 Writing

29 2000 Greek Philosophy/Christianity

30 1188 Islam

31 510 Printing Press/Renaissance

32 296 Steam Engine/Libertae

33 135 Electricity/Mechanisation

34 80 Quantum/Holism

35 40 Computerisation/Systems

History of our World in Milestones

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Weird huh?

One might think from this graph that a point is coming when technological advances will become so rapid that we reach a “technological singularity” (e.g. Ray Kurzweil)

Ray Kurzweil and those like him is full of shit

This has nothing to do with technology ...

Fields of perception

If you try making ANY list of the most important advances in something long lived and which is still advancing today ...

For example, try writing down the most important single tracks in rock music

Or creative advances in the use of language or mathematics

Fields of perception It turns out that you will ALWAYS get thirty-

five or thirty-six items

And these items will ALWAYS have a smooth line when plotted logarithmically over time

So what is going on?

What happens if you regress that timeline down to zero?

History of our World in Milestones

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Fields of Perception

It turns out that there are ALWAYS forty or forty one steps in that progression, it’s just that the most recent five are unknowable to us (too recent to discern)

So how come any of this matters?

Fields of Perception What’s the ratio between the largest and

smallest observations? Distance: Size of the universe = 4.4e26, size of an

electron is 2.8e-15. Ratio: 1.57e41 Time: Age of the universe 4.33e17, lifetime of a

top quark 1e-24. Ratio: 4.33e41 Forces: Ratio of electrical to gravitational forces

between a proton and an electron: 4.4e40

What’s so special about powers of forty then?

Fields of Perception

It turns out that WE – as in, us humans – can only perceive about forty levels of significance

It’s a cognitive processing artefact, and no technology can EVER remove this problem

So why is this important?

Marketing and Sales

You all know from walking into any shop that consumer choice is king

Yet so much choice is so overwhelming (more than forty) we do things like REDUCE the choice down to price or branding

The key to success in life is REDUCING choice down to less than forty options

Choice

What makes some of us succeed and some fail is how we do that choice reduction

For example, in the SNOs Group 3 likes to reduce uncertainty whereas Group 4 likes to reduce costs

Neither is right and neither is wrong. Both are good choices

The Irish Revolution Which brings us to the Irish revolution ...

Why did the 1919-1922 revolution succeed when all previous revolutions failed?

1569-1583: Fitzgeralds revolution 1594-1603: O Neill revolution 1641 1803 1867 1916 Easter Rising

The Irish Revolution If you start to think in terms of powers of forty then

the 1919-1922 revolution starts to look different to previous revolutions

It all has to do with information ...

Because REDUCING CHOICE is really all about reducing INFORMATION

Which is why, in my opinion, the 1919-1922 revolution was the first information war in human history

But more on that tomorrow!

This Week’s Group Task

Group Task Work Check