@semck

I strongly disagree that we couldn't build the pyramids today, or that a senior engineering class could build this clock.

@semck: "That pyramid was comletely out of line with what they should have been able to do back then, or even what we could do now. It is truly unbelievable that it exists.
This clock, while staggeringly impressive, is utilizing well-understood physics, math, and technology. "

How do you know the pyramids were out of line with their knowledge? The problem with the egyptians is that they didn't have documentation of their knowledge. It could be a very similar comparison, but we won't know for sure unless all our means of knowledge would be removed and all other forms rot away and the clock gets discovered in a couple centuries.

To elaborate, there are aspects of the clock that *aren't* well understood. For instance, how materials hold up after 10,000 years. We don't have that type of data for a lot of the precision parts that are being made for the clock.

And given the degree of sophistication in Egyptian society, I'd say the pyramids were easier for them to build than Stonehenge, for example.

I would have liked to see the pyramids when they still had their marble top layer on them.....that would have been amazing to see

This thread...proof that WebDip players will argue about anything? Or intellectual art? ...as you uniquely explore the artistic and/or non-artistic nature of...
Look at the eloquence and intellectual expressions of wonder/awe, etc...

@abge,

I did say the senior class _at MIT_. I'm pretty sure they could, but there's no practical way to resolve that.

"To elaborate, there are aspects of the clock that *aren't* well understood. For instance, how materials hold up after 10,000 years. We don't have that type of data for a lot of the precision parts that are being made for the clock. "

That goes to the wrong question. That just means that we lack complete certainty whether the clock will actually last, not that they aren't the same materials any great engineer would use.

@FK: Good point, except that we can kind of judge by the rest of the stuff they did. They didn't have epic stonework all over the place, just the pyramids. We, on the other hand, do have magnificent technology of every type. If traces of our society last at all, that will be very clear from the future.

"They didn't have epic stonework all over the place, just the pyramids"

oh no you didn't. These bitches owned stone.

http://www.ciaraknight.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Ruins-at-Karnac-and-Luxor.png

http://images.travelpod.com/tw_slides/ta00/d3b/b36/ram-road-at-karnac-luxor.jpg

http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/7/736/V65Z000Z/art-print/egypt-great-hall-karnac.jpg

http://www.saqqara.nl/img/Context/_350/ObeliskRome.jpg

http://www.zoss.com/personal/egypt/images/Luxor%20Temple%20and%20Obelisk%20at%20Sunset.jpg

http://artofcounting.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/KV9-burial-chamber-Egypt.jpg

http://prints.encore-editions.com/500/0/ruins-of-the-second-court-at-the-back-of-the-palace-temple-of-ramses-iii-at-medinet-habu-thebes-egypt-a-beato.jpg

http://www.lessing-photo.com/p3/080117/08011701.jpg

http://cache.virtualtourist.com/6/3552156-West_Thebes_Hatshepsuts_Terrasse_Temple_Thebes.jpg

To be honest, I'd be more interested in this, The New Rosetta Stone Project:

http://rosettaproject.org/

ALL the languages on Earth, preserved in a way that would last thousands of years...

Think of the texts you could preserve!

Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, Dickens, Twain, Hemmingway...

Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, Sartre...

Bible, Bagavad Gita, Koran...

The Magna Carta, The American and French Declarations of Independence...

All preserved...and possibly preserved past the time anyone on Earth would survive to be able to even read them, yet those words would remain forever etched...

Sort of poetic and tragic at the same time (or maybe it's all these final papers getting to me, I dunno...) :)

"That goes to the wrong question. That just means that we lack complete certainty whether the clock will actually last, not that they aren't the same materials any great engineer would use."

No. They are using different materials because some of the common ones now will fuse into each other over long periods of time.

"To be honest, I'd be more interested in this, The New Rosetta Stone Project:"

Says the man who hates ebooks : )

But, seriously, this does look pretty cool, too.

Touche goldfinger, you win that point. I am increasingly willing to say that the marvel word does apply, and that I was mis-glossing the word early.

"No. They are using different materials because some of the common ones now will fuse into each other over long periods of time."

Yes, I know. This also is not relevant to your former post. Basically:

(1) They used different materials because some of the common ones will fuse into each other. So they tried to use some that they didn't think would. Any good engineer who is trying to design slow-moving gears that will last 10,000 years should think of this issue. On the other hand,

(2) "We don't have that type of data for a lot of the precision parts that are being made for the clock." Perhaps I misunderstood you, but I took you to be saying (correctly) that we don't actually have any data on how these materials last through 10,000 years (besides noting that old, mor e primitive ceramics do great), so that there is some guesswork involved in whether the clock will actually last. Perhaps that's _not_ what you were saying? But if it is, it would be true of any engineer, yet doesn't mean that these aren't the "best guess" materials any engineer would use.

If you were instead saying that the tendency of metal to fuse (or of different types of metal to corrode each other) is an obscure, little known fact, then I disagree.

Of course, this is now getting truly out there and irrelevant. :-P But if we enjoy arguing, why the heck not, that's what I'd like to know.

@semck

You understood me correctly on both point 1 and 2. I fail to see how that's different than the Egyptians. They knew how Ramps worked, they knew how pulleys worked, they knew how slave labor worked. While impressive, the Pyramids didn't just pop out of thin air; it was based on known engineering principles of the time.

abge, perhaps I have lost track of things. My understanding was always that point 2 was in support of the proposition that a senior engineering class couldn't design the clock. That is what I was disagreeing with.

As I said in my post to goldfinger, I am coming around to your way of thinking on the "Wonder" aspect, with just a couple caveats:

(1) I still just don't see this, _technologically_ as the most amazing thing we've done with our technology (by far), whereas the pyramids were kind of the crowning achievement of the Egyptians.

(2) I still see the artistic aspects as the most important.

lol

I think we are talking about different things. Let me be clearer.


Status as a Wonder:

I believe it could be considered a wonder (if actually built as described) for both its technical and symbolic achievements. While perhaps not the most difficult thing to build, it is certainly one of the largest technological endeavors. Furthermore, like the pyramids, it is designed to withstand time, which really nothing else in our civilization is.

Also, if you consider the artistic aspect, I think it's hard to argue this clock isn't beautiful. It has a mechanical computer that randomly makes bell's chimes. It's interactive (the clock must be wound by a human). Interactive art is cool. I think there's plenty of art to be found here.


Senior MIT Class:

Perhaps. I really don't know. What I do know is that not everyone who goes to MIT is brighter than everyone who doesn't. But, with that aside, I think there are a number of issues, perhaps not purely technological that Seniors would not be able to handle, such as large-scale planning and integration and coordination of various fields, not to mention getting funding for this project. While not tech issues, they are still entire projects in and of themselves, even though they just make up a small part of the overall clock.

Abge, I don't think there's very much left that we disagree on. Kind of disappointing, because I was certainly enjoying the argument. I agree with you (obviously) about the artistic aspects. The chimes thing is indeed a mind-blowing piece of engineering, and in my opinion the most spectacular facet of the clock. A mechanical computer. Wow.

The one thing left where I somewhat continue to disagree is that this is among our most impressive engineering feats. I'm really not sure about that. I still think that LHC, lasers, the 787, the Pentium, etc., etc. are all much more dazzling if you look into them, and the list could go on awhile. It is a very impressive thing though.

I will pause to specifically agree with your point that not everybody at MIT is smarter than everybody not at MIT. That's not even approximately true. What should be true is that the average intelligence and training there are very high, which is why I lazily chose it.

I think we're approaching the "impressive" from 2 different viewpoints.

Right now, today, I can think of hundreds of things more technologically impressive:

Transistor
Resonant Tunneling Diode
Facial/Speech recognition software
LHC
Watson and Deep Blue
etc

However, in 10,000 years (if all goes according to plan) what of our society will be impressive?

The clock. Because that's all that will be left. That and maybe the Pyramids.

*That's* why I think it deserves to be a wonder, while these other amazing things don't.

Perhaps we should lock some transistors with the clock, seeing as that was, by far, humanity's most important invention.

Well, OK, but is longevity the only thing they'll appreciate in 10,000 years? I would imagine they'll still be making their own transistors, diodes, lasers, etc., and they'll be pretty dazzled at the people who invented them.
Could be wrong though.
I just think the word wonder should be applied to things that are wonderful; not just things that last a long time.

We still have paper and agriculture, but nobody really cares about the Egyptians for that.

Do you really think that if you walked into a cave containing am enormous 10,000 year old clock, which you cranked up only to find it still kept proper time, you wouldn't be just as impressed as you would be visiting Giza?

"We still have paper and agriculture, but nobody really cares about the Egyptians for that."

Actually, I kind of do. :-P

But yeah, I'll give you that this thing is pretty impressive, and will be considered so for ages.

Ah, I tried to bait you into a fight by saying the transistor was the most important invention in human history. I'm glad you agree : )

Oh, haha... I didn't even notice that post, sorry.
Um. Yeah, I certainly don't strongly _dis_agree. I'd still give some love to the wheel, the knife, etc., but the transistor, yeah, definitely nothing more important.
Plus it was invented in Texas.

@Abge: "Facial/Speech recognition software"

As someone who specialized in AI in college, I can tell you it is pretty simple stuff, just pattern recognition. Watson is impressive, but only because they had the processing power and knowledge base, not because of the software running him.

Maybe things that are impressive is stuff you either have a LOT of knowledge about or very little?
For example, my physics is somewhat limited when it comes to quantum physics, and I think the LHC is technology way beyond our time.

@FK

Is it? I only have a very cursory knowledge of it, so perhaps it isn't as hard as I think. However, neither of them work that well yet, so it can't be that good.

But, if you think of how complex the human eye and brain is to analyze faces, it's rather impressive we can have a machine do it.

Face recognition: it's really quite simple. The easiest way to explain it is building a ocr. It's simple, break the image down to pixels, each letter is just a matrix of 1 (colored) or 0. Simple formula's will give you pattern recognition and viola (we actually wrote an OCR in one of my AI classes when I was a 3rd year, so nothing horribly complex). Face recognition has to have a decent set of color and a concept of the 3rd dimension (which is just image processing you have in most video games now-a-days) with the same type of pattern recognition. It isn't as complex as our eyes or brains... just math :)

In fairness, FK, a lot of modern, cutting-edge face recognition algorithms are extremely complicated, mathematically at least. They are "just math," as you say, but they're very very high-falutin' math.

Hey, you know what would be pretty sweet? If this clock got really famous, but then somehow the whereabouts were lost, and after a few thousand years, there was just this legend that somewhere in a mountain in the American west was this mythical clock.

Admittedly, this would involve things like the complete collapse of modern technology, but hey. :-P