Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What content/knowledge is most important?

57 pointsKennyFromIT70 comments

Let's assume you could store a computer along with a few terabytes of external storage inside a faraday cage. In the event of a disaster, you also have the ability to generate enough power to use the computer.

What content/knowledge would you choose to store on the device and why?

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If multiple terabytes, you can store a lot of information. All Wikipedia is only 21.23 GB compressed as of 21 September 2022. The English Books from Gutenberg Library are around 40GB.

With 1TB, you have already a pretty solid base to rebuild civilization.

Then you can go deeper:

As of last year, all Library Genesis for nonfiction is 40 TB and Scientific Papers are 78.5 TB. Total Library Genesis seems to be 220TB.

Finally, you can go bigger: The total size of archive.org seems to be around 212 PetaBytes. That's some serious storage required.

If I had only one floppy disk, it would be a selection of philosophy books from Socrates, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Thomas Aquinas, La Boetie, Kant, Spinoza, Descartes, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein.

Great list.

Perhaps a stupid question - does that Wikipedia number include photos? If not, what kind of overhead does that add?

That would be the Wikidata Wikicommons dataset. It's 375 TB (source: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q565 ). Including also audio, etc...

Thanks. That makes me feel silly...I had no idea so much media existed on Wikipedia, nor that it had enough text to fill that many GB alone.

English Wikipedia is only about 89GB with pictures included and 46GB without.

You can download here newest version:

https://download.kiwix.org/zim/wikipedia/

I've maxi version with images on my Pi and it works locally without internet access. I've also backup in a faraday cage.

Then you can explore it using https://www.kiwix.org/en/download/

We have to make room for plenty of kitten videos though.

I hear kittens are always ready to make more kitten videos, as long as kittens survive we can rebuild those from scratch.

I recall reading somewhere in the event of an apocalypse you'd need at least ~150 breeding pairs of humans to be able to recover (I think that's with no safety margin either), and it would take generations of careful management to prevent inbreeding and genetic weirdness.

I wonder how many cats you'd need? I would think it would be much higher as I assume superfecundation would drastically increase the risk of inbreeding.

Well if I could just impart one idea or concept it would be similar to Feynman's quote:

>“If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.” ― Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol 1

This should be generalized and augmented to the idea of analysis and synthesis in general, what we could call "general alchemy". That is physical and symbolic isolation & scientific controls help to understand the world, but we also need to figure out the "chemistry" so to speak of how things tend to combine and transform so we can understand the whole ecology of the integrated system.

The freedom to choose among terabytes would take a ton of thought to actually come up with some optimal set. You could probably churn over thoughts on the subject for years.

The future would continue like a nursery rhyme. Embedded in everyone that had English speaking ancestors had this inscribed in them:

ring around the rosy pocket full of posy ashes ashes we all fall down

The inscription date was 538 ad, the second year of the plague of Justinian and the installment of the Biship of Rome.

Oddly enough, that's a similar idea to a plot point in anime called Dr.Stone.

https://dr-stone.fandom.com/wiki/100_Tales

There's no record of that rhyme earlier than the 19th century. Also, the association of it with any kind of plague is a modern invention. Usually association with the Great Plague is claimed, but no writing about the rhyme from before WWII makes any mention of a plague.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_a_Ring_o%27_Roses#The_Gre...

That naturally shows Feynman's bias as a physicists. A biologist would very likely answer that the concept of evolution should be first on the list of ideas to preserve. A mathematician will yet have another answer...

Philosophical consideration: maybe that bias would also incorporate some assumption of familiarity (https://xkcd.com/2501/), and a further implicit expectation that this familiarity (aka unwritten/tribal knowledge) would also implicitly contribute to the raw material necessary to rebuild from some baseline axiom.

In other words, maybe everyone says only X Y and Z from their field is necessary/the most important, not (just) because nothing else is on their radar, but because when they think of their field, simply just mentally reasoning about X, Y, or Z is all it takes to take into account all the connected associations, without the feeling this reasoning takes much mental space or effort; and maybe this is an interesting mental fallacy.

Yes well I don't think Feynman's answer is the one single thing to be passed down myself, I am talking about its generalization in a conceptual, philosophical or mathematical sense. As for if this differs from Darwinian evolution perhaps, and perhaps they will both be subsumed under a comprehensive evo-devo-eco theory which is then generalized to a discipline agnostic model. Since they are two pieces of this triad it is difficult to choose between them.

Hi I just saw that you created https://cubetrek.com/, have you tried fatmap.com? I tried to answer on your topic but it was already locked. So I thought about dropping a message here, if you want to create another thread we can also talk about maps there.

"Try something different" "Don't follow our example" "Wrong way, go back"

All seem like reasonable bits of advice from a civilisation that let itself get wiped out,pretty much regardless of the cause.

Cheating answer: the entirety of Wikipedia and every textbook I can find, encoded to a very long base64 string prefixed with "Base64 is [brief description], and you should use that to decode this:"

Now you can include images too!

I'll echo the others saying that "a few terabytes" is utterly massive and could easily fit the English version of Wikipedia several times over, so this isn't much of a constraint. But to take a stab at it:

1. The Bible (original languages and modern translations)

2. All of (English) Wikipedia

3. Medical textbooks

4. nand2tetris

5. Anything not already in Wikipedia about fabrication processes and manufacturing, especially the more "exotic" stuff - exactly how transistors work, photo-lithography, that kind of thing

I'm a little uncertain about the ordering of 4 and 5; building computer hardware is hard, but the mental models to use it are also unintuitive. On the other other hand, it only took us ~60 years to invent modern software the first time once we had the hardware, and Wikipedia hopefully already covered the mathematical background, so worst case we could probably reinvent everything else if we could preserve knowledge of how to fab transistors and simple microprocessors.

EDIT: I'm blanking on the name, but isn't there a set of textbooks that's basically "here's how to bootstrap a modern industrial civilization"? That seems tailor-made to this question, without needing to make people wander through wikipedia to stumble on little things like "levers" and "engines".

Collar in the first place!

Sorry, what?

Why the bible and not other religious text?

Why include religion at all, which to me did more harm than good.

Why not include books about how to cooperate and collaborate with other ppl and why it’s necessary for societies to survive.

Religious texts contain many lessons, fables, morals and parables about collaboration and cooperation, especially in contexts of extreme poverty, low tech scarcity, etc, the likes of which one would certainly be facing under this scenario.

Don't blame the tools for how people have historically used them. I do, however, agree that it makes sense to include more than just the bible, as almost every sacred text is rich in wisdom.

Yes, but there is a lot garbage and harmful stuff included… it adds too much noise.

Take all the good stuff from those religions texts and create a new book using plain language.

How about ancient Greek philosophies (e.g., Aristotle, stoicism)?

Yes, I think those are important… understanding the origins of democracy and the concept of eudaimonia etc.

> Why the bible and not other religious text?

> Why include religion at all, which to me did more harm than good.

Well, The Bible has the small advantage of being true.

> Why not include books about how to cooperate and collaborate with other ppl and why it’s necessary for societies to survive.

...like The Bible? I defy you to actually follow the teachings of the NT at least and not get cooperation and collaboration for free.

Do you support all the barbaric teachings in it, like stoning your daughter when she lost her virginity before marriage? Is that a truth we should blindly follow?

It’s better to come up with a new book which teaches ppl how to live in harmony and working together without instilling fear, guidelines based on science and using simple language.

You could say the human brain and the scientific process is God’s gift… use it rather than blindly following the words of some powerhungry and controlling folks from the past.

> Do you support all the barbaric teachings in it, like stoning your daughter when she lost her virginity before marriage? Is that a truth we should blindly follow?

John 8:7 pretty clearly obsoletes that. So yeah, I'm still happy to follow what the Bible actually says.

That was just one example of harmful content, there is plenty more.

Why follow a book with contradicting messages?

Why not create a new book with clear positive messages only that doesn’t confuse ppl or doesn’t encourage them to kill or oppress others.

>> Well, The Bible has the small advantage of being true

What does it even mean its true? It's so convoluted and inprecise that most of the texts require interpretation and works only as high level metaphors. This claim is as meaningless as calling it the good book.

I fail to see the relevance of the Bible, unless it is to showcase the breadth of languages and to function as a kind of Rosetta’s stone.

The Bible is probably available in most languages, so using a few hundred megabytes on that isn’t a total waste if you have the space.

nand2tetris definitely.

Handbook of Chemistry.

As many engineering documents as I could find.

Copy of the Great Books.

The Art of Computer programming.

Terabytes would be enough to contain perhaps most written material in English but the above is what I would start with.

You mean the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics?

The great books?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_W...

There are two scenarios: a disaster that is bad, but from which humans can recover, and a disaster that ends us. The latter scenario is not entirely pointless: perhaps one day life will evolve again, or aliens will visit, and would it not be good for them to know we were here? It's a civilizational mark carved into the great Tree, "Humans were here." There are several interesting possibilities about how and where such a repository could be stored to survive through longtime, the best bet being the Moon, which is geologically inactive and quite extraordinary body, being large and the same angular size as the Sun as seen from Earth.

How would humans want to be remembered? We might focus on music, art, dreams, stories, philosophy, rather than technology, although that might be included, too. I suspect that zoology and biology would be particularly important, as this is the unique natural bounty of our world, the product of billions of years of Life living and dying.

This makes me want to write a story about how a world war begins over the selection of content of this Grand Time Capsule that kills us off.

History of the earth and humans and our understanding of the cosmos. I think technology is not that interesting in the grand scheme, other than a record of how far we got.

I guess you would make many replicas on the moon for redundancy against meteorites. They could also broadcast signals to space, altough surely they would be relatively shortlived without maintenance.

I would like to read a story about it.

How about some books about retro computing. Simple computing might be the only thing you'll have after a solar/EMP event.

"The Art of Electronics" "ARRL Handbook" "Digital Logic and Computer Design" but you might want these in paper format.

The various PDF specs, so that you can construct a PDF viewer if you have to for your other books.

A simpler Linux (source/(cross)compiler/tool-chain) everything that you need to bootstrap a new system. All your favorite apps + source like a PDF/Epub viewers. https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/

Maybe CPU gets destroyed and all you got left are bulkier Micro-controllers. http://collapseos.org/

Programming languages code/specs for things like ASM/Forth/C/Lisp/Scheme (Python, please let Python survive ;)

I would opt for a curated list of books, quality over quantity.

Survival + Prepper books could also come in handy. https://theprepared.com/prepping-basics/reviews/best-prepper...

There is also other organizations that compile lists, but I cannot quickly find them now.

Hope you find it helpful.

The LongNow foundation has lists for you: https://longnow.org/ideas/category/manual-for-civilization/

> We have named this collection the Manual for Civilization, and it will include the roughly 3500 books most essential to sustain or rebuild civilization.

https://longnow.org/ideas/02014/02/06/manual-for-civilizatio...

Books on Fishing, Foraging, Farming, Carpentry, Mechanics, Electricity, Engineering,

Project Zomboid has taught me.

I would probably add a few compendiums on Computers/Computing, Philosophy, History of the World, Art, Geology and Astronomy.

Good list. Reminds me of the plot from The Foundation book where Hari Seldon wants to build a library of all the knowledge that can help build a civilization from scratch.

Absolutely! Loved the series, probably good to add them if there was space. I’d probably skip over Religion thinking about it. No religious books and such and just a pretty formal description of the worlds religions that existed.

Instead adding a book on Ethics :) Not sure I know a good starter book on Ethics actually.

Plato's The Republic

King Fuzi's The Analects

Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics

It will depend on how much resources you'd have to create the archive. A single person having a few hours will select different resources from a big team working over a few years.

the foundational texts/histories of as many cultures and as many personal accounts of whatever pre-apocalypse was like, and some practical medical books.

I find it funny (but not surprising) that tech people will always put some random science knowledge in there but post-apocalyptic, small scattered communities aren't going to rely on computers and need, if anything, human knowledge which is always relevant and answers on how to govern themselves and how they ended up in the mess.

Basically whatever prevents Lord of the Flies and people dying of dysentery would I think have priority. Also gonna throw Ashley Book of Knots as a concrete recommendation in there because knowing your knots is probably a good idea when the world has ended and that book is a classic

> inside a Faraday cage

So taking precautions for a giant solar flare/nuclear bomb EMP causing civilization collapse? Offline Wikipedia is a great recommendation, but I would complement it with prepper literature about survival and rebooting basic technologies. It might give you a guide about what to look for in your Wikipedia. Those books would also help you actually prepare for civilization collapse, because a computer won't keep you alive if there's no clean water or food.

Also, nothing beats community. If civilization collapses, your neighbors will be your best chance for survival, there's lots of weird and valuable knowledge when enough people cooperate, and then your computer would be very helpful.

- Geometry (Euclidean Geometry)

- Algebra (Linear Algebra)

- Calculus & Analysis

- Physics

Many university curricula include linear algebra and vector calculus. Physics is mandatory for all engineering disciplines.

Therefore, my suggestion would be to preserve the language of our universe and abstract thinking patterns (i.e. mathematics) and the rules of our universe (i.e., physics).

Those 2 are the absolute minimum, I would say, to rebuild modern civilization from scratch.

MATHEMATICS

- Linear Algebra by Friedberg, Insel and Spence.

- Linear Algebra Done Right by Sheldon Axler

- Linear Algebra Done Wrong by Sergei Treil

- An Illustrative Guide to Multivariable and Vector Calculus

- Vector Calculus by Tromba & Marsden

- Vector Calculus by Colley

PHYSICS

- Fundamentals of Physics by Jearl Walker

- The Theoretical Mimimum by Susskind

EXTRAS

- Measurement by Lockhart

- Code by Petzold

- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

- Books by the ancient Greeks

Really interesting question. I'm answering from the perspective of a civilization ending or resetting event, rather than say, a disaster like a hurricane.

Wikipedia to start. But IMO that's not good enough as it's not very discoverable, but makes a great 'for further reading.'

Definitely world history content. Lack of written record is probably one of the most frustrating aspects when studying past civilizations.

Definitely books and such on planting, crop rotations, problems, etc.

Books on maths, physics, geography, biology, chemistry, etc. Probably at least 101 level.

Once I covered those bases, I'd probably fill the rest with video, music, and photo content, though I'm not sure yet of what or how much

A few important books, sure. But I would include as many photos as possible. Mostly of people from all over the world doing their usual daily tasks. Scientific knowledge can be relearned but when culture is lost its lost forever.

Your faraday cage may fail unless you are able to test it. Simple test you can try with a faraday cage. Put a phone in yours. Try to call the number on the phone. If it rings, you have a lot of studying to do.

Wrapping a phone a bit in aluminum foil didn't work for me. But if I was liberal with how much foil to use, I could eventually keep the phone off the hook.

Will that work to save an ssd from a signal millions of times more intense with a far sharper rise? I kind of doubt it. So that aluminum foil covering my lifes work or dreams is probably as good as 3 day old wheat bread toast after a dedicated electronic nuke is detonated.

I'm curious no one cares to store culture on the computer — maybe in the form of music, movies, and videos? Most knowledge can be derived at some point, but the culture is going to be lost.

That's what anthropologists want to do, usually in the form of writing, but I don't think anyone else cares.

I would get rid of idea that something is universaly most important.

Everything and nothing is important. It depends on how, whey and who knows that knowledge.

With all the talk about nuclear wwiii I don't blame you for the question. I'd like to point that human connection is more important than any knowledge. If you insist, however, I can point you to a similar story today on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33114107

That's a big assumption to have a working computer, screen, electricity etc. More interesting is the no-electricity scenario. Then I would made 4 books - one out of etched metal, another out of etched plastic, spring bound. One pair describing how to make metals and steels in as many simple ways as possible. Another pair about making electricity.

Depends on the type of disaster and what your goal is.

Assuming some kind of nuclear apocalypse and you want to rebuild, a bunch of survival info, basic engineering instruction you or a small group could execute, and encyclopedias would be valuable.

But most importantly, the vast majority of your storage space should be for batteries.

Except the obvious, Wikipedia / Wikimedia, I would throw in the current best GPU and a copy of Stable Diffusion / GPT-3 fully trained dataset checkpoints + code to run them, both are great tools for enhancing creativity in a desolate world.

Along with the things mentioned in other comments, I would add lots of dictionaries, especially bilingual ones.

We take words for granted, but so much of the shared experience of humanity is embedded in words themselves.

I would like to save all FOSS which is on the planet, all whitepapers, all mathematical knowledge, and of course Bitcoin's blockchain.

a copy of the blockchain from right before i cashed out please

It will not work. If you were cashed out far before apocalypse than some others high-entropy block will be after your tx. If you were cashed between the nukes have flied up and the first nuke explode than you can not effectively use your value.

Books, videos, guides on:

- Homesteading, Animal Husbandry, Agriculture

- DIY, Construction, Electronics Repair

- Emergency Medicine, Natural Medicines

- Maps

Wouldn’t bother rebuilding civilisation, I’d probably want eXoDOS though.

What kind of storage media is the most durable in a powered of state?

Ages ago I compiled a list of beneficial to society knowledge. From memory so more of a pamphlet than on a hard drive:

How wings/flight works; how to design a simple airfoil.

Germ theory, penicillin. Microscope looking for crazy hands on long stalks. Lenses are molten glass in a mold.

Vaccines are created by producing lots of a bad thing and then heating it up to the point it dies. deactivated virus.

Heat milk to just below a boil. Never let it boil. Milk does absorb significant amounts of heat before boiling. Pasteurization.

Insulin comes from pigs and dog pancreas.

electricity = magnet + water wheel. magnets come from heated iron. next to coiled wire.

magnet -> compass

electricity + tungsten = lightbulb.

gears, glasses, thermometers, scissors, saws, utensils, language books, screwless construction techniques.

Medical Comedy by Pliny the Elder.

Medicine

porn

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