“...are not practical: they are done for their own sake.”
Very much disagree. I study art history, and the great majority of what we call artworks have instrumental value. They communicate with the divine, display power, and express ideas. They enable experiences and understanding that cannot be accessed through other means.
Think about architecture. Clearly a technology, right? Some of the most famous buildings (Hagia Sophia, the Guggenheim Bilbao) were built at the cutting edge of technology. But they also create the same kind of aesthetic experiences that food and music create. And not incidentally: that’s their point. So are they a technology or not?
Song works the same way. We know that ancient song served as a way of structuring lyrics so they could be memorized and repeated. It made possible certain kinds of communication that were not otherwise possible. Isn’t that a technology?
The ultimate issue with tech trees, why none has been completed before, is hinted at here but not really described fully. When it comes down to it, the oldest and most potent technologies we have are social technologies. Jimmy Page could never have learned guitar, let alone written songs without a society to support him.
This concession opens a rabbit hole of massive proportions to tumble down. All of human culture and society - marriage, friendship, trade, war, et cetera are ultimately technologies, even by your definition here. Marriage helps keep young men tamed and prevents revolts. Friendships allow for the overcoming of zero-sum competition and promotes greater flourishing in the long run. Hopefully I don't have to explain trade or war.
Either way, all of these things are instrumentally valuable. If you truly do want to create a 'tech tree' that deserves the name, you'll have to include social technologies as well, as far as I'm concerned.
So I think the definition of technology is a rabbit hole on the tech tree goal. Each node on your tree needs to help you show relationships like prerequisites, inspirations, improvements - so you aren't looking for a node to strictly adhere to a particular definition of technology, you are defining the nodes in your tree as those that can show the relationships and then because you happen to have labelled it a tech tree by analogy, you are perhaps getting stuck on the "tech" part of that label?
Rather than form a list of technologies/nodes upfront to connect, could you start with super high level fuzzy categories of knowledge like science, philosophy, art - or familiar timeline milestones like prehistoric, bronze, iron, etc. - then you can selectively add detail to the connections as further nodes and connections?
I think you will definitely crossover concepts of art and philosophy this way, but that's ok if the relationships are important right (eg. inspiration)?
I would argue the "add detail" heuristic could be; is there an interesting relationship hidden here?
In terms of a completion heuristic, I suspect this could be a wikipedia scale endeavour if you let it, and would say the finish line is when you get bored with it and/or open it to collaborative contribution.
Are advances in mathematics an advance in technology? These seem to be a gray area between instrumental and terminal as they often have interesting applications but are also pursued for their own sake
It's a wild intuition that there are more terminally valued things than instrumentally valued things. That's wild! Imagine "glory in competition" is a terminal value and the competition is war. Then horsemanship, bridle-making, smithying, and horse-training will be instrumentally valuable to that end - as will, supply chain logistics and generalship and hand to hand fighting tactics and army healthcare. A single terminal value seems to spawn many more instrumental skills and needs for its fulfillment and the more complex the society the more types of instrumental good can go towards the fulfillment of a single terminal goal.
It's true that a single instrumental skills like smithying can serve many different terminal values, like art, music, war glory. But the sheer quantity of ways to make art, music, and war glory should dominate in quantity, no?
Sorry to sieze on this minor point. The range of technology seems to me to be very vast. I'd count various religions as several technologies combined with several terminal values, while even something like writing can be instrumental record keeping or Calligraphic art (but there I'd call art the terminal value and black stroke brush, ink, and rice paper the technologies enabling it).
“...are not practical: they are done for their own sake.”
Very much disagree. I study art history, and the great majority of what we call artworks have instrumental value. They communicate with the divine, display power, and express ideas. They enable experiences and understanding that cannot be accessed through other means.
Think about architecture. Clearly a technology, right? Some of the most famous buildings (Hagia Sophia, the Guggenheim Bilbao) were built at the cutting edge of technology. But they also create the same kind of aesthetic experiences that food and music create. And not incidentally: that’s their point. So are they a technology or not?
Song works the same way. We know that ancient song served as a way of structuring lyrics so they could be memorized and repeated. It made possible certain kinds of communication that were not otherwise possible. Isn’t that a technology?
The ultimate issue with tech trees, why none has been completed before, is hinted at here but not really described fully. When it comes down to it, the oldest and most potent technologies we have are social technologies. Jimmy Page could never have learned guitar, let alone written songs without a society to support him.
This concession opens a rabbit hole of massive proportions to tumble down. All of human culture and society - marriage, friendship, trade, war, et cetera are ultimately technologies, even by your definition here. Marriage helps keep young men tamed and prevents revolts. Friendships allow for the overcoming of zero-sum competition and promotes greater flourishing in the long run. Hopefully I don't have to explain trade or war.
Either way, all of these things are instrumentally valuable. If you truly do want to create a 'tech tree' that deserves the name, you'll have to include social technologies as well, as far as I'm concerned.
So I think the definition of technology is a rabbit hole on the tech tree goal. Each node on your tree needs to help you show relationships like prerequisites, inspirations, improvements - so you aren't looking for a node to strictly adhere to a particular definition of technology, you are defining the nodes in your tree as those that can show the relationships and then because you happen to have labelled it a tech tree by analogy, you are perhaps getting stuck on the "tech" part of that label?
Rather than form a list of technologies/nodes upfront to connect, could you start with super high level fuzzy categories of knowledge like science, philosophy, art - or familiar timeline milestones like prehistoric, bronze, iron, etc. - then you can selectively add detail to the connections as further nodes and connections?
I think you will definitely crossover concepts of art and philosophy this way, but that's ok if the relationships are important right (eg. inspiration)?
I would argue the "add detail" heuristic could be; is there an interesting relationship hidden here?
In terms of a completion heuristic, I suspect this could be a wikipedia scale endeavour if you let it, and would say the finish line is when you get bored with it and/or open it to collaborative contribution.
Are advances in mathematics an advance in technology? These seem to be a gray area between instrumental and terminal as they often have interesting applications but are also pursued for their own sake
It's a wild intuition that there are more terminally valued things than instrumentally valued things. That's wild! Imagine "glory in competition" is a terminal value and the competition is war. Then horsemanship, bridle-making, smithying, and horse-training will be instrumentally valuable to that end - as will, supply chain logistics and generalship and hand to hand fighting tactics and army healthcare. A single terminal value seems to spawn many more instrumental skills and needs for its fulfillment and the more complex the society the more types of instrumental good can go towards the fulfillment of a single terminal goal.
It's true that a single instrumental skills like smithying can serve many different terminal values, like art, music, war glory. But the sheer quantity of ways to make art, music, and war glory should dominate in quantity, no?
Sorry to sieze on this minor point. The range of technology seems to me to be very vast. I'd count various religions as several technologies combined with several terminal values, while even something like writing can be instrumental record keeping or Calligraphic art (but there I'd call art the terminal value and black stroke brush, ink, and rice paper the technologies enabling it).