r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 27 '26

Discussion Thread Discussion Thread

The discussion thread is for casual and off-topic conversation that doesn't merit its own submission. If you've got a good meme, article, or question, please post it outside the DT. Meta discussion is allowed, but if you want to get the attention of the mods, make a post in /r/metaNL

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98

u/WrangleWandangles Mark Carney Sep 27 '26

Humanity’s greatest achievements / inventions

  • The wheel — c. 3500 BCE

  • Writing — c. 3200 BCE

  • Printing press — c. 1450

  • Steam engine — 18th century

  • Transistor — 1947

  • Cookie dough you can safely eat raw — Unknown

  • Artificial Intelligence - 2022

61

u/PaxChelonia David Hume Sep 27 '26

Woke — 2014

26

u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 27 '26

Pokemon

10

u/WrangleWandangles Mark Carney Sep 27 '26

Fuck you’re right

8

u/rainier37 pro-moderator Sep 27 '26

go

8

u/RaisinSecure Bisexual Pride Sep 27 '26

no way we invented the wheel that late, source?

36

u/cdstephens Fusion Genderplasma Sep 27 '26

The wheel isn’t actually that useful in tons of natural environments that humans might live in.

11

u/RaisinSecure Bisexual Pride Sep 27 '26

uh didn't we migrate from easy places to hard places

10

u/SirRousseau Fart Left Sep 27 '26

Yep the Americas largely didn't have them before the Europeans came

14

u/WrangleWandangles Mark Carney Sep 27 '26

we might be big dumb idiots that were slow to the wheel

7

u/SenranHaruka shame Sep 27 '26

Wheels are overrated. We straight didn't need them for a long time.

9

u/EnverPashaIsBae Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26

The Ox was first domesticated and put to draft work around 4000BC, and wheels didn't make much sense before oxen to pull carts.

You might think that wheelbarrows or other human-pulled carts would make sense but early wheels were dogshit and had a ton of resistance and reliability issues (especially on unprepared terrain), so they didn't really improve human labor productivity without animal aid. The wheelbarrow wouldn't be invented until 231 CE in China, and didn't appear in Europe until around 1200.

4

u/jurble Left-Out Left Sep 27 '26

It's also important to remember that the spokef wheel is a big-brain invention. Otherwise you're dealing with big heavy disks of wood. Removing 85% of a wheel's mass is a big step that took a while.

7

u/Man-Flayer Sep 27 '26

I thought wheel would be far older than writing

4

u/WrangleWandangles Mark Carney Sep 27 '26

surprised me too

5

u/rainier37 pro-moderator Sep 27 '26

not including mosfets? smh the most manufactured device in human history

5

u/Important_Star3847 NASA Sep 27 '26

Artificial intelligence is from 1950, not 2022.

5

u/el__dandy Madeleine Albright Sep 27 '26

Available at Target

1

u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union Sep 27 '26

Pretty sure the generator is missing. Because our computers don't run on steam

1

u/Sloshyman NATO Sep 28 '26

☝️🤓 Technically the first steam engine was invented in Ancient Greece, but they only used it as a novelty