this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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Today I Learned

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[–] tomi000@lemmy.world 14 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

The title is very misleading. What it means is "for the first 97% of Homo Sapiens' existence, there was no writing", which just states something everyone more or less knows or has a feeling about. It says nothing about how much of what has happened in history has actually been recorded. I mean how would you even measure that? What is 100%? That would mean "all information", so at least the atomic configuration of the whole earth. Even for a single instant, that would need more memory capacity than is available to all data centers combined (and its not a close call, you would need a data center 100+ times the size of earth to store that information)

[–] moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Unfortunately, I don't document every one of my poop's turds

[–] gedaliyah@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

Naw, just get better compression algorithm bro /s

[–] egrets@lemmy.world 4 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Even for a single instant, that would need more memory capacity than is available to all data centers combined

Sure, but we only need to know the exact state of all of the mass and energy in the universe at that one point in time and we can extrapolate from there in both directions.

[–] naught101@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I know this is a joke, but: no you can't. Chaotic dynamics become unpredictable very quickly with minor noise/errors, and quantum effects like e.g. hawking radiation are plenty enough noise to screw up your projections.

[–] eleijeep@piefed.social 1 points 47 seconds ago

Yeah well you know that's just like uhh your opinion, man.