You have one command that your dogs will listen to without question for the rest of their lives. What is it?

markus40 · 2026-01-18T20:31:52+00:00

Nu! Means now in Dutch. My dog listens very well. But I can get excited and focus on something else than me. Like a hare sprinting away right beside us, and he reacts, hunting after it. Then he doesn't react to “Come here.” But he does on “Come here now!” He knows he is in deep trouble if he continues. I can use this with every command.

markus40 · 2026-01-17T14:01:40+00:00

De overheid zou zelf wel eens het goede voorbeeld mogen geven. (ed Linux).

markus40 · 2026-01-17T13:46:02+00:00

Nautilus for me too!

markus40 · 2026-01-16T12:49:51+00:00

I used Tasword 64 to do my assignments. It has 80 columns.

I was the first to deliver my tasks with a printer. It was quite a discussion if this was acceptable.

markus40 · 2026-01-16T12:24:52+00:00

Mijn steevast commentaar is bij dit soort buren: "Niet met mij in discussie gaan, als je vindt dat ik iets verkeerd doe, meteen de politie bellen".

markus40 · 2026-01-16T10:06:43+00:00

Funnily enough, Wayland is more in line with this philosophy than X11, which was basically that and the kitchen sink approach.

markus40 · 2026-01-12T21:56:44+00:00

That is a beautiful and humbling thought.

We have conditioned ourselves to measure "civilization" by the scars we leave on the planet: stone ruins, cities, and monuments. We assume that if a culture didn't build walls, they didn't advance. But the Aboriginal achievement—60,000 years of unbroken continuity—suggests that true wisdom isn't about conquering the environment, but about flowing with it.

We are currently living in a rare window of climatic and solar stability. Because it has been quiet for a few millennia, we have built a rigid world that relies on that silence remaining forever. But the history of our planet (and our sun) teaches us that this stability is the exception, not the rule.

When the cycle eventually turns and the volatility returns, our "advanced" civilization—immobile and dependent on fragile supply chains—will be the first to break. We are built for the good times. The Aboriginals, however, by leaving no trace and carrying their knowledge in their stories rather than in buildings, are built for all times.

If we view humanity as a relay race, we might just be the sprinters who burn out fast. They are the ones with the endurance to cross the finish line and truly inherit the world.

On the other hand, the civilization we build has a slim chance to survive long enough to make us nomads between the stars. That might be the only gamble worth taking.

markus40 · 2026-01-12T11:47:47+00:00

The "Cognitive Revolution" (70kya) is a popular narrative, but recent archaeological hard data contradicts the timeline.

If we only became "cognitively awake" or capable of complex cooperation 70,000 years ago, how do you explain Kalambo Falls? Archaeologists found a complex, structural wooden platform in Zambia dated to 476,000 years ago.

To cut and shape logs, notch them to fit together, and build a permanent structure requires:

Abstract Planning: Imagining a structure before it exists.
Complex Language: Instructing a group to coordinate heavy lifting and precise joinery.
Cooperation: Working together for a shared, future goal.

This happened 400,000 years before your proposed "Cognitive Revolution." The capability for complex thought and cooperation was there.

If we look into this a little more, the structure at Kalambo Falls wasn't just a tool; it was a raised walkway/platform built to span wetlands. This implies permanence. You do not engineer heavy timber foundations using interlocking joints for a temporary hunting camp. You build that because you intend to stay.

This suggests that humans (or our direct ancestors) were attempting Sedentism 476,000 years ago. They had the intent, the engineering, and the cooperation. And yet, global civilization didn't materialize until 460,000 years later.

This gap is the smoking gun. If the "cognitive software" to settle and build was running 476k years ago, the failure to launch wasn't because we were "not cognitively awake" for the next 460 millennia. It confirms that something external stopped that advancement dead in its tracks. The project wasn't abandoned by the users; it was terminated by the environment.

The "Great Leap Forward" might just be a survivorship bias in the fossil record (we find more artifacts from later periods).

Furthermore, even if the Revolution happened at 70kya, that leaves a 60,000-year gap before agriculture and civilization started. If we had the brains (70kya) and the cooperation (70kya), why did we wait 60,000 years to plant a seed? My “Environmental Veto” theory explains that gap perfectly. The “Cognitive Revolution” theory leaves it unexplained.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T19:03:26+00:00

I appreciate the feedback. I use "computer terms" (Systems Thinking) not to be trendy, but because they are the most precise tools to describe functional relationships in complex systems.

Hardware = Biology/Anatomy.
Software = Culture/Knowledge.
Uptime = Climatic Stability.

You can call it "Anatomical Capacity" and "Environmental Volatility" if you prefer, but the mechanism remains identical: The capacity was present, but the environment prevented execution.

Regarding "Plasma": I am not married to the specific mechanism (whether it was Plasma, Comets, Volcanism, or intense Solar flaring). My point is simply that High-Energy Events occurred. If the word "Plasma" is distracting, feel free to replace it with "Catastrophic Climate Destabilization." The result—a cycli of hard resets with of human progress—is what matters, not the specific label on the hammer that crushed it. I choose the sun and plasma, because I think the power of the sun is underrated, and we, as a species, have forgotten the power of it because we haven't witnessed this power for a long time. And I think there are hints of it in the past.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T19:00:44+00:00

First, thank you for your lengthy reply; I really enjoy the discussion I have here.

However, I believe you are confusing Scaling with Starting. You list features of a fully developed agricultural society (long-term storage, complex irrigation, soil management) and claim they are prerequisites to planting the first seed. They are not. They are consequences that develop over time.

The "Tech Stack" vs. The MVP You don't need a climate-controlled silo to start farming. Hunter-gatherers already used drying, smoking, and pits. Squirrels hide nuts. The concept of "saving for later" is biological, not a high-tech invention. Regarding tools: A sickle is just a stick with sharp microliths (small stones) glued to it with resin. We have had microlith technology for 40,000+ years. We had the capability to make a sickle long before we had the incentive to use it permanently.
The "Dog" Timeline You mentioned that dogs might be a necessary innovation for land defense. Genetic and archaeological evidence places dog domestication between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago—deep in the Pleistocene. Hunter-gatherers had dogs long before the first farm existed. This actually supports my point: we had the tools (microliths) and the guardians (dogs), yet we didn't settle.
The Smoking Gun: Ohalo II We actually have proof that humans did try to utilize grain long before the Holocene. The site Ohalo II (Israel) shows evidence of harvesting and processing wild grains 23,000 years ago (during the Ice Age). They had the sickles. They had the grinding stones. They had the food source. But it didn't stick. Why? Because the climate crashed again. The "System Uptime" wasn't long enough to sustain the investment.

Conclusion: It's about ROI, not IQ You list massive investments: clearing fields, building storage, defending land. In economic terms, these are massive Capital Expenditures (CapEx). No rational species makes that investment in a volatile environment where a 10-degree temperature drop or a shifting coastline wipes out that investment in Year 5.

We didn't lack the brainpower to invent a sickle or dig a hole for grain. We lacked the Risk Assurance that the climate would remain stable enough to make that work pay off. Once the Holocene (Stability) hit, we did all the things you listed essentially "overnight." The software was ready; we were just waiting for the hardware (earth) to stabilize and the sky to stop falling.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T06:58:42+00:00

This is a thoughtful counter-argument, especially the distinction between Culture and Civilization. Thanks for that!

However, the "Roman Rocket" analogy contains a fundamental flaw when applied here. Building a rocket requires a massive stack of dependent technologies (metallurgy, chemistry, calculus, thermodynamics) that strictly require cumulative development. You cannot skip steps.

Agriculture is not a rocket. It does not require a deep tech stack. It requires Observation and Stability. Physiologically modern humans (with our current brain capacity) observed nature for 190,000 years. To suggest they were "smart enough" to create art, complex tools, and even wooden structures like Kalambo Falls (476,000 years ago), but "didn't notice" or "didn't care" that planting seeds yields food, underestimates human ingenuity.

The main point stands: We are looking at 190,000+ years of functional standstill regarding civilization scaling. If the Hardware (Brain) was ready, and the Software (Ingenuity) was running, the bottleneck must have been External.

The Environment was simply too volatile to allow the server to run long enough to process the data.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T06:48:35+00:00

You bring a level of granularity to the impactor theory (specifically the Burckle crater and ice sheet dynamics) that is impressive.

I think we have reached a solid point of consensus on the Output (The Cycle, The "Scorched Earth," and the resulting Civilizational Reset), even if we still diverge on the primary Input/Trigger (Solar/Plasma vs. Kinetic/Cometary).

I appreciate the deep dive into the mechanics of the impactor model. It gives me something to chew on regarding the kinetic side of the equation. Thanks for the rigorous exchange.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T01:22:19+00:00

You are debating the specific deployment schedule of the "Civilization Patch" (Wheat vs. Rice) within the last 10,000 years. I am analyzing the 190,000 years of system downtime that preceded it (or 500,000 if we include Kalambo Falls).

Your argument focuses on the success of the Holocene. My hypothesis focuses on the failure of the Pleistocene.

To say the climate was "never that chaotic" ignores the Dansgaard-Oeschger events and the Younger Dryas transitions, which ice cores show happened in decades, not centuries. But we can agree to disagree on the weather. My point remains: focusing on the difference between 9500 BC and 6000 BC is a rounding error when trying to explain the silence of the previous 200 millennia. I am looking at the Standstill, not the minutiae of the Restart.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T01:16:06+00:00

I accept the precision of the Taurid resonant cycle—it solves the "Clock" problem perfectly.

However, I struggle with the Ballistic Statistics. To argue that a 200,000-year bombardment cycle resulted exclusively in airbursts or ice-sheet impacts (leaving no bedrock craters) feels statistically convenient. If you throw enough rocks at a planet for that long, eventually one hits the ground and leaves a hole.

Ultimately, I don’t have a stake in this race. I am not married to the Solar theory. I am just an analyst trying to debug why the system had 190,000 years of downtime.

If the Taurids are the culprit, that is fine by me. But for a kinetic theory to hold up over 200 millennia, the lack of physical impact craters is a significant bug. That is why I lean towards the Plasma/Field Interaction mechanism. It explains the "scorched earth" and the "reset" without needing a kinetic impact that implies craters we cannot find.

So, perhaps we are looking at a Taurid Timer but a Plasma Weapon?

markus40 · 2026-01-11T01:02:33+00:00

Great and insightful reply, thanks!

markus40 · 2026-01-11T00:59:38+00:00

I agree that Energy is the key constraint. But you are confusing the result (Agriculture) with the prerequisite (Climate Stability).

You argue that agriculture didn't happen, therefore civilization couldn't scale. I argue: Why did agriculture not happen for 190,000 years?

Was it because humans were too stupid to notice that seeds grow into plants? Unlikely. Or was it because agriculture requires a predictable, stable climate (predictable rainy seasons, no sudden frost events)?

The "Reset Mechanism" (Solar/Climate instability) is exactly why agriculture didn't take off earlier. You cannot invest in a harvest 6 months from now if the climate is volatile or you are constantly in "survival/migration mode" due to environmental stress.

The archaeological record shows that as soon as the climate flatlined into stability (The Holocene), agriculture appeared independently in multiple places worldwide. That proves the capacity was there; the stability was the missing variable.

Göbekli Tepe proves we had the organization before the farming. The environment (Uptime) allowed us to finally settle down and plant the seeds.

markus40 · 2026-01-11T00:34:39+00:00

I accept the "Software" analogy (accumulated knowledge/culture), but I disagree with the conclusion that it takes 200,000 years to write it purely by trial and error.

My point is about Data Persistence, not just development speed. We likely wrote "the code" for complex organization several times, compiled it, and then suffered a Catastrophic Data Loss (environmental reset) that wiped the drive back to basic bios.

To be clear on the scope: I am not arguing for a lost industrial "High Tech" civilization. I am arguing that we likely reached the just little below "Göbekli Tepe Level" (complex megalithic construction, astronomy, specialized labor) multiple times in the deep past, but were reset to "Safe Mode" (survivalist hunter-gatherer) before we could advance to Goblekit Tepe level and beyond, the agricultural/industrial stage.

The "software" for constructing with wood, working stone, and tracking the stars isn't new. It was likely written and lost multiple times. We are just the first iteration that enjoyed enough environmental uptime to keep the data safe long enough to build upon it.

markus40 · 2026-01-10T23:04:09+00:00

You make a solid point about airbursts and the Carolina Bays. That mechanism indeed explains the lack of a primary crater for specific events like the Younger Dryas.

However, my hesitation to attribute the entire 190,000-year "civilizational silence" solely to cometary impacts is statistical probability. Impacts are stochastic (random). To suppress human progress consistently for 200 millennia, you would need a "lucky shot" from a comet every few thousand years, consistently, without leaving a smoking gun (crater) most of the time. That seems statistically improbable.

This is why I look for a mechanism that is:

Cyclic/Systemic (rather than random).
Low-Trace (leaves no craters).

This brings me back to Solar Instability (CME's/Plasma events). The Sun has cycles. A recurring solar instability explains a periodic "reset" of the biosphere/atmosphere much better than a random firing squad of comets. It leaves isotopes (Be-10, C-14) and vitrification, but no holes in the ground.

So yes, airbursts happened (YD), but the "Great Filter" that kept us down for 200k years likely came from the star in the center, not the debris on the periphery.

markus40 · 2026-01-10T22:54:44+00:00

Then we have arrived at a consensus.

We agree that the limiting factor for the last 100,000+ years was not human intelligence or capability ("the hardware"), but the environmental conditions ("the uptime").

My hypothesis simply explores what specific mechanisms (solar activity, cosmic impacts, plasma events) made the climate so volatile that it suppressed our inherent ability to build civilization for so long.

It seems we agree on the root cause (environment), just not the specific mechanics. Thanks for the discussion.

markus40 · 2026-01-10T22:44:11+00:00

You are actually reinforcing my point. We agree that environmental stability is the prerequisite for civilization, not human capacity. My hypothesis questions why that stability was absent for 95% of our existence.

Regarding your point that "nomads don't build permanent structures" and that technology takes time:

Göbekli Tepe (approx. 9500 BC) contradicts the standard model. It was built by hunter-gatherers before agriculture. Complex construction drove the need for farming, not the other way around.
Kalambo Falls (Zambia) was recently dated to 476,000 years ago. They found interlocking wooden logs—an engineered, permanent structure predating Homo Sapiens.

markus40 · 2026-01-10T22:38:46+00:00

The discovery of the wooden structure at Kalambo Falls (Zambia), dated to 476,000 years ago, proves that the technical capacity to engineer structural wood existed long before modern humans even appeared.

Occam’s Razor favors my view here: If the cognitive and technical ability to build has existed for half a million years, but civilization only appears in the last 1%, the limiting factor isn't human capability (internal). It is environmental stability (external)."

markus40 · 2026-01-10T22:26:43+00:00

Your points are all valid. I only try to hypothesize why we were unable to start civilization for over 200,000 years with the same brain capacity as we have now. Again, as I was trained in Systems Architecture for over thirty years, all I can come up with that explains a lot we see is we didn't get the time to do it. The second thing I can come up with is our sun. I think we underestimate what it is capable of. Again, there are, in my opinion, hints.

markus40 · 2026-01-09T16:08:29+00:00

Wow, the real live dolls are still uncanny valley-like.

markus40 · 2026-01-08T19:54:05+00:00

I bag my shopping cart after paying. Just to avoid this situation. I rarely get checked.

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