The Bootstrap Problem

[vakkotaur]

There's likely a simple, though maybe not easy, answer that I've just plain missed. One of the things I've wondered about is what could be called the bootstrap problem. How can crude tools be used to make less crude tools?

That is, you start with sticks and stones, and you eventually end up with precision machined parts accurate to tolerances that may be too small to see. It can be done. That much is plain since humanity did it. But although it's been proven possible, it seems counter-intuitive. It requires crude things to make finer things, repeatedly.

A devastated, but once advanced, civilization should in theory be able to recover faster than it built itself up the first time - if it permits itself that rebuilding. What's needed to do this? A good many things are only "obvious" after the fact. By the time a civilization understands something well enough to bring it to perfection, that civilization has likely discovered something else that even though imperfect is so much better that the first thing is rendered obsolete. But the knowledge of earlier technologies isn't useless - if nothing else, it'd be useful to rebuild fast and skip all the fiddling around between advances.

Comments

[chakawolf.livejournal.com]

This is one of those questions that deserves a lot of thought. I am an amateur machinist. Someone once asked me if you could make parts that were more accurate than your machines. Without thinking, I said no. Then they asked me where more accurate machines came from, and I saw the light! It is true that with careful setups you can exceed the accuracy of your tools.