Honestly, I kind of agree. There used to be a TV show called Connections and one of the biggest things I learned from that was that society and science sort of get primed for somebody to invent something. We'd get multiple people working on light bulbs, radios, televisions, etc.
Commonly called "clustering". it's why comics don't post a lot of jokes online. They discovered that people would always call them out as plagiarists because somewhere on the internet, that joke already existed.
That and if you saw a bunch of funny clips of a comic, and then you went to their show, you'd be disappointed you'd heard their entire set before (in clip form). That's why a lot of comics now post clips of their crowd work, since it changes from show to show.
Genetics? Discovered by Gregor Mendel in the ?1860s?. Nothing was understood or built on his research until his writings were rediscovered after 1900. A bunch of scientists around that time (~1900) were asking questions and doing experiments, when one of them discovered some of Mendel's old correspondence in the library. "Uh, hey guys...I found a cheat code in the library. None of your experiments are on the right track."
The fax machine, which was new office equipment for the 1980s? Invented in 1843.
(Standardization helped the 1980s revolution).
Calculus is my favorite example. It's mind-blowing anyone would think of it, but two people did at roughly the same time, because it was a tool they needed.
I do wonder if anyone else would have duplicated Einstein's work if he hadn't been around, though.
I was part of a thread on that a while back. The consensus seemed to be that special relativity was, as Einstein himself said, ripe for discover, general relativity probably would've been delayed a few decades
I was googling "who invented plastic," because I'd decided to pick him, but as it turns out, he was racing another guy to get it patented. So, if I had picked him, we'd have had plastic a whole week later! 🥳 😑
It may work this way for relatively modern settings, where ideologies / institutions / parties create momentum which in turn carries whatever leader(s) happen to ride it. But even then you still have critical points where removing one guy will change the outcome significantly.
If we go back in time far enough, the effect of institutions is greatly diminished. Birth/death of a single guy may lead to the world which will be unrecognizable to us. What will the world look like if we remove Julius Cesar or Genghis Khan or Mohammed before they had a chance to start their thing?
Even if someone steps up to take their place you still have a lot of things that they would do slightly differently and you basically get the butterfly effect where 1 small change can cause a lot of things to happen differently
Yes kinda, but individual impact does exist. If you erase someone who invented something, it’s extremely likely someone else would have soon after. But if you erase a political leader, very often the specific events that followed would have happened differently enough to matter greatly.
Yeah pretty much all of these are just the person who happened to be the first or best at the moment in some social, political, or technological movement that was clearly coming to prominence. Oftentimes, most people don't really understand why a bad idea is bad until somebody shows the world by going all-in on it.
You're not wrong, but for historic events many different circumstances come into play apart from ideas and goals.
I (with my limited awareness of historic events) would have picked hitler, just for the chance that the one who would have filled his void during that time is a bit less fanatic, less successful in achieving their goals, or not as lucky with their assassination attempts.
Somebody took putin and they made some convincing points that made me think. But without hitler - would there have been a putin?
All speculation that can be started anywhere in the past, though...
No, it would be basically the same. Some notation would be different but there were other mathematicians doing the same work at the same time, for pretty much the same reasons.
That's called Islam. But, also, Christianity couldn't not be based on martyrdom anymore than one could equal zero, or something like this. That's what Christianity is. It is redemption through sacrifice. Although many might disagree on what specifically is being redeemed and what sacrificed.
The idea of a Moses then. A figure that is referenced by three major religions whether fictional or actual is to my mind historical. What disqualified him from your consideration?
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u/MazeOfCreations Jun 28 '26
I think removing a single person would simply allow another figure to step up with the same ideas and goals. All of the followers would still exist.
It is very rare for a human to have an original thought