cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32524920
I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester’s inner workings and I still don’t understand how this thing works.
Well, the first step was making a machine that does every step of the process to make it easier. Then you combine those machines into one big machine, hence “combine”.
No one starts from zero and builds a machine like this. Each of those processes was its own problem that got solved first.
People don’t seem to understand that complicated things don’t just get invented out of nowhere. They almost always are the result of many steps along the way, each of which was useful in its own right.
And that’s why it’s common that multiple people invent the same thing at the same time. Like the theory of evolution, or the telephone. These things may be complicated, but all of the building blocks were created over a long time, and suddenly, their invention or discovery becomes inevitable.
Not to say that it never happens that people make large leaps, but it’s rare.
Same with evolution. “The eyeball is too complex to evolve as a whole unit!” Well, that’s absolutely correct. First, start with a patch of light sensitive cells, iterate.
https://earthlife.net/nautilus-anatomy/#The_Nautilus_Eye
This is a great read; it posits that nautilus did have a mucous layer that is no longer present, but other cephalopods’ complex eyes may have evolved from that
I love these little guys! I may have known before, but I learned the eye thing from this video yesterday actually (just to give credit where it’s due):
No you’re wrong the eyeball is so complicated the only explanation is a divine being created us!!!
(Im being very sarcastic)
Hamburgers
Much like a sewing machine. Fortunes were made by many, many people as they solved each small problem.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-singer-won-sewing-machine-war-180955919/
When I was taught that Philo Farnsworth, a “farmer” who “invented” television by using the idea of plowing a field in parallel lines to display an image, I was completely dumbfounded. A farmer figured out how to build a vacuum tube, fire an electron beam, deflect it at phosphor-coated surface, and do so in lines, varying the intensity, to display an image? This simplistic “history” skips about 50 years of progress in vacuum tube design and absolutely fascinating mechanical television.
On that note, The Upright Thinkers by Leonard Mlodinow is a good book about scientific progress, and really drives a point about incremental nature progress.
They continuously improved on every single step in the process. What you see now are the descendants of many generations of harvesters.
They are awesome, and they cost an awesome amount of money.
It is strange that many, many farmers are simultaneously millionaires and dirt poor. Not that it’s a problem exclusive to farmers by any means, but ya know. Slim operating margins.
Don’t worry, John Deere will find a way to fuck it up.
Combines ain’t that complex. But they are fussy to run. Growing up on a farm you learn to fix them at a pretty young age. I’ve even owned one myself, a well used Case I bought from an Uncle. I can close my eyes and "see’ every stinking moving part on any of the combines we owned. And I can still remember how access the parts and fix them.
Personally, I hate balers far more.
Farmers are always looking to make their job easier and they have a few months during the winter to build stuff.
I’ve gone down this rabbit hole, combine harvesters might be the most advanced piece of technology ever created, they’re fucking insane. Space travel seems simpler than the engineering that goes into those mother fuckers, a computer is child play in comparison.
They’re very cool and intricate indeed. But, as someone who grew up on a farm and is pretty familiar with combines: you’re drastically underestimating the engineering challenges in computers and space travel.
The thing is, I understand computers and space travel, it’s all stuff that makes sense when it’s explained to me properly. I’ve watched like six long form documentaries/explanations of combine harvesters and as far as I’m concerned it’s fucking wizard shit. It’s too complicated to actually work properly, it’s doing way too many entirely different things at once. There are entire multi stage manufacturing plants with less complex engineering requirements, it should jam up or break down two seconds after starting, it spits in the face of Ockham.
A computer is many orders of magnitude more intricate, technologically advanced, etc. A modern computer chip requires incredibly complex 3D labyrinths of different materials that have walls that are nanometers thick.
