Oddbean new post about login | logout Rogan keeps on talking about the wonder of the pyramids - how it makes no sense how they were built. Bro, there used to be a river, and they’d float the rocks on it to the destination. It’s not that mysterious! Slave labor is a hell of a tool too.
Ackshually... 🤦🤣
The aliens were smart to use us as slave labor and the governments still do the same.
Wanna build amazing gigantic stuff? Just throw human suffering at it. Still valid these days… yes Dubai, I am looking at you, and not only
Rogan has been stuck on the same talking points since 2017
It’s the height that confuses people. Not sure how you would float massive blocks up 600 feet. They would have needed more than a river.
Lift one big pool of water a few times, instead of lifting each and every stone individually. It's still a huge feat. I find it extremely questionanle that Egyptians, in the presence of even primitive hydraulic technology, would have gotten the pyramids done relying on metabolic energy alone. https://youtu.be/rxFXsoqbfrk
That concept is interesting but doesn’t explain how the Egyptians would have been able to deal with the water pressure at the base. The gates and pipe from the concept would need an explanation on how those technologies would have been implemented by the Egyptians.
You see it in the beginning of the video; simple locks. Submerge the channel horizontally to fill it, *seal the locks*... and LIFT. Once it's sealed, it's effectively a solid object that can be moved with people pulleys & leverage, to any location & any orientation necessary to float rocks. And let's be real...No one can argue that the Egyptians of all ancient cultures were bad at sealing things (but they may have been bad at treating their workforce like real people, who knows?) 😉😅
I’m not sure. In the video, the locks are in a plastic tube (which is tough enough to withstand the pressure of the small volume of water in the demonstration). How would the Egyptians have built such a thing that could have withstood the water pressure of a gigantic tube? According to AI, a tube 10 feet in diameter and 50 vertical feet would put pressure at the bottom of the tube of 700 lb/sq inch. On a 1 sq ft block of stone at the base, that would be 100,000 lbs pushing out for 50 vertical feet. For 500 vertical feet, that would be 1 million lbs pushing out. Not sure how they would have constructed a tube to withstand that.
These were not prehistoric people, they were fully evolved creative innovators like we are today. They could have lifted blocks one by one, but I seriously doubt they didn't also think to lift any tools, machines, animals or water to help the job get done before the emporer dies. 🤷♂️ For kicks, ask AI to generate some possible solutions besides pure slave labor that could conceivably have taken place, given Idunno, 50 or 100 years to beat the deadline of the kings death?
https://youtu.be/TJcp13hAO3U?si=3WQpYfQmivKgGRLM Here you go.
Construct tiered pools. Line with massive logs. Fill up with water, slide over. Rough idea but seems doable.
How about a water wheel driven crane? Pulleys are old tech...
Maybe. They could have used water as a counterweight. Just so long as they had strong enough ropes. Presumably they didn’t have steel cables and I have no idea what rope materials they had at the time. 🤷♂️
Maybe, but any explanation will need to address construction of the system and how they addressed the foundation and water pressure. For example, a series of linked pools like a set of locks going up 600 feet would have been its own engineering challenge. Would it have wrapped around the pyramid multiple times like a corkscrew? The more times it wrapped, the lower the water pressure on the lock gates, but the stronger the foundation and supports would need to be. What might have supported it? Maybe some sort of scaffolding system? Dunno. 🤷♂️
Vertical rivers?! https://media4.giphy.com/media/9Vkm7LGgrPTcA345Sb/200.gif
How were nostr devs able to create so many apps?? It doesn't make any sense! How the hell can somebody make apps by just writing text files without any database of AI tools? It must have been aliens.
I know it’s so dumb “nObOdY kNoWS hOw tHEy bUiLt tHe pYrAmiDS” Joe we built the Hoover dam, the Panama Canal, the international space station, the James Webb space telescope. The pyramids are not that complicated.
i gotta say, favorite ancient architecture is the Pantheon, wow
Rogan butchered that opportunity , such a midwit
It was as if Rogan is hearing some of these ideas for the first time, when they’re old ideas to everyone else. Pretty boring interview because of Rogan. He was trying to show thiel he was smart. He should have been asking thiel more questions. Thiel is a lot smarter than he is.
I turned it off , especially after Rogan kept dodging bitcoin everytime thiel brought it up
Unfortunately his midwit is probably a big reason why he’s successful and relatable for many
Comics are generally not midwits; they have to be fairly intelligent. Rogan doesn’t seem to be dumb; he has excellent recall and can loop in a lot of different data points from previous interviews. But, he does tend to veer off into his areas of interest which are very speculative and offer no evidence. He also likes to create an air of uncertainty and wonder - perhaps that’s just the presenter in him. Also, we have to remember that he talks to people much smarter than him, which can naturally make him seem stupid - but really, we’d all look stupid next to them.
Can confirm. Rogan is a smart, nice guy. Or was when I used to book him on my morning show when he came through Phoenix. This is 20 years ago. Always liked working with him. He was just doing Tempe Improv back then.
Midwits defending midwits
Water was a very big part of it. Slaves, not so much. Floating a 10 ton rock up takes water and time. Pushing it up would take an almost unthinkable number of humans.
You wouldn’t push, you’d use a lever of some sort and pull, maybe aided with weights on the pull side, but I have a feeling it was much less complicated simply using water
How about combining sleds on rails, pulleys and water filled weights? You could pull from one side of the pyramid...
It’s amazing what human civilization was capable of accomplishing before the internet made everyone stupid.
Verdade! 😅
Thank god. I've never really investigated this but this makes sense. You have no idea how annoying it is when people say "we don't know how the pyramids were made." How could we not know? All that's needed is to essentially apply Occam's razor. Just venting now, I have a family member who loves "Egyptology" and believes we don't know how we made the pyramids. I've been annoyed with this stupidity for way too long. It's simply not interesting and there's a lot of "we must not use our brains to ensure we can milk a non-existent neverending mystery!" 😩
Nah... Rogan is right on this one. You're all way off.
I read this entire thread. It looks like it's still a mystery and no one knows forsure.
