Mr. Niall Douglas

 9am-10am: Reading and vocab check  10am-11am: Niall’s History of the History of the Irish Revolution part 1 of 2  11.20am-12.20pm: Group Task Check  12.20pm-1pm: More English Language Cementing  1pm-1.20pm: Work on tonight’s readings if there is time

 As we are into our final week together, I thought I’d throw some of my own research at you. I used to give lectures on this sort of stuff at St. Andrews University for free  Personally I think this sort of stuff will save human civilisation from extinction, but there is very little support out there for it  In other words, most people think I am a crackpot...

 The proper term for the History of History is Historiography  This is a very fashionable trend in the study of History right now, starting from E.H. Carr’s 1961 book What is History?  However my take on it is deeply unpopular in the field of History because I am “too quantitative” and Historiography is almost entirely sociocultural analysis...

 Before we can explain the Irish revolution, we need to understand time...  So, what are THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTIONS ever in human history?  For convenience, I have labelled time in the format “tEn” = “t x 10 n ” where n is the number of zeros, so4.3e6 = 4.3 x 10 6 = 4,300,000 years

MilestoneYears before 2008Creative Step 11.37E+10Universe Begins 28.30E+09Milky Way Forms 34.50E+09Solar System Forms 44.00E+09Life Begins 53.50E+09Photosynthesis Invented 62.25E+09Eukaryotes & Oxygen 71.20E+09Sexual Reproduction 88.00E+08Predation 95.40E+08Cambrian Explosion E+08Modern Biodiversity Reached Table 1: Major Creative Steps (Milestones) before 2008

112.51E+08Dinosaurs & Mammals E+08Flowers E+07Dinosaurs End, Birds Begin E+07C4 photosynthesis E+07Hominidae E+06Pan/Homo split E+06Australopithecus E+06Humans Begin 1.40E+06Knife E+05Fire for cooking E+05Pigments & Spears

212.00E+05Burial & Composite Tools E+05Lithic Blades E+04Ships & Bow/Arrow E+04Mining E+04Ceramics E+04Rope Irrigation Writing Greek Philosophy/Christianity Islam

31510Printing Press/Renaissance 32296Steam Engine/Libertae 33135Electricity/Mechanisation 3480Quantum/Holism 3540Computerisation/Systems

 One might think from this graph that a point is coming when technological advances will become so rapid that we reach a “technological singularity” (e.g. Ray Kurzweil)  Ray Kurzweil and those like him is full of shit  This has nothing to do with technology...

 If you try making ANY list of the most important advances in something long lived and which is still advancing today...  For example, try writing down the most important single tracks in rock music  Or creative advances in the use of language or mathematics

 It turns out that you will ALWAYS get thirty- five or thirty-six items  And these items will ALWAYS have a smooth line when plotted logarithmically over time  So what is going on?  What happens if you regress that timeline down to zero?

 It turns out that there are ALWAYS forty or forty one steps in that progression, it’s just that the most recent five are unknowable to us (too recent to discern)  So how come any of this matters?

 What’s the ratio between the largest and smallest observations?  Distance: Size of the universe = 4.4e26, size of an electron is 2.8e-15. Ratio: 1.57e41  Time: Age of the universe 4.33e17, lifetime of a top quark 1e-24. Ratio: 4.33e41  Forces: Ratio of electrical to gravitational forces between a proton and an electron: 4.4e40  What’s so special about powers of forty then?

 It turns out that WE – as in, us humans – can only perceive about forty levels of significance  It’s a cognitive processing artefact, and no technology can EVER remove this problem  So why is this important?

 You all know from walking into any shop that consumer choice is king  Yet so much choice is so overwhelming (more than forty) we do things like REDUCE the choice down to price or branding  The key to success in life is REDUCING choice down to less than forty options

 What makes some of us succeed and some fail is how we do that choice reduction  For example, in the SNOs Group 3 likes to reduce uncertainty whereas Group 4 likes to reduce costs  Neither is right and neither is wrong. Both are good choices

 Which brings us to the Irish revolution...  Why did the revolution succeed when all previous revolutions failed?  : Fitzgeralds revolution  : O Neill revolution  1641  1803  1867  1916 Easter Rising

 If you start to think in terms of powers of forty then the revolution starts to look different to previous revolutions  It all has to do with information...  Because REDUCING CHOICE is really all about reducing INFORMATION  Which is why, in my opinion, the revolution was the first information war in human history  But more on that tomorrow!

 Group Task Work Check