Interesting Question

[gfish]

What was the single greatest mistake of human history?

My answer:
Classical Chinese cultural myopia. They had a 1000 year head start on the west technologically, and they pissed it away masturbating to new and even less relevant commentaries on The Spring and Autumn Annals. If they hadn't been so busy navel-gazing, we'd all be post-singularity machine intellects out exploring the galaxy by now. Curse you, Zhu Xi!

What does my side of the internet think?

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

But Chinese technology progressed at a reasonable pace until the early Ming...

[gfish.livejournal.com]

In the time of Christ they had a level of pig iron production that wouldn't be matched in Europe until well into the next millenia. Instead of being the groundwork for an industrial revolution, they had a bureaucracy for specifying and standardizing molds for farm implements.

They had the printing press back in the Song. Instead of contributing to a reformation or scientific revolution, they decided to just concentrate on 4 ancient books instead.

No, it didn't really stagnate until later, but the cultural inflexibility was already there. Had they looked out instead of in, they could have completely dominated world history.