Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.
But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.
Will any of our writings be found in 2500 years? Are we a myth…?
It seems to be a case similar to Socrates, or Jesus. Nice how Pythagoras was supposed to perform miracles, and stay a month “dead” just to later come back to life.
The year is 5123. We have meticulously deciphered texts from the early 21st century, providing us with a wealth of knowledge. Yet one question still eludes us to this day:
Who the heck is Magic 8. Ball?
The media on which our electronic data is stored have lifespans measured in just years. Everything that the Internet consists of right now, unless it’s endlessly copied forward, will be lost.
There’s a copy of Wikipedia on the moon and the orbiting Tesla. With a shelf live of a few billion years.
Luckily the moon is a quick day-trip away in case we return to sticks and stones.
The point being it’s for a humanity that recovered scientific progress in a place techno-barbarians cant ruin or, failing that, others 👽
Unless you’re a contemporary, you’ll just be a story.