It'd be like dragging the sticks in the mud with the 2nd century warlord copypasta, except they wouldn't have any purpose in the first place but they'd still think we were so beyond them that we needed a cigarette smoking machine or that the useless boxes had sim6e other purpose
There's a funny HFY short story (I've lost the link 😢) where an alien talks about a massive, mysterious, and indestructible structure built by ancient humans. Countless ships of countless species have come to challenge the guardian that resides within, but the guardian always wins in the end. It soon becomes clear to the reader that it's just a massive useless machine humans built to troll the galaxy and the "challenge" is just to flip the switch and see if you can make it out of the system before the guardian flips it back.
That machine reminded me of my old RC firetruck I had as a kid. It didnt go on radio waves but with a cable from the controller to the truck. You had to always walk with it because the cable was quite short. I still have the truck today parked on a shelf in the living room. (the controller and cable is now gone, The elctronics broke down and (with some help) I removed the cable bc it was useless, and so I could play with it as a regular toy car. Only 10 times bigger.)
The 'useless' hammer machine is, in fact, a trip-hammer, which over the centuries, is probably one of the most USED and USEFUL machines ever, having been used, in a scale-up form, by hundreds, if not thousands, of black-smiths, miners, millers....
It's more about the design of the machine and over the contextual application of it's praticity ; the hammer, as presented here, is not really an efficient design compared to that of the trip-hammer used by professionnals. Because if we are to go with your logic - wich in itself is perfectly rationnal - the mecanism and schematic serving as basic of the "smoking machine" is also useful when taking and converting material on an assembly line - in this example going from "cigarette" (raw ressource) to "ash" (by-product).
Tenhys No, not really. Because you can scale the smoking machine up and down how you want, and it'll still just be a machine meant to smoke cigarettes, which in and of itself is useless. A trip-hammer, however, isn't useless, and, scaled up, is a fundamental part of humanity reaching where it is.
***** I wasn't talking about the scale but the schematical design and contextual application. The "smoking" part comes from using "manipulation/placement" (like in an assembly line) then "ignition" (the lighter) then "aspiration" (vacuum or the like) and then disposal. Here cigarette is used as an example of "transformable material" and not "finished product" (what a cigarette is). But, for such design, it doesn't necessarily requires it to be focus only on "cigarette" specifically, as presented in this video. Same thing for "the switch that turns itself off". In it's current mechanical and contextual application it is definitively useless. But get rid of the "arm" part and add a timer that you could set time yourself and you'll basically have what is currently found on almost every modern electronicle devices today.
Tenhys Lord... Are you trying to be all arteest, or something? None of the machines in the video has any use except the hammer one, because it's a trip-hammer, which is, and have been, used in the vast majority of iron works and blacksmith shops for the past several centuries. Simple as that.
***** What ? "Arteest" ? What's that ? Look, i don't exactly know what is your problem about not understanding the difference between a schematic from it's working principle and the practicity over a specific application of it. So i'll make it simple for you : the principle of a hammer is to forcefully push something onto another thing by hitting it repeatedly. A trip-hammer follow that principle by being a machine allowing the user(s) to have anything they want "hammered" down in their stead. That's the principle behind it and, consequently, the schematic follow's in it's design from an industrial perspective. However there's not a single blacksmith, engineer or mechanic that would use the one in the video, being clearly impractical in it's use by it's design. This logic extend to the other machines as well - any machine, really. A poorly designed schematic of a good mechanical process will be looked upon as wasteful, like here. "The switch that turns itself off" is following a logic that is no different from the in-build timer of a cooking induction plate : you set the time and once it's spend the plate turns itself off. Had there be no timer, or barely a switch that imediatly turns the plate off barely a second after you activate it, there would be no difference with the one we're seeing in this video. It's simple.
I fail to see how having a machine that can automatically apply an exact amount of force to the exact same area over and over again can be considered useless. What you have is a power hammer, which is used in many modern smithies for performing the general shaping of a large piece of metal so that you can finish up by hand.
Entropy is being wasted in monstrously humongous amount by physical processes all over the universe, so basically whatever insignificant thing humans can do is practically by cosmic standards. Besides, we are yet to know if there's some natural process that reverses entropy, which is perfectly possible and it's not being reconsidered by scientists...
I love the text for number 7, "careful you don't get a nail near it or you might accidentally get some work done". It's so wonderfully smart-ass-ish. :P
0:02 The Waiting Machine 0:19 Multi-Switch 0:35 Chain Conveyor 0:50 The Hammer 1:07 The Duel 1:22 The Smoking Machine 1:38 The Unplugged 1:54 The Basic Coffin 2:10 Eternal Sweeping 2:26 The Basic Box
sporebean 22 Yes, i'm sure a made up police will come across the ocean to mess me up. Why would he come across an ocean you ask? Because wherever you come from they speak the language "Stupid".
Katzen4u Forgot to respond but basically this. It takes a little bit of force to pull out a british standard plug, and because the cable comes out perpendicular to the pins rather than parallel, its much harder, if not near impossible, to accidentally pull out while using an appliance.
The Basic Coffin at 1:55 reminds me of a piggy bank I had as a child in the 70s. A plastic black box with a coin-slot. When you put a coin on the slot, the battery-driven mechanism was activated. A green hand popped out and grabbed the coin.
The hammer machine is based on a system used many hundreds of years ago, where very large hammers were moved by a waterwheel or mules, and the smith simply had to place the hot iron under it and give it the desired angle.
