On Wed, Nov 18, 2015 at 02:36:31PM -0500, Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:
> 1) Mitochondrial Eve ? dozens of hominid species, and they can
> narrow down all living humans to one ancestor?

That's pretty much a mathematical certainty after a sufficient number
of generations, for any species subject to birth/death processes.

> 2) Mammals all over the planet... including the oceans, where air
> breathing and live birth are serious handicaps.

> 3) Takeover by H.Sap : All these other Hominids, and only one
> survives? In spite of the others having multiple k-year head starts?
>
> 4) Technology super-growth : 90 to 200 kyears of stone age, followed
> by a sudden surge that in less than 5 kyears takes them to computers,
> space flight, nuclear power? Also, in reference to (3) above, none of
> the other Hominids develop anything past Stone Age tech, despite
> having multiple k-year head starts?

These too are to be expected.  There's quite a lot of evidence that
there was a lot of brain development during those stone-age millennia;
fairly rapid on evolutionary timescales, but slow by historical
timescales.  Also, the first part of (4) explains both (3) and the
second part of (4).  Our ancestors just got lucky in reaching a
suitable set of capabilities first, and subsumed, displaced, or
eliminated the others.  That sort of thing happens fairly frequently
on evolutionary timescales.  Usually it's followed by speciation
again, but there hasn't been time for that yet.

> 5) Superpower nations : not just the "known world conquest" like
> Alexander of Macedonia and the Romans, but the US or USSR where they
> can economically/politically/militarily control any smaller polity
> on the planet, and often do.

What's the difference?  It seems to me that the only difference is
that the "known world" now covers the planet due to technology
advances.  That too seems pretty much inevitable.

What's more interesting and frankly somewhat odd is the fact that
there are multiple superpowers all within striking distance
(militarily and/or economically) of each other.  That seems fairly
unstable to me, but again it has been a very short time on the
relevant timescales and how it turns out will be for future historians
(if any) to write about.

> I dunno, a lot of that just doesn't completely add up.  I saw
> someone write up a "review" of WWII as if it were a novel, and they
> pointed out the places the author had unbelievable stuff.  Ah, found
> it: http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html?page=1

A lot of it is in the viewpoint you adopt, and which things you choose
to look at.

Frankly, I don't have any trouble suspending disbelief as far as any
given set of isolated events goes.  What makes things much more
difficult is actually playing in a setting where things don't seem to
make sense in an ongoing basis, and yet I'm supposed to be playing a
character who does make sense of them.  At least, playing it as
anything other than a farce.  I've certainly played my share of
farcical adventures, but a steady diet of them isn't very satisfying.

- Tim