> But if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be any observation bias since the process is then mostly random because they were not really aware of what technique that worked, no?
Not sure I understand the argument. Though something a bit related:
We can assume that the Romans didn't have the modern sophisticated understand to know exactly what they were doing. But we can assume that they had enough experience to eg make something last for a hundred years with very high probability.
After all, they had enough history to be able to observe various things that their ancestors built a hundred years ago.
Now my argument is that if you build something to last a hundred years with very high probability, more often than not, it'll have a reasonably high chance to survive a thousand years.
Similar to how eg Nasa Rovers on Mars were engineered to have a very high probability to last their official mission length of a few weeks, and thanks to that (over) engineering, they ended up lasting much longer.
There's a saying that "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."
The Roman buildings that lasted were pretty much over-engineered, because they didn't have the knowledge to make the fine trade-offs we can today.
Not sure I understand the argument. Though something a bit related:
We can assume that the Romans didn't have the modern sophisticated understand to know exactly what they were doing. But we can assume that they had enough experience to eg make something last for a hundred years with very high probability.
After all, they had enough history to be able to observe various things that their ancestors built a hundred years ago.
Now my argument is that if you build something to last a hundred years with very high probability, more often than not, it'll have a reasonably high chance to survive a thousand years.
Similar to how eg Nasa Rovers on Mars were engineered to have a very high probability to last their official mission length of a few weeks, and thanks to that (over) engineering, they ended up lasting much longer.
There's a saying that "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."
The Roman buildings that lasted were pretty much over-engineered, because they didn't have the knowledge to make the fine trade-offs we can today.