Egregoros

@cjd @CobaltSasquatch Chinese gunpowder was pretty shit and never energetic enough for meaningful weaponized use, broadly speaking. Their saltpeter was less pure, at the wrong ratios (50% vs 75%), and they tended to mix honey and oil and shit into it.

I think you also have paper and a few other ancient inventions that are super important though. He's probably limiting the idea to more modern stuff chiefly. There are a number of antique inventions that didn't really see their real value brought out until Europeans got ahold of them.

Though, I tend to caution people not to overstate things like this because it just gotcha types ammo. Black people sometimes make good music. Jews have done things. Normies will gleefully throw out the entire point if they can be given a single counterpoint, especially if it saves them from being racist. Still, if hoemath is preaching to an energized group of non-pedants, that's fine by me. The pedantics-remove-larger-point redditor stuff is stupid to get hung up on if you have his audience size.