To many "smart" people have stood up and taken the credit for hundreds of others and generations of work.

We have been sold and buy the idea that there a supermen out there that are beyond clever and capable when they are just the result of their environment and resources from others. And now history is looked at through that lenses looking for singulars where there is plural.

No you’re wrong the eyeball is so complicated the only explanation is a divine being created us!!!

(Im being very sarcastic)

Even all those different little inventions had plenty of steps along the way, and almost all of them were viable during its time.

The greatest strength humanity has had to create ingenious machines wasn't intelligence.

It was time and manpower.

Same with evolution. "The eyeball is too complex to evolve as a whole unit!" Well, that's absolutely correct. First, start with a patch of light sensitive cells, iterate.

all of the building blocks were created over a long time, and suddenly, their invention or discovery becomes inevitable.

The first season of Connections did an exceptional job of illustrating that idea. Highly recommended!

Make a self propelled machine and a machine that cuts grass and smoosh them together.

We did two things first:

First we made a (simple) machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level (scythe).

Second we made a (complex) machine that is self-propelling.

Well first there's the cutting technology. Scything is ancient. Industrial production of push mowers using cylinder blades were developed in the 1800s and the more modern gas powered rotary cutters came along in the 19th century with many other self-propelled and automated mechanisms. This started with coal and wood fired agricultural equipment used for processing, like threshing and winnowing. As internal combustion engines (gas powered) developed in the 20th century more equipment and processes could be incorporated on-site and in-field.

Stationary processing of grain. Then stationary automated processing of grain. Then add a cutting machine (from harvesting hay) and self-propelling and you've got your combine harvester.

The loading thing? A extruder on a swivel, old tech.

How does one even start to make a self-propelling machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level?

You look at a horse-drawn mowing machine like this and start thinking about how you could do something similar without the horse.

The first version is just a machine that mimics the human motion of doing that task. Its a mechanical reaper that is pulled by a horse:

https://okfronline.com/2024/02/inventions-of-agriculture-the-reaper/

Then someone figures out how to make a self contained engine and it becomes self propelled.

This is a process that occurred over centuries.

Don't think they built the proposed alchemic tokomak yet, thought it was a theoretical paper?

Etching runes onto stone by blasting little bits of metal into miniature suns.

Can I bind spells to my body by putting my hand in the machine?

Is this how we make biblically accurate Cortana?

Scythes require more specific wind and moisture conditions compared to sickles (as do combines), but they do save a ton of work. My favorite scythe fact is that there is an even faster but more dangerous version called the Flemish Scythe, that is one-handed. From "The Scythe Book":

...John Gerard, in his seven- teenth-century Herball, recorded an accident wherein the mower:

made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of blood; the poore man crept upon this herbe (Clownes Wound wort or All-heale), which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantity of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his dayes work againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day until he was perfectly whole, which was accomplished in a few dayes.

Fucking hardcore.

The thing is, I understand computers and space travel, it’s all stuff that makes sense when it’s explained to me properly. I’ve watched like six long form documentaries/explanations of combine harvesters and as far as I’m concerned it’s fucking wizard shit. It’s too complicated to actually work properly, it’s doing way too many entirely different things at once. There are entire multi stage manufacturing plants with less complex engineering requirements, it should jam up or break down two seconds after starting, it spits in the face of Ockham.

I grew up on a farm and it's amazing that I always knew we were poor, but we always had our basic needs met. It probably contribited to me having an easy on-ramp to socialism once I moved to a city and saw the horrors of real poverty.

Relevant to the topic, we had a combine and I got to operate it to help my dad with harvesting. Crazy, very cool vehicle. It was always like magic to me.