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People have a habit of thinking linearly, however technology builds on top of technology (leading to exponential improvements). Half way through the Genome pro

People have a habit of thinking linearly, however technology builds on top of technology (leading to exponential improvements). Half way through the Genome project, they had only mapped out 1% of the genome. A lot of people in that field and working on that project were thinking the same thing - "not even close". But the next 7 years, they completed the next 99%. This is the power of exponential progress. The only thing that is going to halt this progress is to hit physical limits and not find a new way of doing things to get around the physical limits. New technology opens new possibilities.

rayiner 9y ago
Technological curves tend to look exponential at first, then logarithmic. We went from first manned flight to first supersonic manned flight in just 44 years. Seventy years later we still don't have supersonic commercial flights. In the energy sector, the thermal efficiency of coal plants improved dramatically from 1880 to 1950, then pretty much hasn't improved at all since then. The number of years someone can expect to survive after qualifying for Social Security at age 65 has gone up only about five years since the age was first set to 65 back in 1935.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Seventy years later we still don't have supersonic commercial flights. Worse still, we have already had and lost them. And the age for qualifying for social security is going up faster than longevity in plenty of countries.
saosebastiao 9y ago
Futurists have a habit of thinking exponentially for things that ultimately end up with asymptotic progress. Driving cars is ultimately about learning and learning is asymptotic. A child typically progresses from not knowing how to control their vocal cords to 50% of their peak vocabulary within 5 years. It takes several times that amount of time to be able to capably work a white collar job (a feat many fail at), and decades more to be able to make a meaningful and attributable contribution to society (something almost all fail at). The genome project is a terrible example because mapping progress is a second order effect to the actual technological progress of learning how to map the genome. It would be reasonable to project that once we know how to build a level 5 car that AVs will consume 100% of miles travelled within a very short period of time. But learning how to get to level 5 could very well be asymptotic in the same way that it takes decades of asymptotic refinement to turn an exponentially learning toddler into a PhD.
whipoodle 9y ago
It's worth asking which problems fall into the set of those that can eventually benefit of exponential progress, and why. This reminds me of Taleb's distinction between mediocristan and extremistan, or non-scalable randomness vs scalable randomness.

rayiner 9y ago

Technological curves tend to look exponential at first, then logarithmic. We went from first manned flight to first supersonic manned flight in just 44 years. Seventy years later we still don't have supersonic commercial flights. In the energy sector, the thermal efficiency of coal plants improved dramatically from 1880 to 1950, then pretty much hasn't improved at all since then. The number of years someone can expect to survive after qualifying for Social Security at age 65 has gone up only about five years since the age was first set to 65 back in 1935.

jacquesm 9y ago
> Seventy years later we still don't have supersonic commercial flights. Worse still, we have already had and lost them. And the age for qualifying for social security is going up faster than longevity in plenty of countries.

saosebastiao 9y ago

Futurists have a habit of thinking exponentially for things that ultimately end up with asymptotic progress. Driving cars is ultimately about learning and learning is asymptotic. A child typically progresses from not knowing how to control their vocal cords to 50% of their peak vocabulary within 5 years. It takes several times that amount of time to be able to capably work a white collar job (a feat many fail at), and decades more to be able to make a meaningful and attributable contribution to society (something almost all fail at). The genome project is a terrible example because mapping progress is a second order effect to the actual technological progress of learning how to map the genome. It would be reasonable to project that once we know how to build a level 5 car that AVs will consume 100% of miles travelled within a very short period of time. But learning how to get to level 5 could very well be asymptotic in the same way that it takes decades of asymptotic refinement to turn an exponentially learning toddler into a PhD.

whipoodle 9y ago

It's worth asking which problems fall into the set of those that can eventually benefit of exponential progress, and why. This reminds me of Taleb's distinction between mediocristan and extremistan, or non-scalable randomness vs scalable randomness.