6 ms·

The last 50 years have been a turd sandwich compared to the previous 50. Try the exercise in your mind. Basically the last 50 years have been ... fracking, bett

The last 50 years have been a turd sandwich compared to the previous 50. Try the exercise in your mind. Basically the last 50 years have been ... fracking, better networks and packet radio, democratized for the masses. The previous 50 years .... atomic energy, computers, quantum mechanics, antibiotics (probably the greatest human biological innovation thus far), supersonic flight, landing on the moon, the 747, diesel engines, all of electronics from vacuum tubes up to LSI.... I could go on, but you get the idea. 1969 -> 2019 is lamesauce nonsense compared to the progress we got from 1919-1969 Progress, like everything else, is an S-curve, not an exponential increase. Exponential increases are not physical.

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cma 7y ago
> 1969 -> 2019 is lamesauce nonsense compared to the progress we got from 1919-1969 Machine perception is pretty high up there. We weren't close in 1969.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  There is no such thing as "machine perception."
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - cma 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_perception But I didn’t mean it distinct from computer vision, hearing etc.
solidasparagus 7y ago
That seems pretty false to me. - Global phone networks - The internet and everything that stems comes from instant global communication - The personal computer - The personal computer that fits in your pocket - Global financial networks - Global supply chains - Widespread international travel that takes less than a day - International space station - GPS and similar - Automated language translation - Automated computer vision - Automated speech recognition and transcription - Genetic code read and write - Antivirals - Artificial organs - MRI - Minimally invasive surgery - 5x reduction in global child mortality rate - 25% higher global life expectancy You can handwave that away by calling it 'better networks' or 'democratized for the masses', but that's a pretty biased PoV considering you could summarize most of the '19-'69 achievements by calling it 'better engineering'.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  Yeah, damn right. As I was thinking of each of these things I was like, “wow, holy fucking shit that’s new”. I don’t know how anyone can call the era of the Internet anything but mind blowing. True linking across the entire world. This is ducking revolutionary. Gives me chills. And fucking clones man. Like actual copies of complex organisms. What the fuck. How do you handwave that away.
- aklascheema 7y ago
  Well lets actually congeal similar things together. A = {The personal computer, The personal computer that fits in your pocket } B = {Global phone networks, The internet and everything that stems comes from instant global communication, GPS and similar} C = {Automated language translation, Automated computer vision, Automated speech recognition and transcription} D = {Global financial networks, Global supply chains} E = {5x reduction in global child mortality rate, 25% higher global life expectancy, Minimally invasive surgery, MRI} A: Basically moore's law. We've gotten smaller and smaller transistors and cheaper/condensed storage. No real breakthrough, just been using similar semiconductor technology and making incremental progress when it comes to semiconductor fabrication but it has led to exponential number of transistors being placed into a single chip. B: Improved the number of bits we can push from one place to another from slowly weaning of the old generation of networks that were used to communicate. C: This is clearly a result of A and B. As more people got connected to the internet and we could push more bit there was more data and as computers got more transistors we could do more compute. So with enough compute and data we could train the refined versions of models that had their foundation in the late 60s, early 70s. D: Globalization. Plain and simple. People become more connected via B and opening up of developing countries (China). E: A lot of people dying in developing world got access to medicines that existed but were out of their reach. This led to the average to significantly move up. If you compare how the average has moved for developed western countries ... well it's depressing. Antivirals and MRI had their foundations laid out during the 60s and early 70s and widespread travel was possible in pre 1970. In fact the Boeing 747 was designed in the 60s and had its first flight in late 60s. Since then we've just been incrementally improving it. I can't speak about artificial organ since I don't know much about that. But so far I have not heard of humans getting artificial organs. In conclusion, I agree that there has been some progress but most of that has been concentrated in pushing and processing bits. There is some progress when it comes to CRISPR and some new advances but it is nothing compared to 1920s - 1950s. We went from just having figured out powered flight to landing a man on another world. The ISS is akin to taking some aluminum presuraziable modules and sticking them together in low earth orbit... Most people alive today were born in the last 50 years and they've come to accept the world for what it is; their definition of incremental progress as landscape changing progress. I am not sure if this slow down is because we've exhausted a lot of the simple discoveries or their is some institutional faliure. I lean more towards the latter. Government has its mandate set by beauracrats who are bent on continuing the status quo and spending on social services to appease the masses. They don't have the balls to spend large amounts of money on large scale human efforts or fund foundational research. This mindset has also spilled over to the scientific community where funding for something out of their zone of comfort is never funded. Its as if people like Ralph Abernathy (opposed apollo program and thought funding should be used to feed the homeless) have taken over. And sadly enough in a world where there are deadlocks in government over small theing, it is unlikely that they would ever agree on funding anything that could move the needle for the human race.
scarejunba 7y ago
What? Untrue. Cheap and fast genome sequencing, a mitigation for AIDS and ART in general (fuck, even just describing AIDS), LASIK, CRISPR (and gene therapy in general), GPS, the Lithium Ion battery, MIRVs, TCP/IP + WWW + Internet, the smartphone, discovery of exoplanets and gravitational waves. Fuck, living clones, the Hubble, the fucking ISS, Wikipedia, and automated home vacuums. Holy shit, these years have been wild.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Yeah, going from horse drawn carriages, mercury cures and cloth biplanes to antibiotics, atom bombs, the invention of the computer and landing on the moon: totally in the same class as ... better batteries and being able to look at porn on a packet radio equipped nerd dildo instead of a magazine. You can say "shit" and "fuck" all you like; it won't help you: 1919->1969 vastly eclipses 1969->present in all ways. Any one of dozens of breakthroughs in 1919-1969 (atom bombs, digital computing, spaceflight, antibiotics ....) eclipses all subsequent ones.
  - scarejunba 7y ago
    No way, man. You've started with the conclusion and now you're satisfying yourself. That's fine but it's not even close to the right conclusion. Gives me chills, all the remarkable breakthroughs. Crispr is serious stuff. Mapping the human genome. A permanent human space settlement. You can be as cynical as you want but that's more a personal failing than humanity failing. Edit: And hahaha, I just checked the news and guess who won the Nobel for Chemistry? "Better batteries" as you so flippantly put it.
    - maxerickson 7y ago
      A lot of the dismissal is just something like "arrivalism". Like, the atom was harnessed in 1950, so it gets that date, never mind that reasonably safe designs took another 30 or 40 years. Computers existed, so never mind the massive cost decreases and capability increases that made them available and useful to many more people. Treat the arrival dates as the period society takes to integrate the technology and we are still in the transistors window. (I think this is a reasonable point to make in the context where I started off talking about 50,000 years)
johnisgood 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File:Moore's_Law_Transistor_Count_1971-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File:Moore'... It slowed down a bit, but who knows. Might be a good read, too: https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/is-kecks-law-coming-to-an-end https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/is-...
maxerickson 7y ago
Half of that stuff is just incremental progress from Maxwell's equations.

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cma 7y ago

> 1969 -> 2019 is lamesauce nonsense compared to the progress we got from 1919-1969 Machine perception is pretty high up there. We weren't close in 1969.

scottlocklin 7y ago
There is no such thing as "machine perception."
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cma 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_perception But I didn’t mean it distinct from computer vision, hearing etc.

solidasparagus 7y ago

That seems pretty false to me. - Global phone networks - The internet and everything that stems comes from instant global communication - The personal computer - The personal computer that fits in your pocket - Global financial networks - Global supply chains - Widespread international travel that takes less than a day - International space station - GPS and similar - Automated language translation - Automated computer vision - Automated speech recognition and transcription - Genetic code read and write - Antivirals - Artificial organs - MRI - Minimally invasive surgery - 5x reduction in global child mortality rate - 25% higher global life expectancy You can handwave that away by calling it 'better networks' or 'democratized for the masses', but that's a pretty biased PoV considering you could summarize most of the '19-'69 achievements by calling it 'better engineering'.

scarejunba 7y ago
Yeah, damn right. As I was thinking of each of these things I was like, “wow, holy fucking shit that’s new”. I don’t know how anyone can call the era of the Internet anything but mind blowing. True linking across the entire world. This is ducking revolutionary. Gives me chills. And fucking clones man. Like actual copies of complex organisms. What the fuck. How do you handwave that away.
aklascheema 7y ago
Well lets actually congeal similar things together. A = {The personal computer, The personal computer that fits in your pocket } B = {Global phone networks, The internet and everything that stems comes from instant global communication, GPS and similar} C = {Automated language translation, Automated computer vision, Automated speech recognition and transcription} D = {Global financial networks, Global supply chains} E = {5x reduction in global child mortality rate, 25% higher global life expectancy, Minimally invasive surgery, MRI} A: Basically moore's law. We've gotten smaller and smaller transistors and cheaper/condensed storage. No real breakthrough, just been using similar semiconductor technology and making incremental progress when it comes to semiconductor fabrication but it has led to exponential number of transistors being placed into a single chip. B: Improved the number of bits we can push from one place to another from slowly weaning of the old generation of networks that were used to communicate. C: This is clearly a result of A and B. As more people got connected to the internet and we could push more bit there was more data and as computers got more transistors we could do more compute. So with enough compute and data we could train the refined versions of models that had their foundation in the late 60s, early 70s. D: Globalization. Plain and simple. People become more connected via B and opening up of developing countries (China). E: A lot of people dying in developing world got access to medicines that existed but were out of their reach. This led to the average to significantly move up. If you compare how the average has moved for developed western countries ... well it's depressing. Antivirals and MRI had their foundations laid out during the 60s and early 70s and widespread travel was possible in pre 1970. In fact the Boeing 747 was designed in the 60s and had its first flight in late 60s. Since then we've just been incrementally improving it. I can't speak about artificial organ since I don't know much about that. But so far I have not heard of humans getting artificial organs. In conclusion, I agree that there has been some progress but most of that has been concentrated in pushing and processing bits. There is some progress when it comes to CRISPR and some new advances but it is nothing compared to 1920s - 1950s. We went from just having figured out powered flight to landing a man on another world. The ISS is akin to taking some aluminum presuraziable modules and sticking them together in low earth orbit... Most people alive today were born in the last 50 years and they've come to accept the world for what it is; their definition of incremental progress as landscape changing progress. I am not sure if this slow down is because we've exhausted a lot of the simple discoveries or their is some institutional faliure. I lean more towards the latter. Government has its mandate set by beauracrats who are bent on continuing the status quo and spending on social services to appease the masses. They don't have the balls to spend large amounts of money on large scale human efforts or fund foundational research. This mindset has also spilled over to the scientific community where funding for something out of their zone of comfort is never funded. Its as if people like Ralph Abernathy (opposed apollo program and thought funding should be used to feed the homeless) have taken over. And sadly enough in a world where there are deadlocks in government over small theing, it is unlikely that they would ever agree on funding anything that could move the needle for the human race.

scarejunba 7y ago

What? Untrue. Cheap and fast genome sequencing, a mitigation for AIDS and ART in general (fuck, even just describing AIDS), LASIK, CRISPR (and gene therapy in general), GPS, the Lithium Ion battery, MIRVs, TCP/IP + WWW + Internet, the smartphone, discovery of exoplanets and gravitational waves. Fuck, living clones, the Hubble, the fucking ISS, Wikipedia, and automated home vacuums. Holy shit, these years have been wild.

scottlocklin 7y ago
Yeah, going from horse drawn carriages, mercury cures and cloth biplanes to antibiotics, atom bombs, the invention of the computer and landing on the moon: totally in the same class as ... better batteries and being able to look at porn on a packet radio equipped nerd dildo instead of a magazine. You can say "shit" and "fuck" all you like; it won't help you: 1919->1969 vastly eclipses 1969->present in all ways. Any one of dozens of breakthroughs in 1919-1969 (atom bombs, digital computing, spaceflight, antibiotics ....) eclipses all subsequent ones.
- scarejunba 7y ago
  No way, man. You've started with the conclusion and now you're satisfying yourself. That's fine but it's not even close to the right conclusion. Gives me chills, all the remarkable breakthroughs. Crispr is serious stuff. Mapping the human genome. A permanent human space settlement. You can be as cynical as you want but that's more a personal failing than humanity failing. Edit: And hahaha, I just checked the news and guess who won the Nobel for Chemistry? "Better batteries" as you so flippantly put it.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    A lot of the dismissal is just something like "arrivalism". Like, the atom was harnessed in 1950, so it gets that date, never mind that reasonably safe designs took another 30 or 40 years. Computers existed, so never mind the massive cost decreases and capability increases that made them available and useful to many more people. Treat the arrival dates as the period society takes to integrate the technology and we are still in the transistors window. (I think this is a reasonable point to make in the context where I started off talking about 50,000 years)

johnisgood 7y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File:Moore's_Law_Transistor_Count_1971-2018.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#/media/File:Moore'... It slowed down a bit, but who knows. Might be a good read, too: https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/is-kecks-law-coming-to-an-end https://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/optoelectronics/is-...

maxerickson 7y ago

Half of that stuff is just incremental progress from Maxwell's equations.