5 ms·

> Anything done with a computer could have been done by hand, manually. No, that's not true at all. It was true in ~ 1945... sort of. By 1950, there were plen

> Anything done with a computer could have been done by hand, manually. No, that's not true at all. It was true in ~ 1945... sort of. By 1950, there were plenty of calculations happening which, even if you harnessed the entire planet's educated population and gave them marchant calculators, they couldn't have produced the answer. That's a category difference. It also planted the seeds for the present day when it is obvious you're not going to get your 3-d porn videos via heliograph and human marchant calculator computer. A similar category difference is the atom bomb. If the entire industrial output of the world were dedicated to making TNT for decades, it couldn't compare to the power of nuclear weapons in existence today. Categorical difference. >My point is that you are making up categories to fit your argument, but you think the categorical differences are obvious. That makes it a weak argument. If by "making up categories" you mean "using real world examples and assuming people can tell that the use of antibiotics is more important to humanity than cell phones" -I guess I agree with you. Seriously man: people used to routinely die like flies of infection. What compares to that change? Name one thing invented after 1959 which compares to this! My use of this example isn't making up a category: it's stating the obvious. If you really think cell phones or the fast fourier transform are more important than antibiotics, well, "that's just, like, your opinion, man." Billions of people who would otherwise be dead disagree with you. You can nitpick about flying (which is not an example I actually used, FWIIW; people were flying in 1919) if it makes you feel better. I suppose taking the train is equivalent to the ICBM and having artificial satellites around the earth? >My point is that we can't measure the rate of progress by only looking at the past 50 years. Something feels slower, sure. This doesn't make any sense. OK, don't use 50 year intervals. Use 10 year increments. I am naming the somethings which make things "feel slower" -I don't know how you could possibly disagree with any of them. If the substance of your disagreement is "Scott is a dick and I don't like his tone" -that's OK; many people agree with you. > I bet in 1969 something felt slower than the previous 50 years too, to some people. You're on. Find an example. Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen are examples from more or less current year who have written books and essays more or less saying what I just said above (FWIIW, both after my essay). Elon Musk is someone who has made it his life's mission to reverse this trend. There were links to IEEE spectrum in the original article arguing against "the singularity" more or less making my argument for me as well; I could track them down somehow. There are no examples from 1969, because in 1969, unlike today: it simply was not true.

zamfi 7y ago
> "Scott is a dick and I don't like his tone" OK dude, this is the third time you've tried to steer this thread towards a character attack on yourself, and that's just with me--others took the bait. People can have legit disagreements with you and also think you're a "dick". That you bring it up so often suggests that maybe one person who thinks you're a "dick" is you, and maybe you should talk to someone about that. > I am naming the somethings which make things "feel slower" -I don't know how you could possibly disagree with any of them. I don't disagree with any of them! In fact, I already said that I agree that things feel slower. Antibiotics, vaccines, etc. are all great things! They've saved millions of lives! None of the foundational principles of biology behind them were discovered in the last 50 years, correct. But, you know, I'm trying to figure out what's actually going on, not merely looking for evidence that already supports what I think -- I'm looking for counterexamples. Do you disagree that the impact of a particular decade, or any time period, looks totally different when viewed from the last year of that time period, compared with 50 years later? We already know this to be true for basically any time period in the past 300 years. Are you saying recent decades are somehow immune to this effect? Yeah, you're gonna need a much stronger argument for this than a list of things from 50 years ago that are obvious huge inventions and...what, a much shorter list for the last 50 years? > Find an example. Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen are examples from more or less current year who have written books and essays more or less saying what I just said above (FWIIW, both after my essay). Elon Musk is someone who has made it his life's mission to reverse this trend. There are no examples from 1969, because in 1969, unlike today: it simply was not true. What? There were a ton of people around 1900 that thought physics was "done", including respected physicists. They were wrong. Every era has short-sighted ranters with a mouthpiece and an ego to feed. Don't be one of them, dude. Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening? What could be causing it? Come up with a definition of category -- I like your "computers are different because all the people on earth doing math couldn't do it", that's good. That works also for things that are explosive increases in energy use, but inventions that aren't that kind of thing don't quite fit that notion of category. Ask in what ways these categories make Thiel's zero-to-one changes. There's way more depth to be explored here. If you just repeat yourself and make claims that things are obvious, and think people only disagree because you come off as a "dick", then you're not doing much more than trolling.

zamfi 7y ago

> "Scott is a dick and I don't like his tone" OK dude, this is the third time you've tried to steer this thread towards a character attack on yourself, and that's just with me--others took the bait. People can have legit disagreements with you and also think you're a "dick". That you bring it up so often suggests that maybe one person who thinks you're a "dick" is you, and maybe you should talk to someone about that. > I am naming the somethings which make things "feel slower" -I don't know how you could possibly disagree with any of them. I don't disagree with any of them! In fact, I already said that I agree that things feel slower. Antibiotics, vaccines, etc. are all great things! They've saved millions of lives! None of the foundational principles of biology behind them were discovered in the last 50 years, correct. But, you know, I'm trying to figure out what's actually going on, not merely looking for evidence that already supports what I think -- I'm looking for counterexamples. Do you disagree that the impact of a particular decade, or any time period, looks totally different when viewed from the last year of that time period, compared with 50 years later? We already know this to be true for basically any time period in the past 300 years. Are you saying recent decades are somehow immune to this effect? Yeah, you're gonna need a much stronger argument for this than a list of things from 50 years ago that are obvious huge inventions and...what, a much shorter list for the last 50 years? > Find an example. Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen are examples from more or less current year who have written books and essays more or less saying what I just said above (FWIIW, both after my essay). Elon Musk is someone who has made it his life's mission to reverse this trend. There are no examples from 1969, because in 1969, unlike today: it simply was not true. What? There were a ton of people around 1900 that thought physics was "done", including respected physicists. They were wrong. Every era has short-sighted ranters with a mouthpiece and an ego to feed. Don't be one of them, dude. Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening? What could be causing it? Come up with a definition of category -- I like your "computers are different because all the people on earth doing math couldn't do it", that's good. That works also for things that are explosive increases in energy use, but inventions that aren't that kind of thing don't quite fit that notion of category. Ask in what ways these categories make Thiel's zero-to-one changes. There's way more depth to be explored here. If you just repeat yourself and make claims that things are obvious, and think people only disagree because you come off as a "dick", then you're not doing much more than trolling.