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> "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 tha

by 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.

scottlocklin 7y ago
>I don't disagree with any of them! Well you sure "didn't disagree" at great length above! >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? I don't think I do need a much stronger argument than this: you just said above you agree with all of my examples. Now you say ... my examples aren't enough. Yet you "feel" I am right anyway? What would be "enough?" Simply looking at 1969's vision of the future is pretty damning as well. Re your Kelvin goalposting; you don't have an example of technological pessimism from 1969, do you? You've been a reasonably honest interlocutor thus far; don't goalpoast me, bro. "So what makes 1959-2009 "not progress"?" was bad enough. >Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening? I have my suspicions, which is why I consider writing a book on it. First, though, I'd like to get you, who agrees with me on one line, then disagrees on another (you assure me this is not routine bay area tone policing, and I'll just assume so for the sake of argument), to admit it is actually happening. What evidence besides your subjective feelings on the matter would you accept? What evidence do you, who claims to agree with me, yet disagrees on every detail, have? I think naming a series of bonkers technological revolutions that happened in one time period with not even one comparable example in a later time period is a reasonable and strong argument. If you disagree with the time span in question, I invite you to suggest a better time span, or one going back another 50 years. 1869 to 1919 was super amazing, and nobody thought technology was over in that time period, even if Kelvin thought physics was done (which was a reasonable thing to think back then; oddly people no longer think this, despite the parallel lack of experimental results which contradict theory). Same with the 50 years prior to 1869; technological progress was vast then. Any of those 50 year periods had more important breakthroughs than today. It's the recent era which has slowed down. You'll get the same result breaking it down by decade, by 20 years or 40 as I did in the original takimag article.
- zamfi 7y ago
  I'm going to meta-level with you: 1. No one is saying that the inventions of 1909-1959 were not amazing. Yes, the jet engine is fantastic. Flying is bonkers. Antibiotics, great. No one is seriously arguing that these are not spectacular inventions that transformed humanity. You don't need to keep repeating the argument that 1909-1959 was great, by listing great things from then, because no one is arguing against that. 2. I (at least) am making an argument about the proof you offer that progress is slowing, I am saying it is weak proof. I am doing so in two ways: (A) by pointing out that the ways you are arguing 1909-1959 things are great can also be applied to post-1959 things, and the ways you are arguing post-1959 things aren't great can also be applied to things from 1909-1959. This argument looks like this: jets are great compared with props in the same way that iPhones are great compared with ENIAC. So why is the former transformation categorically different from the latter? You are interpreting A as me saying that things from 1909-1959 weren't great. I'm not saying that. No one is saying that. You are saying that my examples are absurd: yes, that is the whole point of this argument. It's absurd to say that jets are not great because we already had props, just as it's absurd to say that iPhones are not great because we had ENIAC (or whatever appropriate computer from 1950 you're thinking of). (B) by pointing out that it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 years after the fact. Not all things, of course, which is why this thread is full of examples and counterexamples. People being optimistic or pessimistic about tech in 1969 is irrelevant -- if I found someone who in 1969 thought that 1919-1969 was lame compared with 1869-1919, would that convince you of anything? No, because it's irrelevant. The whole Kelvin thing is apparently apocryphal anyway. With that out of the way, you ask: what would be enough evidence to convince me that progress is slowing? First, one problem is that we'd need a definition of progress. "Rate of invention of things Scott thinks are obviously amazing with 50 years of hindsight"--aka your list---is not a great definition because we don't have 50 years of hindsight on 2009. See point (B) above. Other people have looked at counts of patents, per-capita research papers, etc., all of which continue to accelerate. But these are all also problematic, because these things can be gamed and end up correlated with other things that are irrelevant to that ineffable "actual progress" we're both arguing around. We could go with lives saved, by which measure 1959-2009 looks amazing except that most of those lives aren't in the USA or Europe, compared with 1909-1959. In another post, you say (paraphrasing, but I think I got it) "things that give a society that possesses them a guaranteed win in a war over societies that don't" but this is a very pre-atom-bomb type of definition. At this point, the atom bomb is that thing for everyone all the time, so it makes sense that societies don't prioritize weapons like that anymore: you don't need them! We already have the bomb. Who needs a second world-annihilating type of device? So technological progress doesn't look like this anymore, post-bomb. (Even the things you list as examples of post-1969 definitely don't fit. Coding theory feels like a stretch here IMO.) I speculate that it's because societies tend to fight more in economic terms today than physical terms. So we get information-related inventions and financing inventions, not physical-dominance or energy-extraction inventions. But I digress. I don't have a good definition of progress. But I'd love to come up with one that fits. Second, without a definition, things are tricky, but I tend to look at proxy measures like productivity. Technology lets people do more, so, how much can people do per unit time? The rate of productivity growth has been slowing a bunch since 1970-1980. Another proxy measure you could look at is health outcomes: life expectancy at birth (reflecting childhood diseases, mostly) has basically been stagnant since 1980. These proxy measures are what make me think that progress is slowing. But it could be the proxy measures losing their proxy-value instead. I welcome a new definition of progress from you to argue about.

by zamfi 7y ago

scottlocklin 7y ago

>I don't disagree with any of them! Well you sure "didn't disagree" at great length above! >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? I don't think I do need a much stronger argument than this: you just said above you agree with all of my examples. Now you say ... my examples aren't enough. Yet you "feel" I am right anyway? What would be "enough?" Simply looking at 1969's vision of the future is pretty damning as well. Re your Kelvin goalposting; you don't have an example of technological pessimism from 1969, do you? You've been a reasonably honest interlocutor thus far; don't goalpoast me, bro. "So what makes 1959-2009 "not progress"?" was bad enough. >Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening? I have my suspicions, which is why I consider writing a book on it. First, though, I'd like to get you, who agrees with me on one line, then disagrees on another (you assure me this is not routine bay area tone policing, and I'll just assume so for the sake of argument), to admit it is actually happening. What evidence besides your subjective feelings on the matter would you accept? What evidence do you, who claims to agree with me, yet disagrees on every detail, have? I think naming a series of bonkers technological revolutions that happened in one time period with not even one comparable example in a later time period is a reasonable and strong argument. If you disagree with the time span in question, I invite you to suggest a better time span, or one going back another 50 years. 1869 to 1919 was super amazing, and nobody thought technology was over in that time period, even if Kelvin thought physics was done (which was a reasonable thing to think back then; oddly people no longer think this, despite the parallel lack of experimental results which contradict theory). Same with the 50 years prior to 1869; technological progress was vast then. Any of those 50 year periods had more important breakthroughs than today. It's the recent era which has slowed down. You'll get the same result breaking it down by decade, by 20 years or 40 as I did in the original takimag article.

zamfi 7y ago
I'm going to meta-level with you: 1. No one is saying that the inventions of 1909-1959 were not amazing. Yes, the jet engine is fantastic. Flying is bonkers. Antibiotics, great. No one is seriously arguing that these are not spectacular inventions that transformed humanity. You don't need to keep repeating the argument that 1909-1959 was great, by listing great things from then, because no one is arguing against that. 2. I (at least) am making an argument about the proof you offer that progress is slowing, I am saying it is weak proof. I am doing so in two ways: (A) by pointing out that the ways you are arguing 1909-1959 things are great can also be applied to post-1959 things, and the ways you are arguing post-1959 things aren't great can also be applied to things from 1909-1959. This argument looks like this: jets are great compared with props in the same way that iPhones are great compared with ENIAC. So why is the former transformation categorically different from the latter? You are interpreting A as me saying that things from 1909-1959 weren't great. I'm not saying that. No one is saying that. You are saying that my examples are absurd: yes, that is the whole point of this argument. It's absurd to say that jets are not great because we already had props, just as it's absurd to say that iPhones are not great because we had ENIAC (or whatever appropriate computer from 1950 you're thinking of). (B) by pointing out that it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 years after the fact. Not all things, of course, which is why this thread is full of examples and counterexamples. People being optimistic or pessimistic about tech in 1969 is irrelevant -- if I found someone who in 1969 thought that 1919-1969 was lame compared with 1869-1919, would that convince you of anything? No, because it's irrelevant. The whole Kelvin thing is apparently apocryphal anyway. With that out of the way, you ask: what would be enough evidence to convince me that progress is slowing? First, one problem is that we'd need a definition of progress. "Rate of invention of things Scott thinks are obviously amazing with 50 years of hindsight"--aka your list---is not a great definition because we don't have 50 years of hindsight on 2009. See point (B) above. Other people have looked at counts of patents, per-capita research papers, etc., all of which continue to accelerate. But these are all also problematic, because these things can be gamed and end up correlated with other things that are irrelevant to that ineffable "actual progress" we're both arguing around. We could go with lives saved, by which measure 1959-2009 looks amazing except that most of those lives aren't in the USA or Europe, compared with 1909-1959. In another post, you say (paraphrasing, but I think I got it) "things that give a society that possesses them a guaranteed win in a war over societies that don't" but this is a very pre-atom-bomb type of definition. At this point, the atom bomb is that thing for everyone all the time, so it makes sense that societies don't prioritize weapons like that anymore: you don't need them! We already have the bomb. Who needs a second world-annihilating type of device? So technological progress doesn't look like this anymore, post-bomb. (Even the things you list as examples of post-1969 definitely don't fit. Coding theory feels like a stretch here IMO.) I speculate that it's because societies tend to fight more in economic terms today than physical terms. So we get information-related inventions and financing inventions, not physical-dominance or energy-extraction inventions. But I digress. I don't have a good definition of progress. But I'd love to come up with one that fits. Second, without a definition, things are tricky, but I tend to look at proxy measures like productivity. Technology lets people do more, so, how much can people do per unit time? The rate of productivity growth has been slowing a bunch since 1970-1980. Another proxy measure you could look at is health outcomes: life expectancy at birth (reflecting childhood diseases, mostly) has basically been stagnant since 1980. These proxy measures are what make me think that progress is slowing. But it could be the proxy measures losing their proxy-value instead. I welcome a new definition of progress from you to argue about.