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Thanks for continuing the discussion in a constructive way! > it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 y

Thanks for continuing the discussion in a constructive way! > it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 years after the fact. That's absolutely untrue in all of the examples I listed. Nukes, antibiotics, supersonic jets, space flight, the invention of computers; all of these things were immediately recognized as of titanic importance. There is nothing recognizable in the last 50 years as being of comparable importance. Cell phones and search engines are cool, but not hugely different from what we had before, and again: not comparable to the previous 50 years. They were minor revolutions, and how I make my living, but compared to antibiotics? Feh! Sure there may be things in the lab now or back a few years which will eventually prove amazing. That's pretty impossible to talk about; I doubt there is even a single decent example from the prior 50 years you could name that was as hidden as these alleged breakthroughs are now. Important things aren't often kept secret. I mean, maybe the air force has antigravity UFOs like the tinfoil hat brigades say; I kind of doubt it! There is a distinct lack of obvious breakthroughs of the last 50 years. That's what I keep saying! Maybe CRISPR or whatever will change everything; but they've been saying stuff like this since the 70s, and again, the biggest biotech revolution thus far is ... as I said ... cheap insulin. Not even close to antibiotics. Your point about us not developing super-weapons is not obviously true. The US has basically failed at this, just as it continues to fail at most things involving large scale industry: but the Russians just fielded a nuclear ramjet cruise missile (the US was working on this in the 50s) as well as a crazy doomsday torpedo and some weird hypersonic things I haven't fully parsed yet. Also, antibiotics wasn't a super weapon, nor was computers, nor any number of other examples; but these technologies conveyed huge advantages on the possessors of such technologies that have military implications. The point of measuring breakthrough techs via their military advantages is to have some obvious metric. It's a pretty good one! Nothing is perfect, but it's a decent way of pointing out why some technological innovations are more important than others; evolutionary fitness. Re productivity; if you remove chip improvements from economic measures of productivity; things look super grim. That's what I said in the original article!

zamfi 7y ago
> Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?]. Supersonic jets do not belong on that list. I get that you like them; the world would be pretty similar if no one had ever invented them. Personal computers ('70s-'80s) definitely belong on that list, and I'd argue that smartphones (~2007) do too but you apparently disagree. Maybe the Web too ('90s), though I imagine you definitely disagree there. So, now that we have a list that's more evenly distributed across decades for the last 90 years, what? We just argue about what's on the list? Who cares? Is it just what I see as humanity-changing vs. you? This is exactly the kind of useless argument I don't want to have, because it tells me nothing except what Scott thinks is important. Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways. So, good at pointing out why some inventions are more important than others? Yeah, for some subset of inventions, but conveniently not recent ones. So I don't really think it strengthens your argument. Further: > Your point about us not developing super-weapons is not obviously true. I made no such point. I said that the incentives for people to work on breakthrough inventions has shifted, and thus as a result that progress would look different post-bomb. The US rewards invention differently than Russia, so it's not surprising that Americans aren't building superweapons, that military funding no longer produces amazing breakthroughs at the rate it did, and that the Russian military is still working on new ways to annihilate everyone. > Re productivity; if you remove chip improvements from economic measures of productivity; things look super grim. That's what I said in the original article! But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket!
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  > Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?]. Sputnik was in the 1950s, computers happened in the late 40s, and yes, we're calling the time period these things were invented to be 1909 through 1959 or 1919 to 1969; whatever. Compare to the following 50 years of 1959 to 2009... Or compare 1969 to 2019; whatever; doesn't matter. One chunk of time; the EARLY chunk of time demonstrates enormous and obvious progress. The other one contains the iphone and "personal computers." One of them represents a preposterous increase in actual, measurable human power over nature. New things were possible that were not possible before. The other one represents an increase in distractions available to individuals. >Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways. Indeed it does ignore this change, very self consciously so. Imagine if we're playing a game of "Civilization." Which invention, which requires the limited resources of the civilization to be dedicated to its development, confers advantage over the other civilizations? Atom bombs and antibiotics and the invention of computers in the first place, or personal computers and smart phones? Pretty sure the first couple of them are giant leaps forward which means your civilization dominates the other one. Maybe networked computing helps too, if you can use them to subvert the other cultures, but it sure don't look like it from where I am sitting! >But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket! Yes: that's the point! It may have stalled because the smart people were fucking around uselessly with chips and their useless biproducts when they could have been, say, building better solar or other non-carbon power technologies, or, like Gerald O'Neil's space colonies!

zamfi 7y ago

> Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?]. Supersonic jets do not belong on that list. I get that you like them; the world would be pretty similar if no one had ever invented them. Personal computers ('70s-'80s) definitely belong on that list, and I'd argue that smartphones (~2007) do too but you apparently disagree. Maybe the Web too ('90s), though I imagine you definitely disagree there. So, now that we have a list that's more evenly distributed across decades for the last 90 years, what? We just argue about what's on the list? Who cares? Is it just what I see as humanity-changing vs. you? This is exactly the kind of useless argument I don't want to have, because it tells me nothing except what Scott thinks is important. Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways. So, good at pointing out why some inventions are more important than others? Yeah, for some subset of inventions, but conveniently not recent ones. So I don't really think it strengthens your argument. Further: > Your point about us not developing super-weapons is not obviously true. I made no such point. I said that the incentives for people to work on breakthrough inventions has shifted, and thus as a result that progress would look different post-bomb. The US rewards invention differently than Russia, so it's not surprising that Americans aren't building superweapons, that military funding no longer produces amazing breakthroughs at the rate it did, and that the Russian military is still working on new ways to annihilate everyone. > Re productivity; if you remove chip improvements from economic measures of productivity; things look super grim. That's what I said in the original article! But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket!

scottlocklin 7y ago
> Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?]. Sputnik was in the 1950s, computers happened in the late 40s, and yes, we're calling the time period these things were invented to be 1909 through 1959 or 1919 to 1969; whatever. Compare to the following 50 years of 1959 to 2009... Or compare 1969 to 2019; whatever; doesn't matter. One chunk of time; the EARLY chunk of time demonstrates enormous and obvious progress. The other one contains the iphone and "personal computers." One of them represents a preposterous increase in actual, measurable human power over nature. New things were possible that were not possible before. The other one represents an increase in distractions available to individuals. >Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways. Indeed it does ignore this change, very self consciously so. Imagine if we're playing a game of "Civilization." Which invention, which requires the limited resources of the civilization to be dedicated to its development, confers advantage over the other civilizations? Atom bombs and antibiotics and the invention of computers in the first place, or personal computers and smart phones? Pretty sure the first couple of them are giant leaps forward which means your civilization dominates the other one. Maybe networked computing helps too, if you can use them to subvert the other cultures, but it sure don't look like it from where I am sitting! >But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket! Yes: that's the point! It may have stalled because the smart people were fucking around uselessly with chips and their useless biproducts when they could have been, say, building better solar or other non-carbon power technologies, or, like Gerald O'Neil's space colonies!