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Progress in those cases makes sense, it follows an exponential curve of technological progress that fits perfectly with our understanding of how things work. W

by edwnj 5y ago

Progress in those cases makes sense, it follows an exponential curve of technological progress that fits perfectly with our understanding of how things work. What doesn't make sense is that all the examples you gave happened in just over a century. If you go back a bit further there is pretty much nothing. Biologically, there should be very little difference between us now vs 5, 10 or 20 thousand years ago. If we made an index fund that tracks human progress, For decades (millenniums) its normal linear growth like the S&P 500, something you put in your retirement fund. Then suddenly you have a massive green dildo that went up more in 2 seconds than decades worth of gains. Now the fund looks like a shitcoin.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
Or there could be some other beings that in some way control or influence humans. This seems to be very common in nature, see e.g. the relationship between humans and bacteria on a Petri dish.
- edwnj 5y ago
  maybe.. but thats not good enough. We have a mandate to discover the inner workings of gods creation. Just to say its god/aliens is not enough.
  - hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
    You are right. Personally I think one of the keys is life itself. We still haven't figured it out. It seems all forms of life stem from other forms of life, we haven't observed spontaneous manifestations of life from matter - apart from a few components that might be a (dead) protein. But even apparently very simple processes like photosynthesis are terribly complicated. (BTW I very much hope the research in this area progresses and we could have artificial photosynthesis ready for mass-scale deployment before CO2 rises to the point of no-return.) Maybe there is something very important right in front of us that we don't see. The current approach to consider life, thoughts, consciousness and so on as purely material phenomena have its place, but they monopolized research for historical reasons. Unless your career is rock-solid like Penrose, you won't even consider getting near challenging the current status quo regarding, say, the relationship between matter and consciousness for fear of ridicule. Another obstacle is the limitations of human brain, including short- and long-term memory, the amount of information we can process, retain, meaningfully map and so on during the period of human life. Then there are several unknowns, for example the depth of the universe(s) in macro- and micro-scale. I somehow accepted that I'll never know these things, but it's worth trying anyway, I mean what more important could there be?

by edwnj 5y ago

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

Or there could be some other beings that in some way control or influence humans. This seems to be very common in nature, see e.g. the relationship between humans and bacteria on a Petri dish.

edwnj 5y ago
maybe.. but thats not good enough. We have a mandate to discover the inner workings of gods creation. Just to say its god/aliens is not enough.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  You are right. Personally I think one of the keys is life itself. We still haven't figured it out. It seems all forms of life stem from other forms of life, we haven't observed spontaneous manifestations of life from matter - apart from a few components that might be a (dead) protein. But even apparently very simple processes like photosynthesis are terribly complicated. (BTW I very much hope the research in this area progresses and we could have artificial photosynthesis ready for mass-scale deployment before CO2 rises to the point of no-return.) Maybe there is something very important right in front of us that we don't see. The current approach to consider life, thoughts, consciousness and so on as purely material phenomena have its place, but they monopolized research for historical reasons. Unless your career is rock-solid like Penrose, you won't even consider getting near challenging the current status quo regarding, say, the relationship between matter and consciousness for fear of ridicule. Another obstacle is the limitations of human brain, including short- and long-term memory, the amount of information we can process, retain, meaningfully map and so on during the period of human life. Then there are several unknowns, for example the depth of the universe(s) in macro- and micro-scale. I somehow accepted that I'll never know these things, but it's worth trying anyway, I mean what more important could there be?