4 ms·

You could have said the same thing 100 years ago.

CuriouslyC 5y ago
You're making the same mistake all the star eyed futurists make, which is to not realize that in reality, all exponential curves are just early/mid stage sigmoidal curves. You can paradigm shift all you want, that's not going to make infinite progression a thing.
- azeirah 5y ago
  You're making the same mistake all star eyed futurists-skeptics make, which is to not realize that in reality, new sigmoidal curves are started all over the place. It's just a matter of time and survival. How long? I don't know. Probably long.
  - CuriouslyC 5y ago
    There is a finite set of sigmoidal curves that can accelerate/plateau. If you add the "progress" from every curve in the set, that also forms a sigmoidal curve (via a transformation of the central limit theorem) with a plateau that is inescapable. You can't out paradigm shift the nature of reality.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Not just sigmoidal, on a longer timeframe they usually end up being more like gaussian
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Indeed. Eventually the planet will run out of CO2 and life on Earth will almost completely disappear. Eventually plate tectonics will stop as well due to the core of the planet cooling. Eventually the Sun will go red giant and the Earth will really die then. Eventually we'll reach the heat death of the universe. A gaussian with a really long tail! We're doomed even if we go inter-planetary -- even if we spread through the galaxy! But the timescales are pretty large, and before then we can have a pretty long (in human scales) and good time.
    - snovv_crash 5y ago
      > A gaussian with a really long tail! So, a Poisson distribution?
cryptonector 5y ago
And people did. Malthus was over 200 years ago.
baq 5y ago
a single example: a 100 years ago the efficiency of ICEs was less than 50% of today's. we're left with maybe 2x until physics doesn't allow us any further improvements. another example - transistors - we've got maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30 years of improvements ahead of us, after that there are fundamental limits that forbid progress. the rate of change of total technology improvements will slow down and at some point will start to approach zero; maybe even go negative as we as a civilization start to forget how to do things faster than invent new ways of doing things.
- nefitty 5y ago
  The hard variable is paradigm-shifts. We see things like quantum computers now, which seem boring at the moment, but the sorts of problems they'll be able to handle are staggering to imagine. Robotics keeps improving, eg replacement/enhancement of human labor. That's a paradigm shift. I definitely see your point about physical limits. I propose that we're nowhere near our ideational limits, which give us the imaginative capacity to form new solutions within those limits you cite.
  - baq 5y ago
    > I propose that we're nowhere near our ideational limits, which give us the imaginative capacity to form new solutions within those limits you cite. the problem is, thermodynamics is so generic that it's hard to imagine how to sidestep it - and people do try all the time. e.g. imagine we have a commercially viable fusion reactor, which translates to basically unlimited energy once you build enough of them that they can be operated and maintained using only fusion power from sister reactors. sounds like post-scarcity world, except if you keep power consumption growing for like 1-2% a year, you'll boil the oceans in a few centuries due to waste heat. if you invent a technology to capture and repurpose enough waste heat to avoid this problem, you sidestep thermodynamics. if you sidestep thermodynamics, there's a lot more you can do than just making fusion 100% efficient...
    - jstanley 5y ago
      There are several potential paradigm shifts which this doesn't address. For example, power consumption may stop growing even while "real" consumption continues to grow. Or we may spread to other planets so that power consumption can keep growing and we don't care if the oceans boil. Or something else might happen that is hard to predict in the same way that medieval people would find the Internet hard to predict. Medieval people may have made equally valid claims about bounds on the speed at which a messenger can transmit a message, even if you manage to develop a commercially viable racehorse that can run at top speed 24/7.

You're making the same mistake all the star eyed futurists make, which is to not realize that in reality, all exponential curves are just early/mid stage sigmoidal curves. You can paradigm shift all you want, that's not going to make infinite progression a thing.

azeirah 5y ago
You're making the same mistake all star eyed futurists-skeptics make, which is to not realize that in reality, new sigmoidal curves are started all over the place. It's just a matter of time and survival. How long? I don't know. Probably long.
- CuriouslyC 5y ago
  There is a finite set of sigmoidal curves that can accelerate/plateau. If you add the "progress" from every curve in the set, that also forms a sigmoidal curve (via a transformation of the central limit theorem) with a plateau that is inescapable. You can't out paradigm shift the nature of reality.
snovv_crash 5y ago
Not just sigmoidal, on a longer timeframe they usually end up being more like gaussian
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Indeed. Eventually the planet will run out of CO2 and life on Earth will almost completely disappear. Eventually plate tectonics will stop as well due to the core of the planet cooling. Eventually the Sun will go red giant and the Earth will really die then. Eventually we'll reach the heat death of the universe. A gaussian with a really long tail! We're doomed even if we go inter-planetary -- even if we spread through the galaxy! But the timescales are pretty large, and before then we can have a pretty long (in human scales) and good time.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    > A gaussian with a really long tail! So, a Poisson distribution?

cryptonector 5y ago

And people did. Malthus was over 200 years ago.

baq 5y ago

a single example: a 100 years ago the efficiency of ICEs was less than 50% of today's. we're left with maybe 2x until physics doesn't allow us any further improvements. another example - transistors - we've got maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe 30 years of improvements ahead of us, after that there are fundamental limits that forbid progress. the rate of change of total technology improvements will slow down and at some point will start to approach zero; maybe even go negative as we as a civilization start to forget how to do things faster than invent new ways of doing things.

nefitty 5y ago
The hard variable is paradigm-shifts. We see things like quantum computers now, which seem boring at the moment, but the sorts of problems they'll be able to handle are staggering to imagine. Robotics keeps improving, eg replacement/enhancement of human labor. That's a paradigm shift. I definitely see your point about physical limits. I propose that we're nowhere near our ideational limits, which give us the imaginative capacity to form new solutions within those limits you cite.
- baq 5y ago
  > I propose that we're nowhere near our ideational limits, which give us the imaginative capacity to form new solutions within those limits you cite. the problem is, thermodynamics is so generic that it's hard to imagine how to sidestep it - and people do try all the time. e.g. imagine we have a commercially viable fusion reactor, which translates to basically unlimited energy once you build enough of them that they can be operated and maintained using only fusion power from sister reactors. sounds like post-scarcity world, except if you keep power consumption growing for like 1-2% a year, you'll boil the oceans in a few centuries due to waste heat. if you invent a technology to capture and repurpose enough waste heat to avoid this problem, you sidestep thermodynamics. if you sidestep thermodynamics, there's a lot more you can do than just making fusion 100% efficient...
  - jstanley 5y ago
    There are several potential paradigm shifts which this doesn't address. For example, power consumption may stop growing even while "real" consumption continues to grow. Or we may spread to other planets so that power consumption can keep growing and we don't care if the oceans boil. Or something else might happen that is hard to predict in the same way that medieval people would find the Internet hard to predict. Medieval people may have made equally valid claims about bounds on the speed at which a messenger can transmit a message, even if you manage to develop a commercially viable racehorse that can run at top speed 24/7.