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>Who knows what things will look like in 1 more lifetime. The usual prediction I see is that the rate of discovery will continue and in another 2 lifetimes eve

by simonh 5y ago

>Who knows what things will look like in 1 more lifetime. The usual prediction I see is that the rate of discovery will continue and in another 2 lifetimes everything we think we know now will seem just as silly and naive as what people believed 2 lifetimes before us. I don't think that's the case. It's a question of whether we're on a (near) infinite exponential curve of discovery, or on the rapid upward stretch of an S curve. I'm in the S curve camp, and I suspect we're at least half way up it on most topics. Just look at relativity, quantum mechanics and cosmology. Most of the great discoveries in these fields were actually quite a while ago. Relativity and Quantum mechanics are over 100 years old and most of the advances were made in the early decades. Progress has not stopped but massively slowed down. In cosmology it's been slower progress, but we've charted time back to milliseconds after T=0 of the big bang, detected thousands of exoplanets, analysed the gravitational waves from black hole collisions and mapped the cosmic microwave background. There's more to learn about dark matter and dark energy for sure, some serious mysteries there, but how much difference will those answers actually make? The Higgs boson discovery was cool, but really just a cherry on top of the standard model rather than a revolutionary discovery that upended science. I'm not sure there are any of those still to come. The closing chapter on the big questions in science still has to be written, but I think the chances it will force us to completely rewrite, rather than simply revise and update the previous chapters, seems slight IMHO. I'm expecting the GUT to simply update or reframe relativity and quantum mechanics to make them compatible, not throw them out completely. It truly is astonishing to be alive at this nexus in human development, whatever our individual take on it might be.

manigandham 5y ago
Progress has slowed down because we solved all the easier problems that we could with the human mind. Now technology is catching up to give us the computing power, massive collective memory, digital records, and AI to start gaining again. We basically have to build a better mind to get to the next level.
- fellowniusmonk 5y ago
  Agree. I think people really underestimate how many intractable "needle in a haystack" problems are now tractable due to RNNs, CNNs and other ML/ai stuff. We are still in the early days of applying that tech to the fields it's going to effect most. We're in the "get a home page for your local business" phase not yet the "faang has changed the face of civilization" (for the better or worse) phase. This is going to continue to ramp knowledge in bioinformatics and other areas, the technology is still in the infancy of being harnessed for biology and medicine. That combined with cheaper robotic arms and cheaper sequencing machines which is just now coming dropping below certain cost thresholds. (I know a group/lab that's automating discovery of drug/compound targets doing purely NDA'd work for merck and other pharmaceuticals, the tech is wild and still in it's infancy.) Cutting edge voice and image style transfer, realistic computer speech, computer vision.. the list goes on, that's just the highly visible stuff and there is still only a small pool of people versed in those areas of tech.
brobdingnagians 5y ago
I think it is likely that some things will be revised and tweaked, but other things will have to be majorly rewritten. We may not know what those are yet, but from looking at history, it is wise to believe that in some things we are hammering away at a faulty path. When we rewrite that, there will probably be major rapid improvements very quickly, then slow over time. Perhaps a lot is slowing recently because we've had less major breakthroughs which usually open up fertile fields. Maybe that's because we have the low hanging fruit of major breakthroughs or our society isnt as good at getting them, either way, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.

by simonh 5y ago

manigandham 5y ago

Progress has slowed down because we solved all the easier problems that we could with the human mind. Now technology is catching up to give us the computing power, massive collective memory, digital records, and AI to start gaining again. We basically have to build a better mind to get to the next level.

fellowniusmonk 5y ago
Agree. I think people really underestimate how many intractable "needle in a haystack" problems are now tractable due to RNNs, CNNs and other ML/ai stuff. We are still in the early days of applying that tech to the fields it's going to effect most. We're in the "get a home page for your local business" phase not yet the "faang has changed the face of civilization" (for the better or worse) phase. This is going to continue to ramp knowledge in bioinformatics and other areas, the technology is still in the infancy of being harnessed for biology and medicine. That combined with cheaper robotic arms and cheaper sequencing machines which is just now coming dropping below certain cost thresholds. (I know a group/lab that's automating discovery of drug/compound targets doing purely NDA'd work for merck and other pharmaceuticals, the tech is wild and still in it's infancy.) Cutting edge voice and image style transfer, realistic computer speech, computer vision.. the list goes on, that's just the highly visible stuff and there is still only a small pool of people versed in those areas of tech.

brobdingnagians 5y ago

I think it is likely that some things will be revised and tweaked, but other things will have to be majorly rewritten. We may not know what those are yet, but from looking at history, it is wise to believe that in some things we are hammering away at a faulty path. When we rewrite that, there will probably be major rapid improvements very quickly, then slow over time. Perhaps a lot is slowing recently because we've had less major breakthroughs which usually open up fertile fields. Maybe that's because we have the low hanging fruit of major breakthroughs or our society isnt as good at getting them, either way, it will be interesting to see what the future holds.