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Could it be that we do understand progress but the world is not ready for it? We are worried about inflation, when the valuation of things explodes. What would

Could it be that we do understand progress but the world is not ready for it? We are worried about inflation, when the valuation of things explodes. What would happen if the opportunities of each human being explodes? E.g. if everybody can fly a rocket into space, there soon will be so much debris that further launches are impossible. >You have a computer, TV, and smartphone. These are impressive inventions, and some seem like magic, but over time, you realise that your living standards haven't transformed quite as much as when you woke up in 1940. The living standard of kings hasn't quite changed since 2000 BC. What's changing is the life of the less fortunate. Women not spending time on washing clothes is a huge difference. [1] What's holding society back is not lack of progress but conventions. When you have microwaves, but you still build houses with kitchens as if your wife stays at home all day, then resources are stuck and cannot be used to change living standards significantly. Similarly, Smartphones are called Smartphones and not mobile computers because people still use them as phones. Living standards will change when the general public starts engaging with computers and crunches data to e.g. automatically choose the best product to buy, or to coordinate housing projects. The housing bubble exists because buyers don't coordinate to remove bottlenecks on the supply side. In a sense, we have the printing press, but people are still illiterate. >There is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. How about China? It would be surprising if they hadn't analyzed how they can out-innovate the US. Then again, does progress need an intellectual movement? That sounds like increasing the study of arts to create more music and literature. Instead of letting intellectuals assemble, where could people meet who would want to make progress? I would like to say HN, but my suspicion is that the bottlenecks are not easily monetizable so that angle investors and VC are not enough. E.g. to build a city for the future with affordable housing, does it take nation states like China and Saudi Arabia, or could that be achieved in another way? [1] General Electric also introduced its first top loading automatic model in 1947 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washing_machine

jasoncrawford 4y ago
> The living standard of kings hasn't quite changed since 2000 BC. Not true. Ancient/medieval kings still got smallpox, peed in chamber pots, and shivered in the winter cold. They couldn't hear the music of great performers who had died, or travel to another continent for a weekend trip. Etc.
contingencies 4y ago
In a sense, we have the printing press, but people are still illiterate. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup How about China? Like many fundamental technologies, the printing press and moveable type were Chinese inventions. But "oh how the mighty have fallen!" IMHO the problem here in 2022 China is the politicization of education and media which denies individual ideas and experience from the earliest years, illogically burdening children with unnavigable quantities of take-home homework and suffocating the analytical thought and independent curiosity that are so critical for research and development. It is as if no research in to pedagogy occurred since the 1920s, and individuals still belong to a numbered local production collective, except that now it is titled a "Number X Middle School". They literally give out little flags to children as young as pre-school, it's full on nationalism every day here. Meanwhile the parents, working full time, can never obtain any notion of economic or social security, thus pressure their children to conform to the system which they are told will deliver opportunity, depite torturing their own children to the point of myopia (there's an epidemic Asia-wide). Not so different from the west in many ways, just different in how they get there, and children being robbed of their childhood is a tragedy. Also, because everyone is so economically insecure and poorly educated with no access to insightful media it's rare to see genuine outward social or environmental conscience. How can someone innovate on the big issues if they don't even recognize them or have no genuine personal alignment?

jasoncrawford 4y ago

> The living standard of kings hasn't quite changed since 2000 BC. Not true. Ancient/medieval kings still got smallpox, peed in chamber pots, and shivered in the winter cold. They couldn't hear the music of great performers who had died, or travel to another continent for a weekend trip. Etc.

contingencies 4y ago

In a sense, we have the printing press, but people are still illiterate. Added to https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup How about China? Like many fundamental technologies, the printing press and moveable type were Chinese inventions. But "oh how the mighty have fallen!" IMHO the problem here in 2022 China is the politicization of education and media which denies individual ideas and experience from the earliest years, illogically burdening children with unnavigable quantities of take-home homework and suffocating the analytical thought and independent curiosity that are so critical for research and development. It is as if no research in to pedagogy occurred since the 1920s, and individuals still belong to a numbered local production collective, except that now it is titled a "Number X Middle School". They literally give out little flags to children as young as pre-school, it's full on nationalism every day here. Meanwhile the parents, working full time, can never obtain any notion of economic or social security, thus pressure their children to conform to the system which they are told will deliver opportunity, depite torturing their own children to the point of myopia (there's an epidemic Asia-wide). Not so different from the west in many ways, just different in how they get there, and children being robbed of their childhood is a tragedy. Also, because everyone is so economically insecure and poorly educated with no access to insightful media it's rare to see genuine outward social or environmental conscience. How can someone innovate on the big issues if they don't even recognize them or have no genuine personal alignment?