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While I agree with you that the rate of paradigm shift increases over time, I argue that their average impact/scope decreases. Newtonian physics opened more roo
by fchollet 14y ago
While I agree with you that the rate of paradigm shift increases over time, I argue that their average impact/scope decreases. Newtonian physics opened more room for technological progress than quantum mechanics, etc. Earliest inventions have the most impact (the invention of the scientific method having the most impact of all?).
So my point is that if you look at paradigm shift rate not in volume but in impact, you'd get a linear rate.
For this reason, an AI given imagination and exploding resources would still only make linear progress.
- 6ren 14y agoI didn't notice your point about impact. Impact is hard to measure purely objectively, but I agree Newtonian physics, being more fundamental, has had more impact. But it's also had 325 years to do so, whereas Information Theory has had only 64 (to stay with these examples). Given an exponentially expanding search space, there's always more to see (but this is an assumption, not a conclusion; I think the nature of the search space is the essential question at issue here). How much impact did Newton have on the world by 1751? How much impact will Shannon have had by 2337?
- simonh 14y agoTransistors couldn't have been designed without understanding Quantum Mechanics. Bye, bye modern computers.
- fchollet 14y agoAnd quantum mechanics could not have been thought up without newtonian mechanics...
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]