4 ms·

What does it matter how difficult it is? That only means it's gonna take a while longer.

somenameforme 2mo ago
When things are spread out over time people are able to adjust to the point that society, as a whole, might not even notice there was a problem, even if for some segment of that society it might feel like the end of the world - or at least an incomparable inflection point. The only real problem you have is when things come on hard and fast, like a tsunami.
rayiner 2mo ago
That’s not how technology works. We went from first flight in 1903 to a man on the moon in 1969. Then we basically did almost nothing in aerospace for the next 50 years. We never got past the supersonic barrier for feasible commercial air travel. Apart from somewhat worse fuel efficiency, a 747 from 1969 can achieve basically the same trips in the same amount of time as a 787 or A350. What looks like exponential curves turn into S-shaped curves everywhere. In the last century, coal power plants have gotten less than twice as efficient. A professor at law school was giving a lecture on technological singularity back in 2011. And I pointed out that Moore’s law was already dead. And in fact in the decade since then improvements came far slower than they did from 1990-2000.
- robotresearcher 2mo ago
  > Apart from somewhat worse fuel efficiency It’s better now by roughly a factor of two per passenger mile. The nature of such large improvements is that it’s extremely hard to get such an improvement again!
  - rayiner 2mo ago
    > It’s better now by roughly a factor of two per passenger mile. Which is just not that big of a deal for 50+ years of technological development. It doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't do before.
    - robotresearcher 2mo ago
      It allows people with half the available money to do what others could do before. That's more than twice as many people. It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost. That's a lot of things that can move around the world 100X faster than they could on the next-fastest available mode: ships and trains.
      - chongli 2mo ago
        It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost That's leaving out fuel prices. The planes may use half the fuel, but aviation fuel has increased 7x in price since 1990. I couldn't find prices for 1969, but if you take the price of crude since then you're looking at a CPI-adjusted increase close to 100x.
        robotresearcher 2mo ago
        Great point. Even more value to halving the fuel cost, then, but fewer products able to take advantage of it. Of course, inflation should be canceled out before evaluating the overall benefit. If you can self the goods for 7X then the fuel savings is back to 2X.

When things are spread out over time people are able to adjust to the point that society, as a whole, might not even notice there was a problem, even if for some segment of that society it might feel like the end of the world - or at least an incomparable inflection point. The only real problem you have is when things come on hard and fast, like a tsunami.

rayiner 2mo ago

That’s not how technology works. We went from first flight in 1903 to a man on the moon in 1969. Then we basically did almost nothing in aerospace for the next 50 years. We never got past the supersonic barrier for feasible commercial air travel. Apart from somewhat worse fuel efficiency, a 747 from 1969 can achieve basically the same trips in the same amount of time as a 787 or A350. What looks like exponential curves turn into S-shaped curves everywhere. In the last century, coal power plants have gotten less than twice as efficient. A professor at law school was giving a lecture on technological singularity back in 2011. And I pointed out that Moore’s law was already dead. And in fact in the decade since then improvements came far slower than they did from 1990-2000.

robotresearcher 2mo ago
> Apart from somewhat worse fuel efficiency It’s better now by roughly a factor of two per passenger mile. The nature of such large improvements is that it’s extremely hard to get such an improvement again!
- rayiner 2mo ago
  > It’s better now by roughly a factor of two per passenger mile. Which is just not that big of a deal for 50+ years of technological development. It doesn't allow you to do anything you couldn't do before.
  - robotresearcher 2mo ago
    It allows people with half the available money to do what others could do before. That's more than twice as many people. It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost. That's a lot of things that can move around the world 100X faster than they could on the next-fastest available mode: ships and trains.
    - chongli 2mo ago
      It allows you to move freight really fast at half the cost That's leaving out fuel prices. The planes may use half the fuel, but aviation fuel has increased 7x in price since 1990. I couldn't find prices for 1969, but if you take the price of crude since then you're looking at a CPI-adjusted increase close to 100x.
      - robotresearcher 2mo ago
        Great point. Even more value to halving the fuel cost, then, but fewer products able to take advantage of it. Of course, inflation should be canceled out before evaluating the overall benefit. If you can self the goods for 7X then the fuel savings is back to 2X.