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> The car itself hasn't changed in any fundamental way since 1950 The form factor of cars haven't changed much since 1950. Everything else has. Seatbelts. A

> The car itself hasn't changed in any fundamental way since 1950 The form factor of cars haven't changed much since 1950. Everything else has. Seatbelts. Airbags. Hybrids. Automatic transmissions allow more people to drive, and are now faster/better than manual. We moved from carburetors to fuel injection to direct injection, dramatically increasing the ability to control combustion in each cylinder. We went from massive V8 and V12 engines (the entire 1950s Cadillac line produced about 300 horsepower from a 6 liter V8 -- a modern import sedan can produce almost the same on a 2 liter V4 e.g., the Hyundai 2.0 liter engine). Superchargers allowed greater performance, turbochargers unlocked greater efficiency. Radial tires were barely a thing in 1950, and advancements in tires have made cars dramatically safer. Catalytic converters and electronic emission controls returned LA's atmosphere to health. Etc. If there was any doubt, check out this chart: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TIp8lXB5h2I/AAAAAAAAOW8/fmXi_SCP-jw/s1600/highway2.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/TIp8lXB5h2I/AAAAAAAAOW... Highway fatalities per mile traveled are about 80% lower than in 1950. The vast majority of that gain is from technology -- drivers sure haven't gotten any better over that period.

api 12y ago
That's improvement, yes, but it's incremental. I'm talking about the internal combustion engine -- the core design. This reminds me a lot of the micro/macro-evolution debate in biology. There are people who think macroevolution is just a lot of microevolution, and there are people who think macroevolution is sometimes something completely different -- that discontinuous leaps occur. I am of the latter camp there too. The Cambrian explosion was a sudden non-linear leap to give one example. Going from horse to car is not the same as going from Model T to Honda Civic.
- krschultz 12y ago
  It's not incremental, you just don't understand the depth of the difference. You're effectively saying there is no difference between a telegraph and the internet. They both send data over an electrical wire, so it must be 'incremental progress'. If that's your definition of incremental, then you will probably never see something that you consider innovative in your lifetime.
  - api 12y ago
    Windows 3.1 to Windows 8 is incremental. This, however, was not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY It's hard to pin down, but I'd define a fundamental advance as one that either (a) multiplies the number of addressable problems, or (b) constitutes a sudden and sizable nonlinear jump in capability over a very short period of time. It does often result from the combination of existing things, but it's always a discontinuity. A fundamental innovation is when 1 + 1 + 1 = 1000, not 3. It's a big monumental win that unlocks whole sections of the "technology tree" that were not reachable at all before. An example of (a) would be the final integration of all the components necessary for a CPU onto a single die. An example of (b) would be what the development of the alternating current transformer did for energy transmission over long distances. The most dramatic examples are both. Examples of these would be the first radio transmission or the first rotary electrical generator. These were utterly unprecedented innovations that changed human life radically. They weren't linear at all. You're right. I haven't seen many of these in my lifetime. I can think of some low-magnitude borderline cases but nothing Earth-shattering that has touched me directly. But if I'd lived from, say, 1900 to 1970, I'd have seen many in rapid succession. You seem to be arguing that such things do not exist-- that the fitness-weighted combinatorial state space for technology is completely smooth and incrementally traversable. I think you should study a bit of combinatorics as it applies to areas like evolutionary information theory. Discontinuities in slope, fitness valleys between significantly different local maxima, and isolated peaks unreachable by incremental hill-climbing are common features of real-world fitness landscapes.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Windows 3.1 to Windows 8 is incremental. Arguably Windows 3.1 to anything in the DOS-based line ending with Windows Me is incremental, and Windows NT 3.1 to anything ending in the line of which Windows 8.1 is the most recent (until Windows 9 is released) iteration is incremental, but the shift from the DOS-based line to the NT based line when XP extended the NT line into the consumer space was not incremental.
- wvenable 12y ago
  The thing is the internal combustion engine didn't come from nowhere to be slapped onto the front of a car. It was an incremental progression from steam engines to diesel machinery. Eventually it become incrementally small and reliable enough to be added to a carriage instead of a horse. A carriage that already had doors, windows, wheels, axles, etc. The leap is not as big as you seem to imagine it is. So we will probably have self driving cars which incrementally change our transportation system until it's completely unrecognizable but no step will be particularly large.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  Going from horse to car is not the same as going from Model T to Honda Civic but they are both dramatic technological improvements.

api 12y ago

That's improvement, yes, but it's incremental. I'm talking about the internal combustion engine -- the core design. This reminds me a lot of the micro/macro-evolution debate in biology. There are people who think macroevolution is just a lot of microevolution, and there are people who think macroevolution is sometimes something completely different -- that discontinuous leaps occur. I am of the latter camp there too. The Cambrian explosion was a sudden non-linear leap to give one example. Going from horse to car is not the same as going from Model T to Honda Civic.

krschultz 12y ago
It's not incremental, you just don't understand the depth of the difference. You're effectively saying there is no difference between a telegraph and the internet. They both send data over an electrical wire, so it must be 'incremental progress'. If that's your definition of incremental, then you will probably never see something that you consider innovative in your lifetime.
- api 12y ago
  Windows 3.1 to Windows 8 is incremental. This, however, was not: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY It's hard to pin down, but I'd define a fundamental advance as one that either (a) multiplies the number of addressable problems, or (b) constitutes a sudden and sizable nonlinear jump in capability over a very short period of time. It does often result from the combination of existing things, but it's always a discontinuity. A fundamental innovation is when 1 + 1 + 1 = 1000, not 3. It's a big monumental win that unlocks whole sections of the "technology tree" that were not reachable at all before. An example of (a) would be the final integration of all the components necessary for a CPU onto a single die. An example of (b) would be what the development of the alternating current transformer did for energy transmission over long distances. The most dramatic examples are both. Examples of these would be the first radio transmission or the first rotary electrical generator. These were utterly unprecedented innovations that changed human life radically. They weren't linear at all. You're right. I haven't seen many of these in my lifetime. I can think of some low-magnitude borderline cases but nothing Earth-shattering that has touched me directly. But if I'd lived from, say, 1900 to 1970, I'd have seen many in rapid succession. You seem to be arguing that such things do not exist-- that the fitness-weighted combinatorial state space for technology is completely smooth and incrementally traversable. I think you should study a bit of combinatorics as it applies to areas like evolutionary information theory. Discontinuities in slope, fitness valleys between significantly different local maxima, and isolated peaks unreachable by incremental hill-climbing are common features of real-world fitness landscapes.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Windows 3.1 to Windows 8 is incremental. Arguably Windows 3.1 to anything in the DOS-based line ending with Windows Me is incremental, and Windows NT 3.1 to anything ending in the line of which Windows 8.1 is the most recent (until Windows 9 is released) iteration is incremental, but the shift from the DOS-based line to the NT based line when XP extended the NT line into the consumer space was not incremental.
wvenable 12y ago
The thing is the internal combustion engine didn't come from nowhere to be slapped onto the front of a car. It was an incremental progression from steam engines to diesel machinery. Eventually it become incrementally small and reliable enough to be added to a carriage instead of a horse. A carriage that already had doors, windows, wheels, axles, etc. The leap is not as big as you seem to imagine it is. So we will probably have self driving cars which incrementally change our transportation system until it's completely unrecognizable but no step will be particularly large.
seanflyon 12y ago
Going from horse to car is not the same as going from Model T to Honda Civic but they are both dramatic technological improvements.