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I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps. http://adami
by api 12y ago
I fundamentally disagree -- there is a difference between incremental and revolutionary advances. They are qualitatively different types of steps.
http://adamierymenko.com/c/ http://adamierymenko.com/c/
Nevertheless this Bloomberg article makes a good concrete counterpoint to Thiel and Stephenson. Part of the problem is that these things are horribly difficult to quantify. How do you measure "fundamental advance?" I'm not aware of any good metric for that.
I wonder though if the real problem isn't the decline in wage parity since ~1970. It's not that innovation's stopped, but the rate at which people can afford new innovation has slowed since more and more people can't afford anything but basic necessities.
- MaysonL 12y agoOf course, if you make enough incremental steps, the result is revolutionary. See for example, the series of small incremental steps from the the first transistor to the current 2 billion transistor integrated circuits.
- zecho 12y agoOr the series of small steps between primordial sludge and a man on the moon.
- api 12y agoTL;DR on the blog article I posted: in any complex fitness landscape there are points unreachable by simple gradient ascent. Innovation simply cannot be 100% incremental. Leaps must occur, and these are qualitatively different from hill climbing.
- seanflyon 12y ago> I wonder though if the real problem isn't the decline in wage parity since ~1970. It's not that innovation's stopped, but the rate at which people can afford new innovation has slowed since more and more people can't afford anything but basic necessities. Parity is not purchasing power. Inflation adjusted wages for the bottom quintile are up 20% from 1970. The poor/middle-class getting poorer has only happened since 1999-2000 so I don't think that is responsible for a lack of innovation. http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-Income-Distribution.php http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/Household-...
- foobarqux 12y agoMiddle class income has been flat since the 70s and discretionary income has decreased.
- refurb 12y agoDo you have a source? It's true that household income has been flat since the 1970's, but the nature of households has changed, there are a lot more single parents where there used to be two income earners. If you look at income on a per person basis, we're much higher (in inflation adjusted terms) than we were in the 1970s.