Anon (plural) isn’t exactly famous for their intelligence
Comment on Anon crunches some numbers
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Technology grows exponentially. What doesn’t add up is OOP’s brainpower.
joyjoy@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Comment on Anon crunches some numbers
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Technology grows exponentially. What doesn’t add up is OOP’s brainpower.
Anon (plural) isn’t exactly famous for their intelligence
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There’s a compounding effect to advances in different fields. But I would posit it’s not exponential, but sigmoid.
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Early in the study of a scientific field, discoveries are slow and difficult. But as the benefits of research are industrialized, you see a critical mass of research and human labor invested in applied sciences. You see a surge in development up until you hit a point of diminishing returns. Then the benefits of research diminish and the cost of maintaining the libraries of information and education grow beyond the perceived benefit of further academic work. Investments slow and labor product diminishes over time. Existing infrastructure cements itself as the norm and improvements become more expensive to impose. Finally, the advances in technology plateau for a period of time.
Eventually, you hit on another breakthrough and there’s a new surge in investment and novel infrastructure, until that well of new useful information is exhausted.
Periods of rapid and transformative growth may look meager and unimpressive in hindsight simply because you are standing on the shoulders of giants. But can anyone seriously argue that the steam engine (17th century) was less significant than the nuclear power plant (20th century), when a nuclear power plant has - at its core - a very high efficiency steam engine? We don’t seem to recognize 300 years of internal combustion as a period of relative technological stagnation.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Yup, it turns out it’s a lot easier to build on something than create something from scratch.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 months ago
While that may be true for individual technologies; in aggregate across all technologies.
Technical growth seems exponential; maybe sometime in the future technical advancement itself will resemble the ‘S’ curve; but for now we are still growing our technical prowess extremely quickly.
DigitalAudio@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
It may also be correlated with the population, though. Specifically the working age population.
I imagine that, as populations decrease and you have fewer people available to actually do any research, technological advancement also stagnates and slows down. If populations ever start increasing again in the future, then I imagine technological development will grow as well
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s almost as though we shouldn’t have made killbots 🤔
blarghly@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Many are saying we are beginning to see the top of the S right now. Our grandparents may have been alive for Kitty Hawk and the moon landing. Surely we would notice if science were advancing faster than that right now.
the_crotch@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
In my lifetime I went from a single button joystick playing a square shooting squares at other squares to a device that fits in my pocket and can access the entirety of collected knowledge in the blink of an eye, have a conversation with me that’s nearly indistinguishable from talking to another human, and store every photo and song I’ve ever collected. We have no idea what will come next.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I mean, what are you measuring that’s seeing exponential growth? Certainly not economic growth, as that’s plateaued globally in the prior decade. Not material productivity growth, as we’ve squeezed most of the juice out of agricultural and metallurgical gains of the early 20th century. Even Moore’s Law isn’t holding up anymore, with transistor density hitting a soft ceiling (just ask Intel).
What are you pointing to that’s still growing at an exponential rate? Other than AI botspam, I can’t find it.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 months ago
Material Science, the decades of research with carbon are starting to become evident in real products. Superconductor research continues to move forward.
Medical Science, the advancements are crazy. Especially in the surgical space. Targeted treatments are Just on the cusp of being viable. mRNA vaccines are a whole other level, their utility over the next few decades will be immense.
Bioscience, the rate of progress in this field is so interesting. So many problems that are falling to custom microorganisms, it is great to see.
Agricultural gains, are not even close to finished. I agree to era of brute force agriculture is over, but intelligent targeted farming has huge potential.
The second space age is happening right now. We are watching in real time, the rapid advancement of aerospace technology.
I could go on and on. Just because computing tech has hit a temporary plateau, doesn’t mean that the rest of science has slowed down.