IDK, man.. It feels like we're stuck.

Looking back at 19xx we got the Moon landing, basically, all the computer protocols that are the essence of what we have today, all the inventions' ideas patented (started even earlier -- 18xx), ...

To me, it feels like scientific progress was at its peak in the past 200 years and has now slowed down considerably.

IDK, perhaps I'm living under a rock, but all I can see is building consumerism on top of what's been discovered/created in the past 200 years and not actually creating/doing anything new and original and actually useful.

Don't you feel like we're stuck in the age where we're enjoying the fruits of discoveries made by our grandparents and are too lazy to make new ones?

If so, then what's next? When are we going to (if ever) get bored by the comfort zone we are in now? What follows then? Progress or regress? Or the MadMax IRL?

What do you lads think?

We're hurtling towards AGI at breakneck speed. Whether this is a good idea is debatable, especially when vendors skip alignment to save time such as in the case of Bing chat, but it's certainly progress in some direction.

you need exactly botedom to start thinking for progress ( or just enough unpaused period of time and some resources laying around ). I'm not bold enough even in my speculations to say what's comming, but I'm exited to welcome it ... or reject it and craw back to my cave. Will it be the next AI winter or just regular mini ice age... sun for everybody ( I'll like that )... collapse of the civilization as we know it... space traveling ( sign me up for that )...free travel to other dimentions... so many options...

I also don't think growth is required for the welfare of humanity. Vital statistics in the west show that well educated people who don't have to worry about survival eventually start having very few children. I think if we distributed resources more evenly it'd be possible to guarantee a living standard high enough to be stable in this sense.

I think you should stop doomscrolling.

Anyway, you are just used to progress. Have you forgotten the progress the past 30 years?

@Nanos nice bikes, now I want the quad velo. much needed upgrade to my el.bike =]

Do you question that we make technical progress? If so, look at this things:

- In physics, we found the Higgs-Boson not that long ago.

- We build first the Spitzer space telescope and later the James Webb telescope, which can see things which we never "saw" before.

- We now have a picture of the accretion disk of a black hole.

- Smartphones didn't exist before 1990.

- We made huge process in 3D-Printing. Not only are getting 3D-FDM-Printers cheaper and more capable (auto-bedleveling, Camera+AI to detect failure during printing), there are also improvements in Software (there are now concepts to print FDM vertically).

- We where able to detect gravitational waves from black hole merges.

Science will be greatly aided by AI, I think. And human intelligence might perhaps become a commodity.

@Linux good point about being used to progress. We see news about scientific progress every day it's hard to even keep up.

Technological progress is still happening. ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion have proven advances in AI. I am playing at 4k and it looks good. The Internet is now a few decades old. Wendelstein proved that a plasma can be magnetically confined longterm on earth. Superconducting high voltage transmission lines have become feasible (this enables use of renewables without storage requirements by interconnecting all continents into a single grid if society evolves into world peace).

Societal progress is way slower. But basic human rights are now a thing and they even mostly apply to women (excluding their uterus of course because we need more soldiers) and slaves (they may now choose their owner). Maybe society will overcome that stupid gender thing eventually. Some political systems have been tried and so far all failed eventually. But negative experience is still experience, so who knows what comes next...

@Oktokolo In my opinion, we have massive societal decline.

@happygimp0 If you only look at recent developments: Maybe.

But societal evolution always was a quite chaotic curve. It is hard to see societal progress in a war. But when looking at the times between the wars (regional of course, as there still are always wars going on somewhere in the world), there is some progress.

Every change needs generations to actually materialize - but that is just how societal evolution works. At least you don't have to wait for random gene mutations (also - because of societal evolution happening - biological evolution isn't really a thing anymore anyways)...

@Oktokolo If i see what you think is positive progress, i think we are declining.

Here is why i think we are declining:

- We don't value family anymore

- We allow all forms of perversions (LGBTQ ....). This was illegal in the past and that was better.

- We convince women to work in a job instead of supporting their family (bad for woman and children) and hate man (bad for men).

- We tolerate divorce.

- We say sex outside marriage is ok and tolerate adultery.

- We don't ask what God thinks. Everyone does what is right in his eyes.

- We don't punish some serious crimes enough.

- On the other hand we punish people for things things like copyright infringement with several years of prison, despite that no one is harmed.

- We don't have free speech in most countries.

Of course there where many bad things in the past too, some of them worse than today but we slowly get worse.

Nuclear holocaust will be the best thing in this decade.

Entrenched political world powers have held back progress in some key areas (energy, material science, optical computing, flight, probably more). I see these powers starting to be exposed and eventually topple. There will be a lot of chaos if this creates a power vacuum. This does not sound like a fun time since it will be be world wide. I think/hope there is a better world after this shit show.

@Demolishun I assume it starts pretty peacfully after each worldwide cataclism, you see the survived ones are weak, separated and probalbly a bit scared to think for wars and similar things

@Demolishun only in the western world. Even if so, the only peaceful place might be mongolia.

@happygimp0 I too see "everyone has to work now and there is no time for relationships and family anymore" as bad development too. But the most often mentioned benefit of work from home is being able to tend better to your kids and spouse. So i expect there to be a movement into the opposite direction towards less work time after the distortion in the demographic pyramid corrected itself (by old people dying of age).

It is sad, that religious fanatics still exist. People like you made Alan Turing kill himself. But as i wrote: Societal progress is slow. As your post prooves, there are still some who are happy to define a group of humans as unworthy to having basic rights because they aren't matching exactly their own definition of what a worthy person is. These are the people who start wars and destabilize whole regions for their own faction's economic benefit. Universal basic rights have to apply to the others too to be considered universal. And peace requires tolerance.

@Nanos I read a book about neuroscience and people's intelligence is actually increasing across the board. They have noticed a significantly larger skull cavity in the past 100 years. They are not sure if this is genetics or nutrition. I want to say it has grown vertically a few cm. I would have to dig up the book and find it again.

In before the people say IQ isn't going up. That is because IQ is an average of the given population. With 100 being average.

Prob not helpful but reminds me of this YouTube vid: https://m.youtube.com/watch/...

@Nanos Could be the absence of natural selection that people have children in which the extra artery doesn't disappear after it isn't needed anymore.

The Chinese got larger since poor nutrition isn't that much of an issue anymore: https://globaltimes.cn/page/202110/...

Since CRISPR is a thing now, i expect there to be a lot of artificial evolution soon (probably causing temporary backsteps in societal evolution a la Gattaca too). Like AI, that is something that is very hard to control... But overall, the effect will be the eradication of inheritable diseases (and maybe endless wars fought by StarWars clone soldiers)...

@Oktokolo Years ago a coworker and I discussed using CRISPR as a weapon. Then a couple of years later mRNA vaccines were introduced to the entire world all at once. Perfect opportunity to modify people if you are into eugenics. Which a lot of the people behind the technology are. But the argument against that is governments only did bad things in the past. They totally don't do that now.

And don''t forget the cyborgs. we will se more of them soon. we can count that as evolving, since it gives u super powers

@We3D Do you know any humans that can run 65MPH? All technology enhances the human condition and gives us superpowers.

@Demolishun not yet, and you are right mostly. some of our tech makes us just lazy, but others do expand our capabilities in many ways. I know some people are against it, bit I rather be a cyborg monstwr and alive than mere human and deqd, so if I need it, will join that revolution.

@We3D I wouldn't mind a brain interface if: its external, and I control the firmware.

@Demolishun Yes, that would have been the perfect opportunity for mass eugenics. But obviously, they wouldn't sell you a vaccine against all known inheritable diseases for the low price of the death flu vaccine. They are capitalists. They want a direct return of investment. Also, the vaccine wasn't a gene therapy. That tech isn't really mass-production ready yet.

And while CRISPR is also usable for bioweapons, the targeting problem is the same as with every other bioweapon: It doesn't care about nationality and GPS coordinates. You would have to find a specific genetic marker to attack which only your enemy carries. There is no communist or capitalist gene - just very fuzzy predispositions and a lot of social influence. Maybe, it would be possible to target indigenous groups which share some uncommon genetic oddity. But it's still less dangerous to just shoot them or force them to work in our mines as we always did.

@We3D We got plenty of cyborgs already. The formal criteria is replacing or augmenting the body or parts of it with artificial implants or replayements.

So if you got dental implants, you actually are already a cyborg. Most people exyclude ultra-low tech like that. But artificial hearts, cochlea implants and insulin pumps still count. And the still relatively clunky artificial limbs probably still count too. So we already got a lot of cyborgs - including a lot of accident victims and veterans.

I would consider the Kiroshi optics from Cyberpunk 2077 or a lot of other relatively subtle implants from the Cyberpunk 2020 chrome books. But neurosurgery isn't there yet and neither is the implant tech itself. Who doesn't want the Schriebmann Port from Beneath a Steel Sky.

And the human organ market is a mess. Artificial replacements for human organs could be the vegan alternative to human organs grown on and in animals.

I am pro cyberware.

@Oktokolo "They are capitalists. They want a direct return of investment."

This right there. Make people customers for life. This is how they operate.

@Oktokolo I was very surprised that some other people upvoted my comment (it wasn't sarcastic, i mean that, but i thought others will hate this opinion).

Work time is one problem for families. I think the fact that we think patchwork families, adultery, divorce are normal is the main one. Of course there are situation, for example one parent dies, where a patchwork family makes sense, but it should not be the norm.

Accepting sodomy is not something i consider social progress. I didn't tell Alan Turing to become a fag, that was his own decision.

And don't worry, it is very rare that i do something political or that i do vote (i voted for/against about 3 laws, i ignored all others).

Economy is only a tool to help humans. We should put human wellbeing about economical success. I don't support any war. But don't be surprised if God uses war to judge "your" faggot president.

@happygimp0 For a believer you seem to have a lot of hate in you

@We3D If you consider not accepting sodomy and adultery as hate, then yes, but i don't.

Also: I didn't say we should do anything against sodomites, i don't want to promote a law or protest against it. I also don't think taking the law in your own hands is right. If you think sodomy is ok, that is your decision. But we will reap what we sow.

@happygimp0 well, I can accept you not accepting sodomy or anything else, but I can also accept people doing whatever they want if all in the party agree to do what they are doing. It's not my job to judge them. If they don't entering my space I'm ok with what they are up to =]

I hear you.

But I think this is a notion during all ages. But maybe this feeling is now reaching its peak like so many things accelerating to lightning speed. Or have the relative speed always been the same? 🤔 How did we feel about this thing in the 1940s? 1980s? I bet they were equally amazed about the progress of man then as we are today.

Progress is slow. Progress is always building a little better. Sometimes there will be giant leaps (M&Ms) but most of the times there are just small increments of improvements of something some other human did.

We just need to build an environment for that to flourish. And that is much harder than what we think. We need to start with the kids.