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Comment by kerblang | Hacker News Reader

The essential question is about extrapolating the arc of human progress: If it continues asymptotically, we become as gods "soon"; if it turns into an S trapped by an upper bound, progress grinds slowly to a halt; and if it inverts like a wave, we see a levelling off, equally rapid decline, and maybe some kind of evolutionary rebound rather than simple extinction.

All seem mathematically valid (in the broadest sense) but I don't see a reason to dismiss other options in favor of the asymptotic outcome. But like many people I am intuitively skeptical about we-become-as-gods.

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I think progress has already started to hit a local maxima.

An argument I heard was that the number of things recognizable by someone from the past has dropped to almost 0.

Consider, for example, major inventions like airplanes, refrigerators, automobiles, microwaves, telephones.

You take those inventions and people from just 10 years before they became ubiquitous would be completely amazed by them. Most of those inventions took a hold of society from the 1900s -> 1960s. If you look at the 1960s->2020, there are very few stand out inventions that would be completely unrecognizable to the general public. Personal computers and medical treatment options with CRISPER seem to be the only major standouts.

From my perspective, we look to be out of the age of invention. Instead, I expect humanity to continue refining and perfecting already existing tools. That's roughly the same state we were in from the 1600s to the 1800s.

"From my perspective, we look to be out of the age of invention."

One of the possible reasons is that we haven't found a cheaper source of energy for a long time.

A lot of things are possible if energy gets cheaper.

Unfortunately, energy is likely to get somewhat more expensive as fossil fuels run out and global warming puts a limit on any major growth.

I think a lot has happened between 1960 and 2020: smartphones, internet, machine learning, hubble telescope, internet of things, ecommerce ...

Going from personal computer of the 1960s to what we have today in our pocket is an enormous achievement in itself so it's a bit disingenuous to list it off as a single word "personal computer".

If we measure progress by whatever metrics: number of patents, number of scientific publication, ... in fact things are speeding up even more.

Most of those things are just natural evolutions of existing technologies. None of those things (barring the internet) are things which scifi from the 1950's didn't predict.

My point is that we don't have those mind blowing inventions that were hard to predict or see coming. Smartphones are the natural evolution of computer chips. Machine learning was already an active discipline in the 60's. In the 60s they were already seeing computing power increase at very fast rates. Internet things is, again, just an extension of general communication. And ecommerce is a real natural extension of the internet.

Compare that to a refrigerator. Before the refrigerator there was an entire industry of ice distribution. It was not a natural extension of really anything.

Same for the microwave. You MIGHT be able to argue that it was somewhat the natural extension of radio, just finally recognized but that's a stretch to think anyone would leap from radio waves to microwave ovens.

As for patent numbers and scientific publications, that doesn't really seem to indicate actual innovation. Rather, it points to population growth and more participation in those programs. Patents, in particular, are issued more out of defense than actual innovation.

What we aren't seeing is massively disruptive technologies. We've not see the power generation which makes fossil fuels obsolete. We aren't seeing the breakthrough in rockets that allow for space vacations. We aren't seeing flying cars. Instead, we are seeing cars getting gradually more efficient, batteries getting gradually better, and computing power getting gradually better.

Actual, honest to goodness, life changing innovation has just stopped.

That's not really all bad, but it does point to "we probably won't be like the gods" any time soon. Just like life got better in the new world from the 1600s to the 1800s (for the most part), I expect life to get better from here on out, but not so mindbogglingly better that 100 years from now it will be completely different from what we experience today. The only major difference in life in 100 years is going to the the impacts of climate change.

The chances that we're about to hit the inflection point in #2 and #3 are still very small. There's a huge area where we can be on the rise in #2 and #3 before inflection.

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