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Anon thinks about human history (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/greentext@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 93 points 2 years ago (21 children)

It is actually wild to think about the progress humanity has made in the last hundred years or so, we went from the Wright brothers to walking on the moon in a human lifetime.

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  • [–] 96 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    The only thing separating modern man from caveman is education, and that explains an awful lot about the world.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (10 children)

    Technological progress is exponential.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (8 children)

    I think that's true for only a planet with indefinite resources. We haven't really hit many caps yet, but I believe things will start to slow down within a lifetime.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    We're also, in my view, hitting the limits of what certain technologies can do. Internal combustion engines, for example, are near the limit of what they can do as far as efficiency is concerned. We're also bumping into the limits as far as semiconductors are concerned.

    There's also diminishing returns with trying to wring out the very last piece of efficiency from a system, so yes, I do think we're going to see a plateau in terms of technological progress, at least in some areas.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    This is true for older technologies.

    Like combustion as you said, we used it a lot and pretty much designed it the best we can with the materials we know and have. But there will be completely new technologies opening up, like maybe fusion. Or solar we know already since a while but made major improvements the last decade and will probably improve it even more.

    I was more thinking about how we had this technology rush. I think it is mostly due to the use of fossil fuels and therefore "incredible cheap" energy which also led to humans reproduce a lot. (incredible cheap in quotation marks, because we will probably have to pay the real price which is environmental damage and a modified atmosphere)

    When you have a world with 3 times (random number based on nothing) more people you also have 3 times more great artists, scientists, etc. Of course only, if society stays more or less the same. Imagine how many great works we could have if the majority of great minds wasn't preoccupied paying for food and a place to stay like in a hamster wheel.

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    We already are. There's a reason you don't see intel and amd chips past 5ghz, for example.

    Or how modern cars are still functionally the same from 10 years ago just with more spyware and bloat.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    The ones that aren't hybrid or EV, at least.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago* (3 children)

    Mate, the first Prius came out in 2006. It's 2024. That's some stagnant ass growth if you ask me.

    Actually the SECOND GEN prius came out in 2003. The first gen prius came out in 01 in Japan.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (2 children)

    And? Look at the specs for a current gen prius, they're bigger, faster, more efficient, plug in hybrid, and have better tech. They've come a long way.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    progress humanity has made

    That word implies a positive growth. Technological advancement seems like a better fit. Although we did that, and many tinkering with productivity, our life standarts was not consistent with that.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I would like you to look at the relative populations of slaves to free people, the rate of death by starvation, the rate of death by malaria, the rate of death in childbirth (both parent and child), and tell me we haven't made significant positive growth.

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  • [–] -4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    It depends on if you watch one country or the world as the whole. I'm now in t-shirt, pants and throusers made somewhere in Asia or Africa. I don't feel they have these rates just like ours. I'm a part of an elite to speak English language in my hole. These workers who produced everything in my house didn't have that time to learn a foreign language, nor they have time to shitpost in it. I feel a little pity for when I despised to work with dangerous chemicals for a while in the past, and they did so for years, died from illneses caused by it, worked with bare hands and without respiratory protection, just to have a meal on the table. There are bad things happening we are isolated from, but it doesn't mean theybdon't happen.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    I never said bad things don't happen. Bad things happen all the time, constantly. The poorest people on earth have a lower quality of life relative to the wealthiest people on Earth than ever before in history, but that is largely because the wealthiest people on earth have never been as wealthy as they are now. I reckon there are few places where the quality of life right now is significantly worse than it was in that location 1,000 years ago.

    The one exception, of course, is climate change. Hundreds of millions, potentially billions of people will be killed within the next couple of centuries due to anthropogenic climate change. I still hold that humanity as a whole is making progress, largely because I can't think of a single empire in the past that wouldn't exploit fossil fuels more than we do now, if they knew how to.

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