Confusion on Progress...
by nameta9 » Sun Jan 05, 2014 3:43 pm
Confusion on Progress...
Be careful when talking about and considering the ideas such as "We are going forward", "science is progressing", "we are increasing our knowledge", "technology is going forward", etc.
This should all be broken down into three fundamental segments:
1) New First Principles, new fundamental discoveries, new fundamental ideas, new "Paradigm changes" and these are those great fundamental discoveries and experiments and formulas that changed the way the world is and how we apply our knowledge to it such as Newton and Calculus and Mechanics, Maxwell's equations and Electromagnetism, The theory of Evolution, and Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, DNA and Genetic Engeneering and many other real fundamental discoveries (oil discovered and applied), theories and ideas that become solid First Principles;
2) New Applications of first principles and new applications of technological discoveries: new first principles often imply new applications and new possibilities, new technologies, etc such as the Steam Engine and the railroad, Electricity and all of what can be done with electricity, the Engine, Automobiles, Airplanes, Jet Planes, Atomic Energy and Atom Bombs, Computers and then Microprocessors and then Personal Computers and then the Internet, reinforced concrete and skyscrapers and elevators etc .
3) The multiplication of instances, examples of production of items that then become standard but are just variations on a theme: so you have a billion cars produced in the 20th century and they differ by design and incremental perfections of parts of it, suspension systems, engines, consumption, speed, etc, but in the end they are all just the constant multiplication of new examples of a fundamental old Application that appeared a hundred years ago: and so it is with airplanes then jets then rockets, and so it is with telephones and computers etc.
A 150 years ago buildings having more than 4 floors where rare: but with reinforced concrete and then elevators the world has become full of skyscrapers and multifloored buildings of all kinds, from 5 floors to 100 floors etc, but this is an example of constantly applying the same application over and over again as a variation on a theme, same with computers and smartphones: they just contain a telephone and camera in one box, but the telephone and camera are all old applications now, etc.
The hardest area to discern between applications and principles is biology - medicine - drugs: this area is both applications of knowledge and sometimes first principles at the same time, but often hard to judge and each patient has a different reaction and so forth: health care and medicine is a great arena for all of those who want to make believe they made great new discoveries, very hard to distinguish, hard to verify and so forth (that is why drugs have hundreds of counter problems and companies want to protect themselves, all drugs seem to be risky and can cause death) this is because medicine, biology, health care is not an exact science in many cases.
Music also had all of its first principles established in the last 400 years: Music is a science in that it is a manipulation of undetermined entities, of undefined entities according to patterns imposed, it is a manipulation of an abstract world (and newly designed minds could invert this and make solid reality manipulable like music and music become a solid reality, but this only with incredible new minds that work differently), it is a manipulation of reality according to technologies etc.
But just as the electric guitar produced an incredible new quantity of new music from 1950 on, the mellotron and computer music did not have the same effect, but in any case it is all electronics applied to music.
So most people think that new examples of old things, new instances of old things are progress, are a sign of science going forward. It is not, it is a sign of production, industrial production and the never ending production of new examples of mostly old items that increases, nothing fundamentally new. 20 new car models that will come out in the next few years and millions of new cars produced, 10 new smartphone examples in the next few years, 10 new techno bands or heavy metal bands that will appear in the next few years, 10 new skyscrapers and a 100 new 5 or 6 floor buildings that will appear in the next few years: so yes the application of old principles can increase forever, the combinations of how to design old applications is never ending, but nothing really game changing or new is being created, nothing that can really surprise you.
So the future of science is mostly 1) very few really new First Principles can be discovered, most have been made, maybe a handful are left, 2) a few new applications like something as new as the PC was and the Internet was when it came out, or the railroad, or car or jet, even here I can't imagine many 3) a never ending amount of "new" applications in the form of new instances of old applications, thousands of new car designs, buildings, rockets, drugs and medicine and body enhancers and what not, but these are all multiplying the number of old stabilized items, not really new items and not really meaning that "we are going forward", nay, this is the arena of political fights that will increase since everyone wants to apply the stabilized technology in one way or another (solar or nuclear ?) etc.
This also implies a decrease in the amount of work needed: a building needs a certain number of workers and once built can last a 100 years, a car needs a certain number of workers but lasts 10 years, a smartphone can be eventually produced by an automatic factory and may need very few workers, so we end up needing less and less work also. A building or car has many other subsystems needed, the car an engine, a window, a seat, etc. but a smartphone has only a few Integrated circuits, end of story, hence very little work needed or generated to produce the item. And we are going towards a world where people buy ever more smartphones and fewer homes and cars (because they have less money).
And then we will start to manipulate the Mind Brain and the world will never be the same again, the Instant Singularities, new universes, the last and greatest discovery is the end of all reality and discovery and the entrance into a trillion new worlds where yes, there will be trillions of new First Principles and applications beyond anything you can behold...
turd
Be careful when talking about and considering the ideas such as "We are going forward", "science is progressing", "we are increasing our knowledge", "technology is going forward", etc.
This should all be broken down into three fundamental segments:
1) New First Principles, new fundamental discoveries, new fundamental ideas, new "Paradigm changes" and these are those great fundamental discoveries and experiments and formulas that changed the way the world is and how we apply our knowledge to it such as Newton and Calculus and Mechanics, Maxwell's equations and Electromagnetism, The theory of Evolution, and Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, DNA and Genetic Engeneering and many other real fundamental discoveries (oil discovered and applied), theories and ideas that become solid First Principles;
2) New Applications of first principles and new applications of technological discoveries: new first principles often imply new applications and new possibilities, new technologies, etc such as the Steam Engine and the railroad, Electricity and all of what can be done with electricity, the Engine, Automobiles, Airplanes, Jet Planes, Atomic Energy and Atom Bombs, Computers and then Microprocessors and then Personal Computers and then the Internet, reinforced concrete and skyscrapers and elevators etc .
3) The multiplication of instances, examples of production of items that then become standard but are just variations on a theme: so you have a billion cars produced in the 20th century and they differ by design and incremental perfections of parts of it, suspension systems, engines, consumption, speed, etc, but in the end they are all just the constant multiplication of new examples of a fundamental old Application that appeared a hundred years ago: and so it is with airplanes then jets then rockets, and so it is with telephones and computers etc.
A 150 years ago buildings having more than 4 floors where rare: but with reinforced concrete and then elevators the world has become full of skyscrapers and multifloored buildings of all kinds, from 5 floors to 100 floors etc, but this is an example of constantly applying the same application over and over again as a variation on a theme, same with computers and smartphones: they just contain a telephone and camera in one box, but the telephone and camera are all old applications now, etc.
The hardest area to discern between applications and principles is biology - medicine - drugs: this area is both applications of knowledge and sometimes first principles at the same time, but often hard to judge and each patient has a different reaction and so forth: health care and medicine is a great arena for all of those who want to make believe they made great new discoveries, very hard to distinguish, hard to verify and so forth (that is why drugs have hundreds of counter problems and companies want to protect themselves, all drugs seem to be risky and can cause death) this is because medicine, biology, health care is not an exact science in many cases.
Music also had all of its first principles established in the last 400 years: Music is a science in that it is a manipulation of undetermined entities, of undefined entities according to patterns imposed, it is a manipulation of an abstract world (and newly designed minds could invert this and make solid reality manipulable like music and music become a solid reality, but this only with incredible new minds that work differently), it is a manipulation of reality according to technologies etc.
But just as the electric guitar produced an incredible new quantity of new music from 1950 on, the mellotron and computer music did not have the same effect, but in any case it is all electronics applied to music.
So most people think that new examples of old things, new instances of old things are progress, are a sign of science going forward. It is not, it is a sign of production, industrial production and the never ending production of new examples of mostly old items that increases, nothing fundamentally new. 20 new car models that will come out in the next few years and millions of new cars produced, 10 new smartphone examples in the next few years, 10 new techno bands or heavy metal bands that will appear in the next few years, 10 new skyscrapers and a 100 new 5 or 6 floor buildings that will appear in the next few years: so yes the application of old principles can increase forever, the combinations of how to design old applications is never ending, but nothing really game changing or new is being created, nothing that can really surprise you.
So the future of science is mostly 1) very few really new First Principles can be discovered, most have been made, maybe a handful are left, 2) a few new applications like something as new as the PC was and the Internet was when it came out, or the railroad, or car or jet, even here I can't imagine many 3) a never ending amount of "new" applications in the form of new instances of old applications, thousands of new car designs, buildings, rockets, drugs and medicine and body enhancers and what not, but these are all multiplying the number of old stabilized items, not really new items and not really meaning that "we are going forward", nay, this is the arena of political fights that will increase since everyone wants to apply the stabilized technology in one way or another (solar or nuclear ?) etc.
This also implies a decrease in the amount of work needed: a building needs a certain number of workers and once built can last a 100 years, a car needs a certain number of workers but lasts 10 years, a smartphone can be eventually produced by an automatic factory and may need very few workers, so we end up needing less and less work also. A building or car has many other subsystems needed, the car an engine, a window, a seat, etc. but a smartphone has only a few Integrated circuits, end of story, hence very little work needed or generated to produce the item. And we are going towards a world where people buy ever more smartphones and fewer homes and cars (because they have less money).
And then we will start to manipulate the Mind Brain and the world will never be the same again, the Instant Singularities, new universes, the last and greatest discovery is the end of all reality and discovery and the entrance into a trillion new worlds where yes, there will be trillions of new First Principles and applications beyond anything you can behold...
turd
- nameta9
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- Joined: Thu Nov 25, 2004 10:42 am
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