Why haven't we really advanced much as a species lately?

[fungi]

refuse to take sources into consideration and dismiss them as bunk because they don't support your beliefs. you want more?

Dude,
I'll repeat this for you, maybe it'll be clearer the third time:
IQ tests are not a perfect method of measuring intelligence.
And again this "observed in some studies" increase in IQ levels was "unobserved" by some other studies.


My disregard for some obscure website is irrelevant in this discussion.

P.s. I'll admit this much, the way we think may (emphasis on may) have changed slightly caused by changes in our way of life (thanks to technology), but those "changes" in the way we think are not necessarily advancements.

 

[Shoemaker]

@JUST BLEED GOD interesting thread, I disagree with you in spots but I'll be back when I've got access to a real keyboard.


edit: essentially my pov is that technology is considerably advancing, however legacy institutions hold back implementation.

 

[ralphc1]

Exploring space is expensive and the government stopped investing in it. We haven't been to the moon in 46 years.

What is there to gain by going to the moon?

 

[blaseblah]

What is there to gain by going to the moon?

Scientific discovery. Expanding our space technology.

Is there any immediate gain? No. Which is why we aren't accomplishing anything in space.

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

We might be reaching our peak. I would like to think that some day deep space travel is possible and we might discover habitable planets like Earth or an Alien civilization that isn't hostile and trades its technology with us. But right now we haven't even colonized the Moon or even put a man on Mars and it doesn't look like that is happening any time soon. Technology will improve but realistically by how much?

 

[Possum Jenkins]

Printing was done for hundreds of years before the printing press was developed. Moveable type was also in use long before the printing press. The printing press allowed for larger pages to be printed more quickly. There was no reason to develop a printing press when nobody could read and a media to print on wasn't readily available. Developing weapons and agricultural implements was more important. When something is developed, uses for it are found. One invention leads to another. Travel spreads the knowledge.

All inventions have a long string of forebears but the fact still remains that the last couple of hundred years have seen a complete spike in pretty much all areas of progress. So the question still remains, why were so many discoveries and advances made in such short period of time?

If humans have had the same intellectual capacity since, let's say, 10,000 BC, why did it take until about the 18th century to get in gear?

 

[JUST BLEED GOD]

A lot of it is political correctness

Project Orion would have had men on Mars in the mid 1970s and men on Jupiters moons by 1983.

By now we'd have colonies all over the solar system and be sending stuff to alpha Centauri.

The project was actually exceeding all of its goals spectacularly.

But it was cancelled because they were budget cutting and atomic bombs are politically incorrect.

Damn! What happened!

This angers me.

 

[superpunch]

They wee doing budget cuts and in the context of Vietnam, anything kind of military and anything nuclear was an easy target.

If the advancement of space travel since the moon landings doesn't make sense to you, that's why. The next stage of it was intentionally sabotaged and cut.

That's why all they've done is bull shit alternative propulsion systems like ion drives and send shitty little robots everywhere.

If we staid on track, project Orion would have built spacecraft propelled by atomic bombs sending men everywhere in the solar system before 1990. Who knows what kind of surprise technology developments that would have led to by 2017? We could have warp drives and shit by now.

 

[superpunch]

All inventions have a long string of forebears but the fact still remains that the last couple of hundred years have seen a complete spike in pretty much all areas of progress. So the question still remains, why were so many discoveries and advances made in such short period of time?

If humans have had the same intellectual capacity since, let's say, 10,000 BC, why did it take until about the 18th century to get in gear?

1->2->4->8..

Start with 1 invention and you only have 1 idea to expand on. Then at 2 inventions, you have 2 ideas to mix around and make more inventions.. At 8 inventions, you have a lot more ideas to mix around..

So that leads to a naturally exponential function for technological advancement. A few hundred years ago We just started hitting 4 where the the advancement significantly diverges from a linear trajectory.

To more conceptoalize the number of possible combinations..

1! =1 2!=2 3!=6 4!=24 possible inventions.. 8!= some really big number of possible combinations of inventions using the inventions you already have as "parts"

 

[panamaican]

We've made tremendous advancements but not in the areas that people really pay attention to.

All of the world's knowledge is almost instantaneously accessible. Which is incredible when you think about it. We've almost cracked AI. We've almost got gene editing down perfectly. Nanotechnology.

People though that advancement would mean more big projects but it's actually been the other direction. We've gotten incredibly advanced in the small stuff.

 

[ToxicShocker]

Because people pay to watch Fast and Furious

 

[blaseblah]

We might be reaching our peak. I would like to think that some day deep space travel is possible and we might discover habitable planets like Earth or an Alien civilization that isn't hostile and trades its technology with us. But right now we haven't even colonized the Moon or even put a man on Mars and it doesn't look like that is happening any time soon. Technology will improve but realistically by how much?

The technology will improve when we seriously invest in it and throw money at it.

We put a man on the moon because we were scared of the Russians and their space program. Once that threat died the budget for NASA shrunk. Today we'd rather invest our resources in the war on terror than the future of space.

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

The technology will improve when we seriously invest in it and throw money at it.

We put a man on the moon because we were scared of the Russians and their space program. Once that threat died the budget for NASA shrunk. Today we'd rather invest our resources in the war on terror than the future of space.

Suppose we did invest in the future of space exploration. How far do you think we could get? I think colonizing the moon is possible but what benefit would that really have? And where can we go beyond that? Interstellar Space Travel is an absolutely fascinating possibility but at the present doesn't seem feasible.

 

[blaseblah]

Suppose we did invest in the future of space exploration. How far do you think we could get? I think colonizing the moon is possible but what benefit would that really have? And where can we go beyond that? Interstellar Space Travel is an absolutely fascinating possibility but at the present doesn't seem feasible.

Of course it's not gonna seem feasible when you look at it from your bubble of the present. We're talking about advancements 50 - 100 years from now that will benefit future generations, not us. We're too short-sighted to do it for them. We'd rather invest in current events and fight over wars, religion and ideologies.

 

[Clippy]

Were unevolving

We elected trump

We will be back o horse and wagon soon

 

[MysticNinjaJay]

Of course it's not gonna seem feasible when you look at it from your bubble of the present. We're talking about advancements 50 - 100 years from now that will benefit future generations, not us. We're too short-sighted to do it for them. We'd rather invest in current events and fight over wars, religion and ideologies.

I don't look at it from the bubble of the present but rather from a scientific standpoint. It's perfectly true that 500 years ago if you told people that there would be machines with wings that could send people from one side of a continent to another in a matter of hours that they would think you were crazy. But today we have airplanes and it's just a normal part of life. But have you ever looked in to how difficult it would be to travel from one solar system to another? We're talking a distance of light years. The nearest star is about 4 light years away. That means that to travel anywhere fast we would need to create spaceships that can exceed the speed of light and not just by a little but by a significant margin. The warp drive is scientifically possible in theory but we have no known means to gather enough energy for that type of trip, there's reason to believe that the spaceship itself would not be able to sustain damage from colliding with particles in space and the crew wouldn't survive. If future generations can pull out off that would be amazing but the scientific evidence at present indicates that traveling to distant planets is not feasible.

 

[GoGOPlata915]

Well "we" aren't very old.

 

[JUST BLEED GOD]

Suppose we did invest in the future of space exploration. How far do you think we could get? I think colonizing the moon is possible but what benefit would that really have? And where can we go beyond that? Interstellar Space Travel is an absolutely fascinating possibility but at the present doesn't seem feasible.

To them new 7 planets!

 

[RetiredSlave]

As far as deep space exploration goes thats a pipe dream for now. I could see a Martian colonization attempt within this century. No guarantee of success. Currently extraplanetary colonization is prohibitively resource and finance intensive. Needs new and much cheaper energy tech to become feasible.