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
