Wright Brothers inspire! wrote:
Just finished the new Wright Brothers book by David McCullough.
I recommend it.
Their example of determination, vision, and hard work will inspire you!
(don't listen to the cynics)
http://www.amazon.com/The-Wright-Brothers-David-McCullough/dp/1476728747
A great book! Can you believe how the media treated these guys? Nutso. These days the local news would show up to film a little kid sledding down a dirt hill.
We all feed from the trough.
I'm just trying to be a little more free range
That's what they said in 1493 as well.
jamin wrote:
Now we all just sit around while the planet becomes more crowded and our living standards drop as a result. It would be nice to be alive back during the times when the cost of living, the number of hours worked per week, etc., were actually going DOWN with each generation.
Do you really believe this?
Take one technology--machine learning--and think about how it can improve something like medical diagnosis. Here's a TED talk on the topic:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_howard_the_wonderful_and_terrifying_implications_of_computers_that_can_learnNow imagine that we could push this technology down to the 3rd world. How many lives would be saved? Dramatically improved?
There has never been a better time for how technology is improving living standards.
I can't believe that no one has mentioned that as soon as most urban police forces have weapons mounted on drones that AI in some computer will immediately put us in a total SKYnet situation.
"You promised me Mars colonies. Instead, I got Facebook."--Buzz Aldrin
John Connor's uncle wrote:
I can't believe that no one has mentioned that as soon as most urban police forces have weapons mounted on drones that AI in some computer will immediately put us in a total SKYnet situation.
I can't believe that YOU mentioned it.
-Hadron therapy - targeting tumors with miniature, table-top particle accelerators.
Are you sure you didn't mean "hardon therapy " :)
The human mind is just getting warmed up. We're nowhere near our potential. Look inside. Trust yourself. Relax. Rearrange your mental furniture. Pay attention to the rivers of intelligence running deep in you. Act on it.
We gotta sublimate the ego thing and start cooperating.
"Necessity is the mother of invention."
That axiom implies that the power of invention lies with the individual who simply reacts to a presented conundrum.
Invention by committee simply does not exist, and that's where the problems arise today. We live in a world of command-control economies, where the government is the primary go-to source whenever there is a perceived need, and diverts free market resources to subsidize it's committee-think. Nothing new can truly be invented as long as the government dictates how we live, what we believe, what we can eat, what we can drive, etc.
Of course, the race to the moon proves otherwise.
jamin wrote:
Piano_Man87 wrote:Exactly.
Due to the infinite capacity for human creativity, there are infinite ways to apply science to solve problems. Even if that science is very old.
Surely, but who is tackling problems which, if solved, will increase our living standards? I don't care if someone develops a new relevance algorithm for my Facebook news feed.
What DO you care about, then?
Yet politicians are paid more than poets.
You want sad?
"farther" or "further"? The physical or non-physical advance? The grammar police are minutes away when seconds count.
jamin wrote:
All the elements on the periodic table have been discovered. All the corners of the earth have been travelled to. All the technology that can be created has been created. All the running WRs have been set. Now we all just sit around while the planet becomes more crowded and our living standards drop as a result. It would be nice to be alive back during the times when the cost of living, the number of hours worked per week, etc., were actually going DOWN with each generation.
I feel like I'm being trolled hardcore. Especially that bolded statement. No way anybody believes that.
Peter Th. wrote:Phisyics - was 99% irrelevant by the time of Newton, and Einstein only figured out the last useful 1% that we needed to get GPS to work. Things like string theory are unfalsifiable and therefore fruitless.
Hmm, how about things like fusion, actually being able to travel space at anything other than comically slow speeds, genetic applications, nanotechnology, computational speeds, etc. Physics underscores basically every other science, and we certainly don't have all the understanding we need for further application.
Peter Th. wrote:Chemistry - 99% done, only thing left is to get batteries for electric cars more efficient. Every stable element has indeed been discovered. I believe the research is already there in academia, just have to implement it, so I'll call this "no longer relevant."
Understanding of physics/chemistry are not there yet for nanotechnology, which is more or less chemistry underscored with physics. Bunch of other things too, though too lazy to list.
Peter Th. wrote:Biology - we still need to build vertical farms and genetically engineer agriculture to be an order of magnitude more efficient to solve the overpopulation problem.
Some diseases? More like most diseases. Plenty of viruses/bacteria/parasites we don't know about, then add in things like auto-immunity, cancer, heart disease, degenerative diseases, bone issues, injury healing.
Oh, and of the course lets not forget the king of diseases: We are still aging.
Biology ain't even close my friend, though if our technology and knowledge keeps improving at current exponential rates we might actually be getting somewhere meaningful in the next 25-100 years.
Peter Th. wrote:Information technoloy - Moore's Law no longer applies and nanotechnology is a pipe dream, but we have to build self-driving automobiles to eliminate car accidents.
Moore's Law largely does still apply, and going back to physics there are still potential applications there that would allow for further extension.
We could more or less do self driving automobiles right now with sufficient motivation.
AI and intelligence research is nowhere yet.
Peter Th. wrote:Nutrition - lots to figure out here, as all degenerative diseases are related to nutrition, yet we still don't know extremely basic things like what happens to iron absorption when you eat calcium.
Nice try, but no. Most are related more heavily to aging than anything else. Supplementing people to optimal chemical levels is not going to prevent things like dementia, CVD, cancer, diabetes, etc. Those are aging diseases.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Civilized people are weak, slow and stupid. They are like farm animals compared to their wild cousins. All these "advances" merely add to the effete luxury that is poisoning the human condition.
The idea that civilization made people smarter is false. Almost all of that "we're so smart" stuff is just culture and specialization. Even inventors and such are just trained by years of rote like a performing bear at a circus. They do amazing things, but they can't do ordinary human things, lost in a maze of nerdery from which there is no escape.
The true human is the spear-wielding barbarian. Never live in groups of more than 30. Never plant crops or keep domestic food animals. Allow nature and evolution to keep you and your descendants strong. One day, as history has proven again and again, civilization will overripen and consume itself, but the barbarians endure forever.
I'll take being slow and stupid and living for millenia over being a strong, smart, and fierce barbarian. Might be a physically superior specimen, but it's a massively crappier lifestyle.