The end of the future
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
"Modern Western civilization stands on the twin plinths of science and
technology. Taken together, these two interrelated domains reassure us
that the 19th-century story of never-ending progress remains intact.
Without them, the arguments that we are undergoing cultural decay —
ranging from the collapse of art and literature after 1945 to the soft
totalitarianism of political correctness in media and academia to the
sordid worlds of reality television and popular entertainment — would
gather far more force. Liberals often assert that science and technology
remain essentially healthy; conservatives sometimes counter that these
are false utopias; but the two sides of the culture wars silently agree
that the accelerating development and application of the natural
sciences continues apace.
Yet during the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and has no end in
sight, these great expectations have been supplemented by a desperate
necessity. We need high-paying jobs to avoid thinking about how to
compete with China and India for low-paying jobs. We need rapid growth
to meet the wishful expectations of our retirement plans and our runaway
welfare states. We need science and technology to dig us out of our deep
economic and financial hole, even though most of us cannot separate
science from superstition or technology from magic. In our hearts and
minds, we know that desperate optimism will not save us. Progress is
neither automatic nor mechanistic; it is rare. Indeed, the unique
history of the West proves the exception to the rule that most human
beings through the millennia have existed in a naturally brutal,
unchanging, and impoverished state. But there is no law that the
exceptional rise of the West must continue. So we could do worse than to
inquire into the widely held opinion that America is on the wrong track
(and has been for some time), to wonder whether Progress is not doing as
well as advertised, and perhaps to take exceptional measures to arrest
and reverse any decline.
...
"
--
FFF
Dirk
http://www.neopax.com/technomage/ - Magick and Technology
Doug Freyburger
>
> http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278758/end-future-peter-thiel?page=1
>
> "Modern Western civilization stands on the twin plinths of science and
> technology. Taken together, these two interrelated domains reassure us
> that the 19th-century story of never-ending progress remains intact.
> Without them, the arguments that we are undergoing cultural decay —
> ranging from the collapse of art and literature after 1945 to the soft
> totalitarianism of political correctness in media and academia to the
> sordid worlds of reality television and popular entertainment — would
> gather far more force. Liberals often assert that science and technology
> remain essentially healthy; conservatives sometimes counter that these
> are false utopias; but the two sides of the culture wars silently agree
> that the accelerating development and application of the natural
> sciences continues apace.
Historically there have been great advances that triggered eras of
exponential growth but they ramped down back into stabilty. Herding and
farming, transportation by boat, houses and storage buildings, writing,
metal working and so on.
The explosion of science was already happening when the Scientific
Method was codified. It was more about good sailing ships for travel
and building stone roads again early on.
At some point every science roles off from an exponential growth to a
stable asymptotic. Inorganic chemistry now works on pretty obscure
stuff. At some point all existing sciences will do that.
Who knows when or if completely news sciences will emerge. It's the
idea in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Thomas Kuhn. Until
someone notices that something in nature can be described with
mathematics there's no progress or folks don't even know a potential
field exists.
So there are competing theories. We'll eventually top out with science
because we're approaching actual truth about the physical universe. At
some point some genius will try to apply some equations to something no
one ever noticed before and there will be another boom. The key may be
that before the Scientific Method was codified natural philosophers did
not always try to apply mathematics to everything and now they do. So
when do we think we've run out of new sciences? There's no way to tell.
Art and literature collapse. I think art is communicating ideas. I
think "good" art makes it easy to communicate those ideas. This is why
folks say art is in decline to me. Expressionist art has gotten harder
and harder to appreciate. I don't think literature is in collapse.
> Yet during the Great Recession, which began in 2008 and has no end in
> sight, these great expectations have been supplemented by a desperate
> necessity. We need high-paying jobs to avoid thinking about how to
> compete with China and India for low-paying jobs.
At some point there will be no places to go for cheaper labor and there
will be enough automation everywhere that cheap labor will no longer
help. Then the job growth begins doing jobs other than manufacturing.
> We need rapid growth
> to meet the wishful expectations of our retirement plans and our runaway
> welfare states.
Reality is real no matter political desires. On this point I agree with
Scott. Runaway welfare states have always failed and taken others with
them. The world is doing that again and the exact same events will be
the result. No one will like the result but wishful thinking does not
solve problems.
> We need science and technology to dig us out of our deep
> economic and financial hole, even though most of us cannot separate
> science from superstition or technology from magic.
This is someting I find odd because since I know what they are I can mix
them without issues. Superstition is treating science like it's just
some religion. Asatru isn't just some religion so that's not a problem
among us. Magic helps when doing technology. It's called intuition and
is to be cultivated deliberately.
Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
> Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote:
>>
>> http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278758/end-future-peter-thiel?page=1
>>
>> "Modern Western civilization stands on the twin plinths of science and
>> technology. Taken together, these two interrelated domains reassure us
>> that the 19th-century story of never-ending progress remains intact.
>> ranging from the collapse of art and literature after 1945 to the soft
>> totalitarianism of political correctness in media and academia to the
I think a lot of the thrust of the article is that science is too
politicized. Just the fact that it takes years to approve an existing
certified drug for off label use suggests something is radically wrong.
That bureaucracy has stifled technological implementation, or more
simply stated, governments are not solving the known major problems and
their regulations are preventing the private sector doing so as well.
A classic example in the USA is NASA.
Zero to the moon in 8 years, but now cannot even match their old
achievement given decades. Or Thiel's point that modern govt could not
successfully replicate the Manhattan project.