On Tue, May 7, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Yes. I have long felt that we are living in an age of pessimism. Also, > people have the notion that we are living through rapid technological > progress, but I disagree. Progress was much faster from 1890 to 1950. >
I don't think that can be justified with objective metrics. There is no doubt that the fundamentals of physics changed much faster during that period, but revolutions like relativity and quantum mechanics can't be expected to come every century, and they are a function of history (earlier progress), and not optimism or pessimism. Understanding biology has made far more progress in the last half century, than the previous, with the introduction of genomics and proteomics and the sequencing of the genomes of many organisms. And as for technical change, communications and computation have developed far faster in the last 50 years. We went from primitive rockets to walking on the moon in a decade. (Not very useful, but progress nonetheless) Moore's law started in the 50s or 60s, and has continued unabated since, without a hiccup in the last 20 years of cold fusion stasis.
