> We made approximately the same progress in the past 100 years as the prior 1000 as the prior 30,000
I hear this sort of argument all the time, but what is it even based on? There’s no clear definition of scientific and technological progress, much less something that’s measurable clearly enough to make claims like this.
As I understand it, the idea is simply “Ooo, look, it took ten thousand years to go from fire to wheel, but only a couple hundred to go from printing press to airplane!!!”, and I guess that’s true (at least if you have a very juvenile, Sid Meier’s Civilization-like understanding of what history even is) but it’s also nonsense to try and extrapolate actual numbers from it.
Plotting the highest observable assembly index over time will yield an exponential curve starting from the beginning of the universe. This is the closest I’m aware of to a mathematical model quantifying the distinct impression that local complexity has been increasing exponentially.
I hear this sort of argument all the time, but what is it even based on? There’s no clear definition of scientific and technological progress, much less something that’s measurable clearly enough to make claims like this.
As I understand it, the idea is simply “Ooo, look, it took ten thousand years to go from fire to wheel, but only a couple hundred to go from printing press to airplane!!!”, and I guess that’s true (at least if you have a very juvenile, Sid Meier’s Civilization-like understanding of what history even is) but it’s also nonsense to try and extrapolate actual numbers from it.