Hacker News Reader

Comment by truculation | Hacker News Reader

I unashamedly think that progress in many fields has occurred, is a good thing, and that we should expect more of it!

However we don't get there by trying to change things, per se. (Only people who think they already have the answers do that.) Rather progress comes from trying to understand things as they are. Specifically from understanding the problems better.

For example, if we understood exactly why people eat too much, exactly why the dozen or so excellent fusion projects out there haven't yet succeeded, exactly why people go to church, then a lot of progress would happen spontaneously.

View on HN

You view people going to church as one of the problems? That seems... rather narrow-minded.

No no I mean the problem of explaining howcome people do go (or don't go). It's very interesting and the observable consequences of understanding it better are utterly unpredictable. E.g. it might result in fewer people going, more people going, or no change in attendance at all.

Ah. I understand.

>trying to change things

>trying to understand things as they are

Some might regard the following as overly charitable to the latter, but I think you could map those two strategies to political progressivism and conservatism (left and right), respectively. The ideal is probably a bit of both: without the 'trying to change' you don't have new ideas; without the 'trying to understand' you lose the lessons of the past.

To my recollection Civilization hasn't addressed left vs. right politics except in a surface "here's how the simulation parameters change" kind of way, but I sense that there might be an interesting game mechanic there as far as what happens when your culture veers too far in either direction.

I agree. This reminds me of a famous mathoverflow answer by Thurston: https://mathoverflow.net/a/44213

100% agreed on this. Invention is a myth. We don't invent new things, we discovering them through deeper understanding of what's actually going on.

Typically the easiest path to 'invention' is discovering how things function in other similar contexts, whether by naturally occurring phenomenon or clever optimization, and cross applying it to another field.

There are endless opportunities to do so in software (ie, in the 1990-2000s in enterprise software all you had to do was take x data heavy process and add a CRM/ERP/CMS/etc style system). Same with "web 2.0" web apps for clunky desktop software, mobile apps for desktop web apps, "sharing economy", IOT, and recently with deep learning/ML.

Likewise in the industrial revolution, you could find any process involving lots of manual labour and add mechanize it with engines or electricity and plenty of metal/steel.

That was a succinctly put clarification of some thoughts I've been trying to coherently put together for quite some time! Thanks for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com