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Comment by aerosmile | Hacker News Reader

I take the opposite view - technology has progressed faster than any other aspect of our experience on this planet. From first flight to landing on the moon = 60 years. From first computers to an iPhone = 60 years. What else has changed in this world faster than technology?

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I'd say going to the moon and shitting 15% faster iphones every 6 months is easy compared to fission, lab grown meat and fully autonomous vehicles. You're under the impression that we've accomplished a lot, and we did to some extent, but the vast majority of it is regular incremental updates, not paradigm shifting discoveries. Running water, central heating or the invention of fridges is more exciting to me than anything we came up with since the 60s, including going to the moon.

We have iphones, tiktok, and subscription based meditation apps sure. We're still living in the exact same ways, just with more distractions and less available time. Productivity increased dramatically but we're not doing better things, we're just doing more things. The gap between "what could be" and "what is" is filled with an incredibly huge amount of gadgets and clutter.

Also, life isn't a video game, the fact that we did ABC in the past doesn't mean we can do XYZ in the future. If you listen to Musk we'll be sipping mojitos on Mars by 2050, I'd be surprised if we have fully autonomous cars on earth by then tbh.

Lab grown meat or fission are more like "invention of the wheel -> modern electric car" rather than "og iphone -> iphone 13"

so we landed on the moon and built iphones, past performance does not imply future results!

i was convinced to be a pessimist by this idlewords lecture: https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm

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