I wonder about what, a thousand years from now, people will look back on us and say 'if they just did this, they could have discovered that thing centuries earlier'.
Perhaps in many thousands of years civilisation would somewhat recover but by then nearly everything would have to be rediscovered.
This in fact is one of the possible answers to the Fermi paradox. Intelligent life besides us does exist but has regressed to a pre technological state and is unable to get back due to depleted resources. Thus it is unable to make its self known.
There just seems to be so much we know we don't know, that to theorize we're the pinnacle of what civilization can be is...gauche? Insanely short sighted and Sol-centric?
I dunno, I'm obviously not a theoretical physicist or conducting well thought out experiments testing those theories - but it just seems defeatist and lame.
We have a visible Universe that has rules and guardrails - that's bonkers and needs to be hacked more.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Ro6QSQaKdhfpeeGpr/why-safety...
About the end of the Chinese civilization technological advantage in the 16th century:
> War had ravaged the lands, laying waste whole cities. Plague had struck, killing millions, men, women and children buried in mass graves...
> (but) the force that put an end to the Chinese arc of progress was deadlier by far than all of these together, yet seemingly intangible as metaphysics. By the 16th century, the fleets had vanished, the proximate cause political; to this day there is no consensus on the underlying factors.
Also:
> The saving grace has always been the outside: when one nation, one civilization, faltered, another picked up the torch and carried on; but with the march of globalization, there may soon be no more outside.
Perhaps the direction the world is going in the last couple of years, with less unity, is not that bad.
Angrier and angrier narcissist dictators with nukes? -- less unity yes. Does it increase safety?
Yes beautiful text
That may be a necessary evil though in the really long term.
But with the humans of today, then yes I agree that conflict is unavoidable
Could you "be friends" with authoritarian countries led by dictators? If not, why?
Many countries' populations appear to see authoritarian regimes as the preferred way to govern, from China to Iran, Russia to parts of Southern and Eastern Europe. You can claim most people would prefer something else but are silenced, but I don't agree with that, as countries "forced" to be democratic, like Afghanistan and Iraq, unequivocably go back to being authoritarian as soon as the "oppressors" leave.
It's official policy of the USA to spread democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_promotion_by_the_Uni...
If you're the ruler of a non-democratic country, you would take this kind of behaviour as kindly as the USA would take any other country trying to spread authoritarianism, wouldn't you?
Whether one ideological belief system is more correct than another, or more just, is kind of beyond the point (and very difficult to prove objectively anyway)... my point is that if you're willing to accept a variety of cultures, ideologies and so on, you must not lay judgement at all on others, and specially you must not attempt to crusade around the world trying to impart your own believes on others. Accepting that would go a long way towards "everyone being friends enjoying the differences".
That's the same as believing the African Americans wanted to get captured by slave traders and shipped by boat to work as slaves in the US.
You have, or pretend to have, big holes in your understand of people and the world.
Putin was never chosen by the people, he doesn't represent them. He assassinates opposition politicians or put then in prison if they grow too strong, and fakes election results otherwise he would lose.
I wonder if you're a paid Chinese Communist Party 50 cent person, otherwise, the lack of knowledge you show would be baffling. If indeed you are, then, no hard feelings, I understand you might need a job and pay the rent and maybe you have family and kids what do I know. Probably I won't reply, have a nice day anyway.
Book tips: The Dictators Handbok. Those people don't ... Don't represent the people.
How is it any lazy
I found especially the Fermi paradox interesting (throwawayacc2 thanks for mentioning)
A hand-cranked wax cylinder with an acoustic cone, a needle, and a rod to move the needle along the cylinder.
Which time period are you talking about? I couldn't find a grand unifying graph of eg cost-per-kWh of electricity storage since 1900 or so, but what I could find points to steady declines in price.
Both in single use batteries and in rechargeables.
What you might see as stagnation is that rechargeable batteries haven only rather recently become good enough for many exciting applications (like practical electric cars). But just because we've only recently crossed these thresholds, doesn't mean there was stagnation earlier.
See eg https://enerpoly.com/alkaline-cell-then-and-now/ for some important progress that you might have missed.
The humble lead-acid battery also has a fascinating history, that is full of steady improvements.
> As an example, lead battery life has increased by 30-35% in the last 20 years.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/10/27/the-lead-aci...