Hacker News Reader

Comment by fragmede | Hacker News Reader

Those biorobots are limited to what a human is able to do. A Roman slave can only lift as much as the strongest human. A forklift can lift far greater weights, a printing press can make far more copies than an army of scribes could produce. their economic conditions and culture had them stuck in a local maxima, but what a maxima it was. What are we currently stuck in a local maxima because we're hamstrung by economic conditions and our culture? housing and zoning seems to be a big one.

View on HN

I wouldn't say we are stuck in a local maxima. The world has developed intensenly over the past decade, and particularly over the past 30 years with the internet and widespread computing moving things along.

You can feel just how fast we are moving monthly.

In the US, life expectancy has plateaued and wages are roughly the same as 50 years ago for people without a college degree. Internet and wide spread computing have caused one of the largest increases in mental health problems since we’ve been tracking such things.

Progress in terms of actual improvements to human lives has been very limited.

We are progressing just in which direction I don’t know

If we evolve into Eloi and Morlocks, I want a time machine.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlock

It hasn’t, it just mostly hasn’t been in the industrialised world. China, India, Vietnam and many other countries have seen tremendous advances in development in the last couple decades.

Good point, I was just talking about the US.

Those are political outcomes. They're the result of deliberate choices by people and enacted by policies.

Yes, that's why scientific and technical advancements alone are insufficient for progress. It's necessary to have the right cultural and political systems in place to benefit from those advancements as well.

Why do you extrapolate the situation of the US to the world? I want to understand your USDefaultism.

I live in the US. No, this doesn't apply to the whole world.

it's undeniable there have been vast advancements in recent times, but thinking that we can't possibly be in a local maxima in any area seems like plain hubris.

> Those biorobotics are limited to what a human is able to do

Well humans are and were able to use tools to multiply their strength so this isn’t really the limitation that could be inferred by the position and wording of this statement

Reply on news.ycombinator.com