Comment by adamjs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adamjs | Hacker News Reader

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I agree some progress has occurred since 1970, but the pace of totally new ideas has slowed considerably. We're in the Age of Moderate Improvement.

I have often wondered what made the West so great during its golden age of innovation (and to answer what we're missing today) and think it can be attributed to a single-mindedness in our culture and leadership towards a common goal.

The Industrial Revolution (and American Revolution) would not have been possible without the overwhelmingly popular Age of Enlightenment (a cultural movement of intellectual reform that emphasized reason over tradition). Such multi-national cooperation and exchange of ideas had been previously unprecedented. The intellectuals of each country banded together because they had a common enemy (entrenched tradition, religion, and monarchy).

Similar patterns (large-scale cooperation towards a common goal) can be found in the Second Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, and the Space Race.

So the question remains: what singular goal(s) do we have today?

The Internet has a great deal of potential to be used as a vehicle for a new intellectual revolution that may drive a new age of progress. I've seen a few hints of this in the OSS community and Silicon Valley but so far neither have found a common goal that resonates strongly enough.

tl;dr : The want of progress is not specific enough to inspire. We need a new, overarching goal to drive the next age of progress.

To my mind, this is a side effect of the 'Capitalism, right or wrong' zeitgeist we have today. Capital markets are fantastic for allocating resources, but if you leave them to their own devices, that's all they do. They allocate resources to the entities that want them and have the means to acquire them. They coordinate action, to be sure, but they don't coordinate action in the broader sense that you're describing here. We have to hope for the Elon Musks of the world to drive progress, but while there are actually a lot of Elon Musks, most of them did not have the foresight to co-found Paypal.

Yes exactly.

Though I call into question whether or not that responsibility (to coordinate action towards the advancement of human civilization) should be left solely with our heroes. I believe this narrative will never truly change until every individual takes some share in that responsibility.

What I was getting at though, is that most individuals can't take a share in that responsibility, even if they have the ability and the desire. This is an enormous waste. Not to make light of Elon Musk's accomplishments, but it is not his intelligence and leadership ability that make him exceptional (though he is a phenomenon in both respects), but rather those traits coupled with a solid bit of seed money in the form of the Paypal sale, and getting into two industries that were poised to explode, and, frankly, some luck. You can argue the extent to which he made those industries explode, but IIRC commercial space flight was, in 2003, considered a very dumb idea to start a business around, and electric cars were something we knew were coming sooner or later, but that would remain a money loser for a long time. It took someone with a substantial fortune, and the willingness to risk losing it, to prove both of those propositions false. (And even then, in SpaceX's case, a lot of their success is due to landing NASA contracts, which I've got no problem with - but it's not capitalism.)

So, where is the Elon Musk of high-energy physics? Where is the Elon Musk of terraforming, both off-planet and on Earth to reverse climate change? What of cancer, antibiotics, longevity treatment, machine intelligence? Et cetera. These are equally important problems we face, and if we rely on 'heroes' to take them on, we might be waiting for a long time. And again, by 'heroes' I don't mean people with the ability and the intelligence and the desire to solve these problems - we have plenty of those - rather people with those qualities and the resources to truly take them on. Those are rare, indeed. Contrast Elon Musk with Notch, who are of comparable means now, yet Notch has quite clearly stated that if anything he does starts to have an impact again, he will shitcan it immediately. What a profoundly awful attitude to have. Sadly, I think you'll find more like him in that caste than Elon.

As I say, it seems like an enormous waste. Capital markets alone are not up to the task. For what it's worth, I'm not trying to subtly advocate for socialism or something either. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but it is a problem.

You're reading my mind here. (4 AM here so please excuse any ill-formed logic)

Excellent points regarding the exceptional breadth of requirements necessary to effect change.

I don't think this precludes my earlier belief concerning individual responsibility for our collective progress. This is a conversation that everyone needs to participate in precisely because there is such a rare chance any one individual will have the necessary pre-requisites to take action.

Even the most plebian among us may one day find themselves flush with cash, and when they do, they could wield those resources responsibly. The concept of "noblesse oblige" (or, the more modern Spider-Man variant: "with great power comes great responsibility") comes into mind here. Interestingly, Elon made a veiled reference to this shared outlook in his "sinking ship" metaphor recently on Colbert.

I too was deeply troubled by Notch's attitude toward unwanted success (and more importantly, the worrying precedent it sets for others). It's disappointing that he has no apparent desire to utilize his position in a useful manner but I wonder how much of that mindset is a product of our current environment.

So, where is the Elon Musk of high-energy physics? Where is the Elon Musk of terraforming, both off-planet and on Earth to reverse climate change? What of cancer, antibiotics, longevity treatment, machine intelligence? Et cetera

At the risk of sounding rather trite: the next Elon Musk might be reading this page right now.

Elon is not an island. He had to have gotten his attitudes from somewhere. Teaching kids about our shared responsibility and to dream big about real problems is an act that every adult can (and should) participate in. Those who are in a position to mentor or inspire another (even if it's a boss to an employee, VC to a founder, or friend to friend) should also take part.

I don't think your or your parent's view on Notch is at all fair or justified. His situation is much different from Musk's. Notch accidentially made a huge sum of money, and now he is weary of the attention it has brought. The fact that he said he would abandon a projects that showed promise, I take as an expression of burnout/emotional stress. He is much younger than Musk, and his success was rather abrupt.

Who knows what he may use his position for in the future? He seems to me an intelligent, honest, passionate person. Maybe he will enjoy a quiet retirement. Maybe he will go on to do incredibe things in other arenas after taking some time to step back. A little empathy is in order, in my opinion.

If you're going to look at it that way, could you not say that one of the principles of the Age of Enlightenment was that every man (and as Cosmos nicely noted, every woman, albeit more discretely) had a responsibility to explore?

Rose colored glasses of history, but I would hazard to say that the average knowledge + ambition + creativity of a person today is far lower than in the various retrospective golden ages.

... you can't find a genius and then teach him or her. You teach everyone, then genius blooms.

Yes indeed, I believe every man, woman, and child born on this planet has a responsibility to participate in its exploration and advancement.

I actually see plenty of ambition in the valley and elsewhere— ambition to be the next billion-dollar success story.

What I don't see is a lot of purpose-consciousness + ambition. It's been offered that the purpose of all for-profit companies is to make money; any venture intending to create value for anything but its shareholders is therefore a non-profit.

I think this is wrong. For-profit companies can work toward a clear, common goal without sacrificing profit. I think the modern web (which was built by contributions from hundreds of companies) is a great example of this. SpaceX and Boeing (funded jointly by NASA) working in tandem to enable private space travel is another.

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