https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#mediaviewer/Fi...
The effect continued past the large effects of hygiene, antibiotics and child vaccination. You may argue that the curve is clearly asymptotic, and that a maximum age genetic barrier is clearly visible. You can't argue, however, that there isn't real progress after antibiotics and hygiene.
This type of barrier is typical of technological evolution. We do strain a technology until returns are minimal, and only then sidestep to the next level of evolution. Steam machines were mechanical wonders before the combustion engine. Valves were amazing right before the transistor made an entrance. Current "corrective medicine" will reach its peak right before "manipulative medicine" enters the fray.
we are seeing a resurgence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, though, and we have no new lines of antibiotics to fight them. These advances may only be temporary.
We don't develop such, due to the broken way our pharmacy research is done.
It makes no sense for pharma companies to develop antibiotics due to low ROI and lifetime of the product. A better approach for this is government to fund researchers for areas that private sector has abandoned.
yeah, like Ebola research funding done by the government ? That was an efficient model.
but surely we've been accumulating knowledge and engineering abilities that will enable progress in those areas. It may enable the progress just by being a stepping stone. That is a kind of progress. (Note that I'm not saying we've been accumulating these as fast as we could have been).
If you're in the group of people privileged to have access to those innovations, yes. For everyone else it kind of sucks seeing what the elite get to play with.
My hope is that if we did manage to ward off death for a bit longer, we might transcend some of our flawed notions.
Who knows? Maybe young humans are fools, and that's the problem.
If 1 dollar = 1 natural resource then clearly, yes, growth is constrained.
But it isn't. My example for this is clerical work. Banks (for example) used to employ vast rooms of clerks, who spent entire days performing simple, repetitive maths in double-entry ledgers to make sure the bank knew where all the money was. Now all of that is done by computers, and so cheaply that banks now offer massively increased services. More value, for less cost. That's growth.
Given that this is HN and frequented by legions of hackers trying to find problems to solve that create real value (by reducing costs or improving services), then this is the last place I'd expect the "growth is limited" mantra to be trotted out.
>"Given that this is HN and frequented by legions of hackers trying to find problems to solve that create real value"
Looking at the list of YCombinator funded startups on the front page (Reddit, Airbnb, Scribd), none of them seem to be tackling the big issues of climate change, pollution, seas being over-fished, deforestation, lack of physical resources for a growing population. Sure they increase efficiency in some small area, but I don't see any that even address environmental issues.
You need to remember that the majority of the worlds population live on very little money, and don't have the comfy lifestyles that many of us in the west have.
Why ? What stops mankind to go in space in go grow further in other planets and systems in the future ? There's AMPLE space for growth everywhere, if anything.
Hubble length is less than 10^24 km. Earth radius is more than 10^3 km. Therefore there's at most room for 10^21 growth in one dimension, 10^63 growth in three dimensions. 10^63 growth is less than 210 doublings. Doubling is less than 70 years of 1% growth per year. 210 * 70 is less than 20,000. Therefore, we can't grow more than 20,000 years, 1% growth per year.
Yes all is fine and dandy, once we set up colonies on the moon.
Population is very much expected and planned to grow up until 10 billions and then stagnate and decrease progressively. Not everyone on earth has tons of kids anymore, it's very much linked to the level of life. See Rosling's speech on the matter for a more detailed explanation.
The Earth does not get hotter by the way, we have like virtually no long term data on the temperature of the Earth and we should actually be VERY humble as to our ability to predict long term climate trends.
And 97% of scientists agree that climate change is happening, and is probably caused by man.
You know, 97% of scientists believed that the Sun rotated around the Earth not too long ago, so "consensus" is rarely telling.
Yup, will be fine. In the early 20th century people said we would all starve when we reach 1 billion people. Look how far we have come without major starvation (apart from the ones causes by civil wars or Communism)
Our growth is sustainable for the foreseeable future, so I'd say let's first make ourselves immortal and then tackle on the issue of stagnating growth.
Until we can get a C eelegans worm to live for years, we are not remotely close to stopping aging.