Why has human progress ground to a halt?

[Justicier]

I don't necessarily think that human progress has ground to a halt, however, I do think it is unnecessarily slowed. I believe the source of that slowing can be attributed mostly (but not entirely) to three human flaws... greed, selfishness, and the desire to be in control. All become a factor when brilliant inventors come up with bold new ideas and contraptions that are a complete paradigm shift that turns the accepted norm on its head. These factors are frightening prospects to others who have already established themselves in the market and are generating great profits as a result. Game changing technologies will cause a great deal of concern to them as their... monopoly... is now threatened. The frustrating thing is that the very people who will hinder growth, are those in positions of power as a result of their exploitation of existing technologies/resources. Nikola Tesla is a good example of brilliant ideas being suppressed by someone who was trying just to look out for number one. That circumstance was a combination of both greed and maintaining control of a market. There are many stories like Tesla's, and as long as mankind values profits and control over their fellow man more than expanding horizons and growing, there will be many more stories like his in the future.

Edited August 19, 2015 by Justicier

[_Augustus_]

We're too interested in watching TV and shooting down each others' drones for no reason to care about human progress or space exploration. Where did all of our Cold War nationalism go? I want it back even though I never saw it!

Edited August 20, 2015 by _Augustus_

[Frozen_Heart]

Its due to the fact that a large proportion or the world lives in comfort now, and so there is no need to innovate and take risks. If something happens to take away that comfort for a decent period of time (e.g. war), then people are pushed to make changes and advance.

However there is no guarantee that a war would advance us anymore. Nuclear weapons are just so devastating that they could set us back rather than forwards.

[_Augustus_]

Its due to the fact that a large proportion or the world lives in comfort now, and so there is no need to innovate and take risks. If something happens to take away that comfort for a decent period of time (e.g. war), then people are pushed to make changes and advance.

However there is no guarantee that a war would advance us anymore. Nuclear weapons are just so devastating that they could set us back rather than forwards.

Agreed. And yet we build more for WW3 every day, and let other nations build more too.

It's like we think that nuclear war is a videogame and that we can just hit "restart" after the cool explosions are over.

[Kinglet]

Tshernobyl is much more dangerous than most educated people think. Many cases of radiation-induced death occur after decades past the event. Plus, it's likely that there are now whole bloodlines suffering from the effects of the radiation due to damaged DNA.

[Flymetothemun]

Its due to the fact that a large proportion or the world lives in comfort now, and so there is no need to innovate and take risks. If something happens to take away that comfort for a decent period of time (e.g. war), then people are pushed to make changes and advance.

However there is no guarantee that a war would advance us anymore. Nuclear weapons are just so devastating that they could set us back rather than forwards.

Red:

Yeah, and the part of the population that doesn't live in comfort (E.G. Africa) would do a lot better if they're given more food or more money.

Blue:

Agreed, back then in the "productive" wars we didn't have nuclear weapons, and so had to develop new technologies to basically kill each-other with. And we only had them at the tail-end of one of the "productive" ones, and that effectively ended the war (or a large part of it). With nuclear weapons, It's essentially an eggs-in-one-basket, do or do not kind of deal.

Tshernobyl is much more dangerous than most educated people think. Many cases of radiation-induced death occur after decades past the event. Plus, it's likely that there are now whole bloodlines suffering from the effects of the radiation due to damaged DNA.

I've heard that butchers in Eastern Europe are told to pass a Geiger counter over any wild hog meat they come across because they may eat radiated mushrooms. What they do with the meat that's radiated I don't know.

[Kinglet]

Red:

Yeah, and the part of the population that doesn't live in comfort (E.G. Africa) would do a lot better if they're given more food or more money.

Blue:

Agreed, back then in the "productive" wars we didn't have nuclear weapons, and so had to develop new technologies to basically kill each-other with. And we only had them at the tail-end of one of the "productive" ones, and that effectively ended the war (or a large part of it). With nuclear weapons, It's essentially an eggs-in-one-basket, do or do not kind of deal.

I've heard that butchers in Eastern Europe are told to pass a Geiger counter over any wild hog meat they come across because they may eat radiated mushrooms. What they do with the meat that's radiated I don't know.

I have heard about that. There is a thin layer of fallout on the earth. Usually it would get buried with time in forests due to rotting biomass, but wild hogs dig around to find food, so they often eat from the irradiated layer.

[Belphegor]

assuming progress is exponential (for every thing we discover 10 new possibilities and 100 more questions open) we could have been a lot further if it weren't for religion and especially the purges of everything unknown.. for example the medieval witch burnings (practicing herblore and medicine were considered as signs that the person was an evil witch so they were burned, delaying the public acceptance that some of these herbs actually had medicinal properties)

also our entire system based on money. imagine where NASA would be if they had unlimited recources at their disposal all along. or if non-rich people with great scientific ideas had the recources to explore them. tho the question is how a world without or with unbalanced 'value system' would work without massively exploiting a large group of the earths population (think early american slavery or our current cooperate world, lots of people were well off and goods were cheap because other people were forced to earn their money by hard work for a dime and a penny)

sorry if this doesn't make sense, non native english speaker here

Edited August 21, 2015 by Belphegor

[Bill Phil]

assuming progress is exponential (for every thing we discover 10 new possibilities and 100 more questions open) we could have been a lot further if it weren't for religion and especially the purges of everything unknown.. for example the medieval witch burnings (practicing herblore and medicine were considered as signs that the person was an evil witch so they were burned, delaying the public acceptance that some of these herbs actually had medicinal properties)

also our entire system based on money. imagine where NASA would be if they had unlimited recources at their disposal all along. or if non-rich people with great scientific ideas had the recources to explore them. tho the question is how a world without or with unbalanced 'value system' would work without massively exploiting a large group of the earths population (think early american slavery or our current cooperate world, lots of people were well off and goods were cheap because other people were forced to earn their money by hard work for a dime and a penny)

sorry if this doesn't make sense, non native english speaker here

Without religion the Renaissance would've been nearly impossible...

The Church actually held onto old forgotten knowledge.

And actually, it could be that the Middle Ages would have happened that way with or without religion. People were fairly separated and it wasn't till much later that trading ideas could be done effectively.

Oh, and Europe was partially isolated, what with the Empires to their east.

[Camacha]

Without religion the Renaissance would've been nearly impossible....

Is that like saying that light is impossible without dark?

[RainDreamer]

Religion was once the nearest thing we get to a scientific organization, recording knowledge and providing an educated class of people, giving grants and scholarship to enable researchers to do their work (mostly theological in nature, but there were some other natural sciences involved, think Mendel). But as we further move on to the present day, it gets a bit mired with other earthly concern, ironically, and become more of a hindrance to advance of science. Though I think we should stop here before it gets problematic.

Is that like saying that light is impossible without dark?

Constantinople (now known as Istanbul) was a powerful Christian city that kept safe the ancient Greek and Roman text (including the religious ones) in its Imperial Library, through the the Dark age while everywhere else was plundered and burned down by various groups, until it finally fall after a much longer time, which prompt the scholars, theologists, artist, and writers of the city to fled, some to Italy, and thanks to their preserved knowledge that the Renaissance came to being.

Edited August 21, 2015 by RainDreamer
got sources mixed up

[Noname117]

Constantinople is Istanbul now, there's a song about it.

[RainDreamer]

Constantinople is Istanbul now, there's a song about it.

Yeah, got places' names mixed up there.

[lajoswinkler]

Some estimates put the number closer to a million.

Not that I have anything against nuclear power, on the contrary, but Chernobyl continues to be a serious problem we still haven't dealt with properly 30 years after it happened.

As for the lack of progress and technological advancement, it's understandable. We haven't had a proper war in decades.

a) Those estimates are made by morons. Total number of deaths that will ever happen due to radiological contamination from Chernobyl, statistically speaking, is closing asymptotically to few thousands with the time going to infinity.

Million or few million, as even greater morons (Greenpeace) say, is a number that requires all cancer-related deaths in affected areas. Such illnesses existed before Chernobyl and will occur unrelated to it long after. They just mash all of it into one digit because they are fear mongering ignorants.

Lack of progress and technological advancement? What the hell? Do you people live under a rock?

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

[...]

Lack of progress and technological advancement? What the hell? Do you people live under a rock?

The computer everyone's using to type these messages is sci-fi by pretty much any standards from before 2000. As Terry Pratchett says (I'm paraphrasing a bit here) "The future doesn't sweep you along like a wave, it gently washes around you, and steadily gets higher." In the 60's, I'm willing to bet, people didn't feel like they were advancing human progress at an incredible rate.

[megatiger78]

we have no current major war. we need large wars to progress.

[razark]

Oldowan Industry, 2.6-1.7 million years ago:

Acheulean Industry, 1.8 million - 100,000 years ago:

Mousterian Industry, 600,000-40,000 years ago:

5000 years ago:

Computer, 70 years ago:

Computer, 0 years ago:

Progress has ground to a halt?

[Bill Phil]

Oldowan Industry, 2.6-1.7 million years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a7/Oldowan_tradition_chopper.jpg/300px-Oldowan_tradition_chopper.jpg

Acheulean Industry, 1.8 million - 100,000 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Biface_de_St_Acheul_MHNT.jpg/220px-Biface_de_St_Acheul_MHNT.jpg

Mousterian Industry, 600,000-40,000 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Pointe_levallois_Beuzeville_MHNT_PRE.2009.0.203.2.jpg/220px-Pointe_levallois_Beuzeville_MHNT_PRE.2009.0.203.2.jpg

5000 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d7/HMB_Steinaxtmanufaktur_Vinelz_Jungsteinzeit_2700_BC.jpg/800px-HMB_Steinaxtmanufaktur_Vinelz_Jungsteinzeit_2700_BC.jpg

Computer, 70 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4e/Eniac.jpg/785px-Eniac.jpg

Computer, 0 years ago:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/01/IPhone6_silver_frontface.png/294px-IPhone6_silver_frontface.png

Progress has ground to a halt?

I'd say it just takes time to make progress. Especially with the opposite currently in place.