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Interview with gwern

(www.dwarkeshpatel.com)
308 points synthmeat | 1 comments | 14 Nov 24 08:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.211s | source
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demaga ◴[14 Nov 24 13:07 UTC] No.42135821[source]▶
> I love the example of Isaac Newton looking at the rates of progress in Newton's time and going, “Wow, there's something strange here. Stuff is being invented now. We're making progress. How is that possible?” And then coming up with the answer, “Well, progress is possible now because civilization gets destroyed every couple of thousand years, and all we're doing is we're rediscovering the old stuff.”

The link in this paragraph goes to a post on gwern website. This post contains various links, both internal and external. But I still failed to find one that supports claims about Newton's views on "progress".

> This offers a little twist on the “Singularity” idea: apparently people have always been able to see progress as rapid in the right time periods, and they are not wrong to! We would not be too impressed at several centuries with merely some shipbuilding improvements or a long philosophy poem written in Latin, and we are only modestly impressed by needles or printing presses.

We absolutely _are_ impressed. The concept of "rapid progress" is relative. There was rapid progress then, and there is even more rapid progress now. There is no contradiction.

Anyway, I have no idea how this interview got that many upvotes. I just wasted my time.

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1. doright ◴[14 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42139905[source]▶
> “Well, progress is possible now because civilization gets destroyed every couple of thousand years, and all we're doing is we're rediscovering the old stuff.”

Irrespective of the historical accuracy of the quote I've always felt this way in some form, having personally lived through the transition from a world where it felt like you didn't have to have an opinion on everything to one dominated by the ubiquitous presence of the Internet. Although not so much because I believe an advanced human civilization has destroyed itself in our current timeline, but because the presence of so many life-changing breakthroughs in such a short period of time to me indicates a unceasing march towards a Great Filter.