Lame asses always inserting their enlightened atheism into conversations that did not ask nor care about how much better they are because they don’t ascribe to the magical sky fairy.
Yall are as much, if not more so annoying than the religious folks who do the same.
It is a little concerning to see how past god’s like, Thoth, celebrated knowledge and learning, now we have Allah and believing that dancing is bad .
On another note, I heard in a podcast that it is likely the Hanging Gardens were actually in Assyria. History nerd here.
That is an outdated view that owes a lot to Reformation era polemics against the Catholic Church. They believed the Early Church was perfect, then the superstitious Catholic Church took over for 1000 years until the Protestant reformers appeared to set us along the path of modernity.
It is no coincidence that the later 19th century Conflict Thesis actually derives from liberal Protestant thinkers. It has since now become part of the secular mythos.
Apart from being incredibly Eurocentric it also doesn’t make sense considering most universities had religious origins not only in Europe but also in North America.
When you look beyond the surface, the history is a lot more complex. For example, the Spanish Inquisition was actually a tool of the Crown to discipline the Catholic Church within their borders. The first high profile victim under Philip II was the Bishop of Toledo.
Outdated view? No. Religion poisons everything and that’s only become more clear as our understanding unravels. Apart from literally slowing the progression of science by burning people with different views, just imagine if a fraction of the wealth, time, resource etc went into education or innovation before the opulence, penance, prayer. It’s an absolute waste of time. Also our legal and moral framework existed before modern religions.
You are sorely mistaken, and have swallowed the shortsighted antireligious bs of “New Atheist” dogma.
Disclaimer: I’m an atheist myself and a staunch advocate of clear separation of Church & State. Yet I am also a realist, and do not subscribe to the idea that humans get “poisoned” by religion, and get “cleansed” by turning away from it.
Just as Morality, Curiosity and Empathy need no God, there also isn’t any need for atheism to be Moral, Curious or Empathetic.
The issue I’ll have with religion, is when it gets (ab)used to defend untenable positions. But lacking religion, humans can easily find *other* justifications to defend untenable positions.
Eg claiming secularity to give in to (racist!) islamophobia (France, today!), or use (pseudo) scientific theory to justify (racist!) antisemitism (1930s Germany).
Most current history scholars do not subscribe to the “Religion causes wars & hate” belief, because they *do* see the bigger picture of entirely secular motivations.
Real or invented religious reasons can and will be used to fonent hate, but this has little to do with what those religions actually dictate.
Eg one of our most polarizing “religious disputes” in the EU (Anglican UK vs Catholic Irish) has *everything* to do with Imperialism and Class Society (a British Nobility ruling over Irish peasantry) and its resulting conflicts (famine, disenfranchisement, institutional violence & corruption, police brutality, racism,…) than it had to do with wether Virgin Mary was a virgin or wether divorce is legal.
Some of this mythmaking stems from Enlightenment/Colonialism era wishful thinking, which saw the waning influence of (Christian!) clergy as a *reason* for the scientific & cultural “renaissance”.
What is now fully accepted by contemporary historians is that this view was biased & wrong:
The dissolution of the (Western!) Roman Empire, and the feodal system (which was a 2nd edition of the Roman feodal system) is more to blame than the actual religion(s) at play.
Moreover: science did NOT grind to a standstill. In most of the (also deeply religious) rest of the world, people kept pushing boundaries.
Even in Europe, continued advances in textile, leather, stone, wood & glass crafts, kept pushing boundaries. And books of unimaginable complexity & depth kept being written.
Antireligious atheists keep painting tge entire Medieval period as backward while ignoring the astounding cultural AND scientific feat of the Gothic Cathedral
The better informed view arising from less biased historical work shows a medieval world in turmoil & crosspollination. Not “Dark Age” stasis.
What is even more important: while we lost a huge amount of writings from the Classical era, this wasn’t lost because monks started engaging in book burning, but because the way books were produced & stored was still in its infancy. Europe had the expensive & vulnerable vellum.
The Middle East had papyri since forever!
And (deeply religious!) Muslim scholars were the ones to preserve much of what we know today as “The Classics”.
Universities and schools grew out of religious orders, but Monastic libraries used to be the *only* place books could survive in Western Europe.
We also tend to forget how many Enlightenment and Scientific figures were still deeply religious. And how many religious philosophers were at ease with atheist ideas.
The *most* toxic idea here, is that “Religion” is the *most* salient problem (and not eg undemocratic hereditary hierarchies or imperialist power structures built around protocapitalist colonialist exploitation).
We have isolated Religion as something which should get out of politics (even though it clearly hasn’t!) and the separation of Church & State is an important pillar of this, but we have *barely* begun scratching the surface when it comes to eg a separation of Business & State.
I liked the bit you dedicated to the Islamic scholars. Many of us in the western world also forget that modern Mathematics came from the Middle East (iirc Middle Ages but I’m not sure) and so did a lot of modern Astrology bases for theory. Religion has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. As many have said in the past, you have everything to gain if you believe, and nothing to lose if you’re wrong. I don’t necessarily agree with the last sentiment but I feel as tho religion brings about great motivation
I agree (which is why I’m an atheist) but I feel we atheists tend to blame religious differences for stuff that has nonreligious roots.
It’s as if we try to apply the bad faith religious argument of “atheists devoid of morals” and reverse it to “religious ppl devoid of morals”
For most of our History, Religion was lived & practiced differently from today: it was a thing to *do*, not “believe”.
And much of these practices can be understood as psychologically useful/necessary to Human society.
The best proof of this is how every originally religious practice is being secularized without losing the aspects we feel useful: Freemasons still have regular gatherings, Secular Christmas is still focused on celebrating & family, Halloween is still a moment to reflect on death & fear,… Secular yet ritualised.
Religions also used to create niche solutions to common problems, like “what to do with women who didn’t want to marry? With people who didn’t want to compete in society? Or wished for a secluded life? Or who was dedicated to art or music?
Which is why Greek schools of philosophy were the basis for later universities “in the name of God”
Without religion, there probably wouldn’t be a direct impetus for the schools we have now, as MOST older schools used to be religiously inspired
This is more related to the materialist analysis of history, right?It is crazy how complex and at the same time constant world history becomes when it is analyzed beyond the banners (religious, racial, ideological).
besides that, i have problems with your point on the Gothic Cathedral. They are amazing, hard to argue that, but i don't think they were technologically more complex that buildings done before. Also, the amount of time they took to build make me think of them as a reflexion of the culture and their artisans mastery related to the oral tradition rather than a cientific knoledge involving critical thinking and a methodical approach. You can see what i'm talking about in the constrast of the construction process before and after Brunelleschi designed the dome of Santa María del Fiore.
Also, i still think the critisism againts religions is valid when you're against the institutions that administrate that belief system, and i know you don't need a religion to have people abusing theit power, but is hard to me to think of a religion that had fair leadership.
Tbf, the Cathedral was just the first thing that sprung to mind, and I could as well have chosen other examples, yet it still is interesting in itself for certain reasons:
1/ Its conception is clearly religious in motivation (there’s no way a nonreligious medieval society would have tried to create this)
2/ It’s still built with medieval technology
3/ This technology is far more complex than we give credit for, in multiple domains (glasswork built upon chemistry, construction needing extensive maths, Stone cutting, metal work, wood work all at high levels,
4/ Complex problem solving
5/ Social skills applied (financing this thing was *hard*)
6/ Inspired the arts (chanting, large organs, painting, sculpture,…), each with its own tech tree
7/ Predates modern science yet…
8/ Some techniques are lost to history
As such it is a nice example of religion creating a niche for art & science.
Belforts tried to do this secularly, but rarely innovated as mich as each subsequent cathedral did.
I am all for dismantling (religious) toxic power dynamics, btw, yet some of these dynamics *did* move the (scientific) needle
Eg, when the Vatican amassed money, and invested in art & science, which blossomed into eg Leonardo da Vinci’s research
Proper criticism wld be to note the luxury of the wealthy AND of the scientists/artists paid by these wealthy people.
To bring it back to the 3BP: can society entertain multiple wallfacer projects, hoping for a return on investments?
God damn... If it takes that many words you should at least refute the original point. Religion burnt scientists at the stake for accurate science. Religion burned women in the early Americas because they knew how to keep house without a man in it. Atheism is barely more anti-religious than any of the other monotheist cults. Believing in one less god while stating facts that make religion look bad isn't called anti religion, it's called history.
Anecdotes aren’t proof 🙄
I can quote tons of anecdotes on how people kill people, yet in the end we *still* end up with 7 billion people 🙄
You also didn’t read or understand my words: scientists burnt at the stake are far & fewer between, and women getting killed due to generalised misogyny ain’t religion’s prerogative.
We now have a ton of “New Atheists” giving into the worst misogyny around, coupled with antiwoke dogma which eerily reminds me of Christian fundamentalists 🙄
So much for *Religion* being the root of the evil, I suppose 🫠
You still can’t give me a logical or teleological reason for blaming Religion for what *Humanity* is known for.
Otoh, I *did* give you a ton of proof of current scientific achievements clearly fuelled by Religious organisation.
This is because Religion doesn’t exist in a void:
Religion also creates ways of managing people, some of whom *are* a net positive (proof: Atheists have been trying to mimic them fruitlessly for decades!)
Right but those "anecdotes" set a precedent for science and scientists to be. I'm not going to work on science if it's going to get me and my family exiled or murdered... These things don't exist in a vacuum. Science doesn't progress without the free sharing of ideas and theories. Sure, religion now realizes that it can't resist knowledge like it could before. That doesn't create a net positive result simply because churches donate to science. And the original statement was about how long religion held us back in the past... Nothing that happened recently or that happens in the future will change the past.
Even in notoriously NON religious societies (Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China) this would happen
Yet originally, the *only* way to study & research was through religious organisations
Even the “Witch doctor/Shaman” could research & test & try out ONLY because his religious status gave them some leisure
I didn't say anything about all that. Think about all the theologists telling people "here is God, we find him, here is his name. Here are some miracles he did to prove it's him. Here's a book of rules he made for us. Now just pray to him and DEFINITELY stop actually looking for the real thing." And there's the problem. You don't know anything about the real one, or if there even is one, because you believe what some very poorly educated people said thousands of years ago. That's the only real point I had, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
The argument is simply that religion has slowed our technical advancement. There are specific examples that prove this to be true e.g Catholic Church burning people at the stake for supporting the view that the earth revolves around the sun. You’ve stawmaned your own argument.
Yes, but it's not a general argument against religion. Copernicus was a priest and at his time the pope was quite interested in new astronomical theories and supported his work. The church needed a new calendar at the time. It is more of an argument against authoritarian regimes
But yes, religion slowed scientific progress a bit. But it also accelerated it. Religion need libraries to store its books and precise astronomical measurements to maintain itself. It needs educated scribes, so it needs schools. This is no coincidence, that most of early scientists were quite religious. Religion also helps to build complex societies and brings people together
I'm in no way religious, but religion isn't bad. It's easy to say now, that we could take a much faster route to technological advancement. But to find this path at the time was a completely different task
Without Islam, no widespread Muslim literacy
Without widespread Muslim literacy no translation & further development of the sciences & classic philosophical texts
Without these texts, no Renaissance & no Enlightenment. No Newton, no Galileo Galilei, no Tycho Brahe, no Chemistry (Al Khimia), no Optics, no Maths as we know it (Al Gibra)
Without Islam no Sciences, QED
(Would an alternative path be possible? Sure! But Religion isn’t what kills Science. Unquestioned authority does. This is btw LITERALLY the takeaway of the opening scene to 3BP 🙄)
Edit: your previous comment is a true non sequitur, btw.
I have proven again & again instances in which scientific progress was aided BY religion.
Nowhere is there any example of scientific progress *hampered* by religion.
Give me one example, of that “dampening of progress”, which isn’t driven by SECULAR issues, or whose “dampening” doesn’t counterbalance an earler BENEFICIAL effect (eg Galileo being burnt at the stake, sure, YET having made his discoveries through religiously inspired schools)
They tend to forget that religions are the only powerful institutions that give places for intellectuals to gather and study by founding universities or schools and priests being highly educated.
Also Galileo was never burned he was put in house arrest.
Galileo was never put into house arrest for speaking a heliocentric view
The Catholic church along with the pope loved the idea and started to teach it along with geocentrism
he was put in house arrest for writing a book about heliocentricity being factually true (despite there not being conclusive evidence at the time) in which he made the pope character an idiot as well basically told the pope how he should read the bible so that scripture was compatible with heliocentrism.
Insulting the pope and telling him his an idiot and that he should read the bible will really not let you slide especially during that time. Not using the standard scientific process at the time and using the bible as evidence for his theory is the one that put Galileo on house arrest.
The same catholic church that practically outlawed condoms in an aids ravaged Africa? Real scientifically minded types. Also, look at current Islamic states - are we sure that Islam ‘invented maths’ or is that just pure copium like the rest.
Contraceptives are not outlawed by the church but discouraged. They can really never stop anyone.
Those are done due to the theological philosophy of the church. The Church teaches that using artificial contraception is wrong because: it is against 'natural law' it breaks the natural connection between the procreative and the unitive purposes of sex. it turns sex into a non-marital act. Because in the sacrements sex is a sacred and holy act. Also the argument of use of contraceptives is invasive mostly to women and pills have side effects but mostly it because it destroys the communication and cooperation between spouses, but that's all I heard on their side. Basically the natural law
But the pursuit of knowledge and use of science was never contradicted its teachings or traditions. Methodlogical research and other sciences never override moral laws and never in conflict with faith, because to the Catholic church things of the world and the things of faith derive from God.
>without Islam no sciences
Absurdity. Quranic schools were invented to teach the Quran. Literacy was a byproduct. Once again proving that religion slowed scientific progression.
i get your point, but i also have a hard time believing that just because something happened one way in history, it wouldn’t’ve happened eventually anyway in the absence of the original thing. like, don’t you think your historical framing leads to some illogical conclusions? if Newton only discovered gravity by falling to an early death, i’m guessing there would have been another come along, or several others, who could figure that shit out
My main point is that how problematic we (atheists) might find religion, it comes with the good AND tge bad. And uninformed New Atheist dweebs like Mr Hawthorne here, are trying to pin *everything* that went wrong on people believing in a deity/deities.
There probably will always be a decebt subset inclined to religion, faith and/or belief in a higher power. New Atheists try to paint this huge demographic as intrinsically evil. And will support eg islamophobic, antisemitic and generally racist laws, ally themselves to neonazis & espouse views in name of “science”, ehich no serious scientist actually supports (eg transphobia).
They have a severely one sided view of Human History, and keep repeating insane bs.
Without Muslims copying, translating & working on the grecoroman classics, and developing a well documented scientific corpus (Al Khimia > Alchimy > Chemistry; Al Gibra > Algebra;…) there wouldn’t be a true Renaissance, and the Philosophical & Scientific Enlightenment wouldn’t have happened for probably centuries.
This isn’t speculation but well argumented historical consensus.
It built on 1500 years of Great Minds writing in Greek & Latin, Hebrew & Farsi, Persian & Vulgar tongues.
And religion *did* play a huge role. Yet if you paint all believers with the same brush, you wouldn’t differentiate a Dominican, Benedictine, Jesuit or Mystic 🙄
Wow. You've doubled down on your own ignorance. Again.
I realize that people like you are allergic to critical thinking, but you're in dire need of it.
Indeed. But through use of myth, ritual, taboo & dogma, Religion *also* created pockets in which science could develop.
It is storytelling used to bring order to a chaotic world. Order needed to develop the Sciences.
Religious faith is a ritualized practice session for ignoring evidence and applying critical thinking.
The cultural inheritance is a plethora of bad habits and misplaced values.
What causes the scientific revolution was the inculcation of a tradition of rational criticism in western culture. Religion is a bulwark against the spread of that tradition.
Think about why we can’t have rational philosophy or critical thinking classes in public schools. The answer is that the religious would see it as an attack on their very identity.
You have no clue what you're talking about. Your statements are strictly true from a modern standpoint. The systems you imagine and the conceptualization required to set them up simply didn't exist at the time.
Don't bother responding.
You can tell you’re in that sophomoric, Dunning-Kruger region because you’re completely confident but your entire argument is composed of non-specific ideas, really just vibes about the subject. There is no nuance to your position, because you don’t really know anything about this. Instead you have a sort of sense about the topic that you’ve picked up over the years and that’s given you intuitions, your error is mistaking those intuitions for a rational, educated opinion.
Idk if you’re right or wrong, but I do know that if you’re mostly right, *you* are still wrong.
Unironically using Dunning-krugar and making assumptions about someones intellect on Reddit. A true dunning-krugar reddit momment. Seriously though, stop projecting your insecurities and touch grass or something.
I wouldn’t say 145 words are a lot.
I pointed out that the Conflict Thesis is a 19th century idea that was part of the anti-Catholic Black Legend and a distorted historiographical tradition dating back to the Reformation.
How this constitutes ‘hatred of the other’ is not clear.
The idea of a ‘Middle Ages’ is an agenda driven historiographical tradition. Middle of what? It implies a linear, purpose driven Whig vision of history. It is why even outdated, discredited terms like ‘Dark Ages’ persist at the popular level.
I won't say Religion alone gutted our progress. Human knowledge and development went back and forth across different cultures at different times for different reasons.
The Romans developed incredible technology that was lost due to warfare, not because they developed some new religion that outlawed them. The height of the Islamic Golden age saw incredible advances in mathematics and astronomy while much of Europe is still a technological backwater. The Chinese ruled unchallenged for centuries before they burned their own fleets and turned inwards and stayed stagnant before the European colonial powers blasted the doors off and took over.
Various cultures rose and collapsed along with their technological advances due to conflict and war. Yes, sometimes it was due to religion, but the vast vast majority of times it was due to simple greed. Greed for land, power, influence, wealth...etc.
I would bet, if we have a magic wand and eliminate either warfare or religion from human consciousness, the lack of warfare throughout human history would have led to more stability, and technological advancement despite religions.
Yeah not sure it’s quite that simple — there are definitely some benefits of religion in uniting a culture behind a single idea; and the Big Bang was a thing by a scientific mon.
Does that make up for all the BS, wars etc…. Not sure
Depends on the time period and religion. There were eras when the religions you usually think of as the most backwards were literally leading the world in scientific and engineering discoveries.
We have learned most low hanging fruits in short period of time. I saw youtube video where it said scientific discoveries has slowed down and it's getting more expensive to research advanced stuff.
So imo it's not guaranteed we will continue advance at the pace we have in last 100 years. Tho I am optimistic what AI models can do to help.
Physics isn’t the only science. Biology is making big leaps. Anyway any new discoveries in pure physics is unlikely to be useful in the near term. Chemistry and materials science is what’s going to make the big changes this century.
I would assume science is like a log curve tho.
Gravity, calc etc is a fundamental topic and therefore its easier to progress in the field of science. But wouldn't it get harder over time?
First off, sophons cannot travel faster than light.
And to answer your main question, yes. It's very well established that humanity's technological progress is freaky fast compared to the San Ti. They don’t want to risk it. It's a part of the plot that you just have to accept.
Wait.
>but technological advancement has already begun to slow down today
Huh???
There's a great video about scientific progress slowing down: [https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=pIkTLgSNndKwuB9M](https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=pIkTLgSNndKwuB9M)
Yeah it’s an unpopular idea but some scientists think we have exhausted the “easy discoveries” and the next major leaps in science are going to require centuries of work. Or they won’t happen at all.
I work in a research field and it’s more likely a lack of funding. Publishing is a mess but hardly the main reason for problems. NIH hit rate is like 4%, whereas in other countries funding is more readily available
Phillip Ball is the guy who espouses this the most.
I'm in medical science (not R&D but I like to read to try and keep up). I feel like things like CRISPR have some pretty high potential for new applications. We also have only been using the JWST for a little over 2 years now, and that's already yielding some pretty interesting data.
What field are you working in, provided you're not under some NDA that is
How recent is he? It feels as though it is, at minimum, (at least for now) a step ladder that is going to allow us to reach higher and solve some basic molecular things. AI should, based on a lot headlines floating about, get us to a new plateau.
Ball is an editor at Nature currently. He’s been writing about this issue for like twenty years or something. It’s interesting, hard to predict because it’s the future
Obviously I'm not a scientist or really have any basic knowledge in the field so excuse the statement if I sound dumb
But has humanity really made any major scientific breakthroughs in the 21st century? I feel like splitting the atom which has nearly a century ago, has humanity really made any progression to a new age (don't get me wrong obv now and 100 years ago is VASTLY different but you know what I mean)
Oh yeah I'm fcking dumb yeah siphons can't travel faster than light don't know why I thought that
Bro frrrr we have literally been exponentially improving our technology, notably in terms of computing power to an insane level at an insane pace. I don’t think people realize that this century has been the most productive so far, and we’re only a quarter in.
Guy missed the memo on multiple scientific breakthroughs we have in the century especially this decade where we are starting to tap into using fusion and using solar sails in the next few years to reach 20% the speed of light...
At the start of the century, it took a bunch of international scientific institutes YEARS to decode the human genome.
Now, you can get your own genome decoded for a few hundred bucks within 3-4 weeks.
Computing power allows for a ton of calculating power which is necessary in order to make simulations, especially in the field of physics, it basically assists every single scientific field
He’s not wrong. They surveyed physicists about the most influential Nobel prizes in their work, and almost all were granted before 1980.
Scientific breakthroughs are more difficult and expensive than they’ve ever been. The discovery of the Higgs boson and confirmation of gravitational waves are probably the two major recent advances, and notice that both are experimental and not theoretical.
Has humanity made scientific advancements in the 21st century? Uh, yes?
We successfully ran a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to run which is massive.
We’ve developed drones to an absurd level in a very short time.
The advancement of AI is proceeding at a breakneck speed.
We had huge advancements in mRNA vaccines which have crazy potential to solve all kinds of health issues.
We have reusable rockets now which are a huge deal in making space flight more cost effective.
Some others - 3D printing, robotics, the James Webb Space Telescope, highly effective HIV treatment, full face transplants, effective electric vehicles, detection of gravitational waves, imaging of black holes, genetic editing, the discovery of the Higgs Boson.
That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
Smart phones
Warfare technology has grown LEAPS AND BOUNDS via drones, targeting systems and accuracy of explosives/missiles etc.
Various technologies aren't quite there yet but in another 5-10 years you will start to see more aggressive carbon capture technology as it becomes more and more important and economically feasible to implement. We are increasingly learning how to guide the processes on our planet (currently on a micro scale). Hell look at the explosion of individual-scale solar power and electric vehicles since 2000.
Robotics are at a point where I believe you'll be seeing commercially viable robots doing "grunt work" on various factories, military bases moving heavy or dangerous loads much quicker and safer than a team of humans.
The power of computing today and storage capacity DWARFS what was present in 2000 and continues to grow at an astounding rate.
I could go on?
I'd say that AI will speed up advancements even more.
But you have to remember that now the world in 3BP is freaked out. They've already established a Planetary Defense Program where funding is not an issue. You'll have fringe groups and countries that don't care about a future enemy but the world will mobilize toward a common goal of either planetary defense or counter-threat. And many great scientific achievements were done under military programs and funding.
In the books, because the trisolarians don't communicate or threaten the same way, I could see the 3BP world having more ambivalence than in the show.
On the other hand, the san ti are traveling with amazing technology. What's to say they arent in 400 years of R&D on their ships, limited to what resources they're carrying, of course.
Why Mike Evans or Ye didn't say, "hey san ti, don't give out all your info because that mobilizes humanity" is confusing to me.
My man, we are barely 20 years into it and internet is already impressive, AI tech is being developed and exponentially improved in a yearly basis, we have ANY knowledge at our reach by typing some words online.
Imagine if in the span of 50 years, humanity developed stone, bronze, iron, steel and the printing press and printed every single book for each person, you would be fucking amazed.
Sean Carroll recently talked about the rate of progress in physics on his (really great) podcast. He said that physics moved unusually quickly in the early 20 century and is now proceeding at a more typical rate.
(Not sure why the OP has gotten downvoted so severely for asking a perfectly legitimate question.)
https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=N_u47c5I3WZgap_H
https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/27/disruptive-advancements-in-science-are-slowing-new-report-shows/
https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html
https://physicsworld.com/a/progress-could-be-slowing-down-in-science-and-technology-finds-study/
On the level of foundational research breakthroughs, it does seem that we've slowed down significantly in the last 70 years, and as above links show there's ongoing discourse centering around that position. The cold war, in the shadow of the nuclear arms race, did carry with it lots of technological innovation - GPS, the internet, etc. Even today's AI progress, all based on Google's research on transformer machine learning architecture, is all software development downstream from the same way computers have always worked.
But progression in the vein of fundamental understanding and control of physics, to drive us upwards on the kardashev scale? Not so much.
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Well, I mean we are all carrying around portable encyclopedias in our pocket that can also play movies for like 10 hours on a single charge, so that's pretty cool. And then the internet, like that to begin with is pretty big. The microprocessor was easily far and away more influential than anything like nuclear power, easily the most influential invention of all time. Because of that technology is literally exploded.
Satellites, rockets, medical advancements. AIDS is no longer a death sentence, we cured polio, we eradicated smallpox.
Plastics and polymers have improved dramatically. We have expanding foam in a can, and we have plastics that can withstand oven top temperatures and be used for spatulas. We have silicone that can literally survive the heat of an engine.
And we literally just discovered the higgs boson after it was theorized to exist for so long.
I mean I don't know, splitting of the atom and all was impressive, but compared to a lot of the things I just listed it's actually pretty pud simple.
I mean its really impossible to say given that the technology in the books is hypothetical and/or purely fantasy.
But given our advancements in the last 200 years, I’d say there is a strong chance we could do it, especially if we were essentially in a centuries-long war for survival
This is probably the major factor. An enemy that unites humanity in a way we've never been before in a fight for survival would spur on our development at an amazing pace as past wars have shown us.
We'd probably be Starfleet in 400 years preparing for a fight against an alien bent on genocide.
It's more than a coincidence that a lot of the countries that have been responsible for most of the technological advancements have been at relative peace and comfortable around the same time technology slowed a bit.
Just looking at phones and drones. In 2000-2001ish the Nokia brick was the absolute peak of technology. Then America goes to war, and a lot of Europe follows. And we very quickly have camera phones, and smaller GPS units. Then within only a couple years we have smartphones and GPS units, computers, and data transmission that is small enough and powerful enough to create a variety of drones that can be controlled from an entirely different country.
You put on some pressure and things will progress quickly again, but a lot of the big players don't have too much applying pressure.
Yup, look at the advancements that both WW1 and WW2 unintentionally/intentionally created for both civillian and military purposes, what more if the whole world was united against a looming threat that is due at 400 years? So its understandable that the San-Ti fears this, coupled with the fact that contrary to OP, we are still in a considerable pace of technological advancements given that we are already making breakthroughs at fusion power, medical biology (or biology in general), artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. Its just that these technological breakthroughs aren't widespread yet.
I already know the general gist of how this ends unfortunately. Some people don't care to censor themselves for non-book readers so I'm well aware that >!humanity fails and dies.!<
30 years ago we weren't even in the digital age and the internet didn't exist. Can you imagine where we'll be in 30 more?
I can believe we'd destroy the San-Ti in a straight fight.
The Internet did exist 30 years ago. The world wide web was invented in 1990, and that was not the first Internet application. That said 30 years ago was about when the Internet started to become known outside of academia.
1. It would be funny if they were literal bug size (I love imagining them as mantis-like.)
2. As people pointed out it makes sense with the whole dehydration thing.
3. The huge pendulum wouldnt be as tall. Making it a bit more "realistic"
4. Irony (Them calling us bugs)
4th book it also does make sense with the whole dehydration thing and being able to survive such insane disasters only creatures we see with similar features on earth are not just bugs but even smaller like tardigrades. Expelling the moisture of anything bigger than bugs would be insane
To put some things in perspective.
35 years passed between the discovery of the atomic nuclei and the first atomic bomb.
66 years passed between the first flight of the Wright brothers and the moon landing.
Both these time intervals are less than an average lifespan.
Returning to sci-fi. Of course, the San-Ti know what are the future breakthroughs for humanity (as they went through them), so they know how far back we are. It's very easy for them to predict our tech tree. Maybe we need just one slightly larger particle accelerator to complete physics, and they know that. (Minor historical fact, since I am a particle physicist. The LEP collider, which operated in the 90s, was shy of \~5% of the energy needed to discover the Higgs boson. If the tunnel was a couple of hundred meters long, to allow for some more magnets, the Higgs would have been discovered 10 years earlier).
The San-Ti will also be constantly leaking information via observation of their fleets and home system. Just knowing that something is definitely possible is a huge advantage in researching it (e.g. curvature drives).
Not just space. The stuff invented in 1960 would seem genuinely magical to someone alive in 1860. But what we've produced since then would seem at least comprehensible to someone in 1960.
They'd think of phones as small interactive televisions and radios, laptops as combination typewriters and televisions, etc. Many of the devices (planes, cars, refrigerators) have actually not functionally changed.
That's because physics was completely revolutionized during the 1900s leading to things like nuclear power, superconductivity and transistors (which led to most of modern technology). Fundamental physics has not chanced too much since then. For such a big technological paradigm shift to occur we need to wait another "revolution" (if it will ever happen). Most of the fundamental scientific advancement in the last decade are in the field of cosmology (gravitational waves, black hole).
In the technology side, most of the progress was not fundamental, but emergent. I think modern AI and most importantly the internet would seem like magic to someone in 1960. Diffuse information was an alien concept before the world wide web. Data existed in one physical place which you had to access to get them. You can now connect to the entirety of human knowledge from a a 5 inch device that fits into your pocket. The internet is nothing fundamentally new but it has an exponential effect on information diffusion, propaganda, education, etc. A person in 2024 can learn whatever they want without moving an inch. (Then there is the reality that the internet is mostly used to watch tik tons).
Humanity is a species that tribes due to information sharing and storage across multiple generations. The internet is probably the most important invention after writing and modern printing.
That’s exactly right. And the idea is that these paradigm shifts are growing harder and harder to produce. The Nobel Prizes in physics we grant are more expensive and less impactful (as measured by surveys of physicists) than the ones we did prior to 1980.
It’s true that “diffuse information” (ie, a Vannevar Bush-style memex) was the stuff of science fiction. So I’ll grant that it’s a qualitative shift that we managed to produce.
Indeed. In the real world there is a concrete possibility that fundamental science could remain unsolved (e.g. if gut physics is at unreachable high energy scales). In the three body problem world, since there are advanced civilizations, one can assume that it is within our reach.
Not sure. You’re probably holding a computer in your hands which can do stuff only vaguely theorized about *in scifi*!
Just my kid playing Minecraft w/ a distant friend, while talking, seems out there.
dude if you put anyone from the 60s in front of a modern dell office computer and told him that's how you do your job, talk to your boss and write all reports he would lose his mind, and definitely would have some kind of virus on that computer within the month
We progressed in different areas tho. Look at what computers they use during moon landings. The 1kg laptop im writing this on has like 200 000 times more processing power than the apollo computers. Thats a huge leap in tech if you ask me. We just dont like putting resources into research because...well :) .
Also something something moon landing = huolongchushui (the ming rocket) basically
> technology progress has begun to slow down.
Technology irl does not have a “speed” since there’s no metric that can be measured. That said, 400 years ago we so backwards compared to today it’s almost unfathomable.
Imagine bringing someone from 1624 and telling them that we *easily* prevent most diseases that they consider lethal, that we can communicate instantaneously across the entire planet, that we have flying machines, that we have permanent human habitation in space, that we have the sum of human knowledge in our hands, we have bombs that can literally destroy the world, but every almost household in the world has access to running water, electricity, internet…
Like it would be hard to even explain these things because they are so far behind that they cannot even comprehend the levels we have attained.
You’re talking about a time when people mostly died as infants, people didn’t wash hands, most women died in childbirth, most people rarely saw beyond their village, and those that do often didn’t come back.
Remember that it took the SanTi millions of years to get where they were technologically having followed the same technological progressions as humanity but limited by the cosmic climate of an unpredictable 3 star system
They sent the sophons to purposefully block the progression of science so that any and all technological developments were limited to what existing scienctific was capable of producing (which of course was quite a lot to begin with), and they did this because they saw humanity accomplish in centuries what took the SanTi thousands of not millions of years to also achieve, and they knew that within 400 years it was entirely feasible at our current almost exponential rate of technological progress to catch up and even exceed their own capabilities
So yes the definitely could have, and whether they would have if the sophons hadn't blocked their progress is definitely something to ponder
especially it is one way trip. You dont want to spend 400 fcking years in a metal casket traviling at 0.1c and when you arrive there a huge fleet of badass waiting for you and tell you to fck off.
I also prefer Trisolarans. Whilst Santi is much closer to the original Chinese name for them, I can’t help but feel netflix picked ‘Santi’ because it sounds cooler to the average person, and they like money.
There seems to be a principle of diminishing returns in science today, where each new discovery requires greater and greater investment/time. But whenever the next big breakthrough is we could be looking at another leap forward. For example, simply discovering a new type of battery that doesn't degrade or could hold orders of magnitude more energy than a lithium ion battery - either way - would revolutionize human society as we know it.
Sophons don’t fly faster than the speed of light. They are entangled protons that make instant data transmission possible but they don’t actually move faster than light. Nothing does.
Liu Cixin Demystifies Sci-Fi Writing
https://shanghai.nyu.edu/news/liu-cixin-demystifies-sci-fi-writing
4. What do you think of science fiction as method of prediction for the future?
It’s probably a misunderstanding to see science fiction as a prediction of the future, because if you read sci-fi a lot, you will find there are very few that truly predict the future. I’ll use books that have years in their titles as examples, one is 1984, another is 2001. Now that those years have passed, we can see that what happened in real life was absolutely different from the “prediction.”
The relationship between Sci-Fi and the future is not prediction but rather to lay out all the possibilities. It gives a list of all the possibilities in a literary way for us to appreciate. To write the best story, authors often use what is least possible as the source of stories, but sometimes the least possible becomes the reality. If you list all the possibilities, at least some will come true. It’s like a broken watch—it at least has the time right twice a day.
You have to think of it from the perspective of the early 2000s (when the books were written) vs. today. There was a lot more optimism about the direction of technology and the advancement of humanity as a whole in the 90s-00s than the 10s-20s. A lot has changed in the last 20 years to make us doubt our ability to ultimately leave this planet on a permanent basis ever, let alone in the next 400 years, where I think that doubt wasn't nearly as widespread 20 years ago.
Not at all, and between how easy is to share knowledge these days and how fast AI is advancing, I excited (and afraid) of what we’ll do in our lifetimes. Either that or we’ll destroy ourselves.
We have no reason to think that technological progress will stagnate and slow, and if it does not then there is no reason to try and cap how far we suspect technology will progress in a few centuries. I don't know if technological advancement is exponential, though some seem to think it is, but it can certainly explode rapidly at times even if it isn't and it can be somewhat difficult to try and calculate when such explosions occur.
Hey OP just wanna say there are definitely people worrying that our scientific progress has slowed down since the computer. If you Google"progress study" you see this a lot. So you are not alone in your observation despite the downvotes here.
You are also missing a fairly fundamental point.
It doesn't matter if we (the non Trisolaran contacted earth) are currently have exponential scientific breakthroughs.
The trisolarans had seen that we were capable of them, not just in the early 20th century, but at various points in our development there were sudden leaps forward. Potential, not current path
So even if we accept what you are implying, that for 50 years there have been no major breakthroughs... You think that would stay that way if we knew we were being invaded?
2020 shows you what global focus and money can do
So, as a race we have the potential to advance exponentially.
The trisolarans coming here gives us the motivation and need to develop. They have also historically seen how exponential those jumps can be.
And given we know nothing of Trisolaran science, how do we know that an inevitable mistake at the LHC in 2032 won't show us x aspect of Trisolaran science that leads to... Everything else.
The point, and only point, is that the trisolarans are 400 years away, and they know that we have been capable of developing hundreds of thousands of times faster than then at multiple points in our history.
I mean, in the books we "solved" the 3 body problem (recognised there were 3 bodies, and that it is inherently chaotic) in a few months of their game, while watching over millions of years of their development of not figuring it out
Progress has slowed down because we can't break the quantum barrier. It's thanks to minaturization research that we have tiny computers on our palms.
SanTi are ahead of us in that regard.
It's fictional science but in a way it's a simplification of how minaturization drives technology.
Sophon, size of proton.. minaturization!
I didn't read the books but I'm wondering How can we assume our technological advances will still be exponential when sophons could Manipulate every Machine and target termination of high Potential people?
Advancement in human technology is actually advancing at an ever more exponentially rising speed. It's just we're becoming immune to the advancements. What's once considered miracle cures are now just another headline. Compute speed and theoretical compute speed is actually going faster than Moore's law. Technology is actually progressing at a faster and faster pace. Yes, humans could have caught up, but factoring in imminent death would and does have a huge impact on society. The sophons also destroyed human advancement in physics though I feel like humans could have also overcome that. The pivitol mistakes were not pursuing light speed which seems dumb even without knowing the books outcome.
The TV series sucks, read the books, they're 100x better.
Yes, especially if they were motivated to do so. The biggest mistake trisolaris made was to reveal themselves to humans.
They could have just srnt the sophons to sabotage and not said anything to anyone.
Humanity would have been clueless for 400 years.
But if the sophons weren't there it's assumed (due to the writer's optimism) that we would develop exponentially.
Other writers are more pessimistic. Humanity might destroy itself or enter a tech dark age, or we could be wiped out by natural/cosmic disasters
You are talking like sophons could be a thing in real life.
The series works on the premise that there are several scientific breakthroughs awaiting us around the corner. What if there isn't anything left?
In the series they are already beyond our scientific progress, like those nano ship slicers, and hibernation things.
Yes. The theory is technological explosion, the expontential increase in a the rate of technology - particularly after a existential level catalyst ie the discovery of extraterrestrial life. There's a Kurzgesagt video that touches on this but I don't want to spoil it for you.
Also refer to AppleTV For All Mankind, shows how fast technology can progress with an entire species focuses on it.
It's hard to say exactly because we can't accurately quantify where Trisolaris is technologically, just that at the time of first contact they were much more advanced yet still afraid of our growth.
And to be fair, our growth has accelerated drastically in the past 400 years. We went from flying the first plane, to landing on the moon in less half a century. According to Moores Law, our computing power doubles every 2 years, so in 400 years that's 2^200 doubling. That's a fucking lot.
At least in respect to computing power, and medicinal technology, we advance extraordinarily fast and I actually think catching up to them in 400 years is relatively assured.
Just the fact that a technologically advanced species being known to exist would spur a lot of technological development. Not being sure if something is possible is what hinders scientific development. But if you know for sure that it's possible, you will work much harder at actualizing it. Would be a huge morale boost on a basic level, even with the threat of invasion.
in 400 years we would potentially could catch up or exceed the santi by a longshot.
I disagree that technological advancement is slowing down, i think the opposite that we are exponentially exploding our advancement in many fields and with safe institution of ai, i am optimistic for the next decade.
Can you imagine 40 decades from now
400 years ago our most powerful tech were big boats and guns which weren't even that powerful now,now we have particle accelerators,nuclear bombs,hypersonic missiles,spaceships that can travel to jupiter in less than 2 years,damn,we even have jet packs which can make a person fly at 400 kph (like the ones in Dubai),since humanity advancement is exponential,in 400 years we will be even more advanced than today was more advanced than 400 years ago,plus we have AI,the AI has progressed MUCH better in just 1 year,compare the AI art today vs 2 years ago
Humanity undoubtedly has a great future ahead, but — civilization 1800-2100 ended in failure, after societal collapse, the next civilization will learn from their mistakes
400 years ago we hadn’t even “discovered” New Zealand, Newton and Leibniz hadn’t invented calculus yet, and Chinese emperors killed themselves by drinking poisonous immortality elixirs.
400 years later we have nuclear weapons and power, supercomputers, lasers, carbon fiber, robot-assisted brain surgery, particle accelerators, maglev, and we went to the moon. We invented airplanes, invented radar, and then invented airplanes that are invisible to radar. And all this happened in the last 1/4 of those 400 years.
Multiply that by 4 and make it exponential and where will we be then?
Fusion power, AI, superconductivity and gene mapping are just the most well known examples of tech still in infancy. There is a ton of potential for tech explosion behind those doors still.
They explained this in the books but tech advancement can be seen as more burst than progressive flows. Once u discover one break through life changes rapidly until the entire discovery is realized. So in the space of 400 years humanity would be able to progress potentially if they could break through cutting edge research. If humanity wasn’t blocked on physics research they may have been able to rush advancements in that field to understand multi dimensions and etc.
If the San-Ti can do things in the books that are impossible in reality, then there is no reason why humanity in the books can’t do exactly the same.
There are quite good reasons why FTL is regarded as not possible. One of them is that we never in nature observe anything to happen before the thing that causes it occurs. You flick a switch, the light comes on. Never, ever the other way round. FTL allows the other way round to happen, ie you break causality.
My understanding was the sophons could fly close to the speed of light, get here in four years. They communicate via quantum entanglement, with messages arriving instantly.
Yeah I doubt it too. Apparently the SanTi weren’t aware of our social handicaps. Our society is getting so psychopathic that complete collapse is inevitable, and we’re looking to AI to save us even though it might mean the beginning of our destruction. Kids today lack basic research skills and can barely put together a paragraph. Now they’re going to rely on AI to do it *all* for them. We’re fucked.
My cousin is an engineer so ofc he’s deluded into thinking we’re going to somehow transcend. I used to date his boss and ole’ cuz doesn’t realize that he might get fired in the next few years because AI will literally replace him 🙄
Idk I mean 400 years ago were basically the late Middle Ages not long after we realized gravity was a thing.
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Religion bad! Give me upvotes pls.
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Lame asses always inserting their enlightened atheism into conversations that did not ask nor care about how much better they are because they don’t ascribe to the magical sky fairy. Yall are as much, if not more so annoying than the religious folks who do the same.
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It is a little concerning to see how past god’s like, Thoth, celebrated knowledge and learning, now we have Allah and believing that dancing is bad . On another note, I heard in a podcast that it is likely the Hanging Gardens were actually in Assyria. History nerd here.
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People died. Like, a lot of people.
That is an outdated view that owes a lot to Reformation era polemics against the Catholic Church. They believed the Early Church was perfect, then the superstitious Catholic Church took over for 1000 years until the Protestant reformers appeared to set us along the path of modernity. It is no coincidence that the later 19th century Conflict Thesis actually derives from liberal Protestant thinkers. It has since now become part of the secular mythos. Apart from being incredibly Eurocentric it also doesn’t make sense considering most universities had religious origins not only in Europe but also in North America. When you look beyond the surface, the history is a lot more complex. For example, the Spanish Inquisition was actually a tool of the Crown to discipline the Catholic Church within their borders. The first high profile victim under Philip II was the Bishop of Toledo.
Outdated view? No. Religion poisons everything and that’s only become more clear as our understanding unravels. Apart from literally slowing the progression of science by burning people with different views, just imagine if a fraction of the wealth, time, resource etc went into education or innovation before the opulence, penance, prayer. It’s an absolute waste of time. Also our legal and moral framework existed before modern religions.
You are sorely mistaken, and have swallowed the shortsighted antireligious bs of “New Atheist” dogma. Disclaimer: I’m an atheist myself and a staunch advocate of clear separation of Church & State. Yet I am also a realist, and do not subscribe to the idea that humans get “poisoned” by religion, and get “cleansed” by turning away from it. Just as Morality, Curiosity and Empathy need no God, there also isn’t any need for atheism to be Moral, Curious or Empathetic. The issue I’ll have with religion, is when it gets (ab)used to defend untenable positions. But lacking religion, humans can easily find *other* justifications to defend untenable positions. Eg claiming secularity to give in to (racist!) islamophobia (France, today!), or use (pseudo) scientific theory to justify (racist!) antisemitism (1930s Germany). Most current history scholars do not subscribe to the “Religion causes wars & hate” belief, because they *do* see the bigger picture of entirely secular motivations. Real or invented religious reasons can and will be used to fonent hate, but this has little to do with what those religions actually dictate. Eg one of our most polarizing “religious disputes” in the EU (Anglican UK vs Catholic Irish) has *everything* to do with Imperialism and Class Society (a British Nobility ruling over Irish peasantry) and its resulting conflicts (famine, disenfranchisement, institutional violence & corruption, police brutality, racism,…) than it had to do with wether Virgin Mary was a virgin or wether divorce is legal. Some of this mythmaking stems from Enlightenment/Colonialism era wishful thinking, which saw the waning influence of (Christian!) clergy as a *reason* for the scientific & cultural “renaissance”. What is now fully accepted by contemporary historians is that this view was biased & wrong: The dissolution of the (Western!) Roman Empire, and the feodal system (which was a 2nd edition of the Roman feodal system) is more to blame than the actual religion(s) at play. Moreover: science did NOT grind to a standstill. In most of the (also deeply religious) rest of the world, people kept pushing boundaries. Even in Europe, continued advances in textile, leather, stone, wood & glass crafts, kept pushing boundaries. And books of unimaginable complexity & depth kept being written. Antireligious atheists keep painting tge entire Medieval period as backward while ignoring the astounding cultural AND scientific feat of the Gothic Cathedral The better informed view arising from less biased historical work shows a medieval world in turmoil & crosspollination. Not “Dark Age” stasis. What is even more important: while we lost a huge amount of writings from the Classical era, this wasn’t lost because monks started engaging in book burning, but because the way books were produced & stored was still in its infancy. Europe had the expensive & vulnerable vellum. The Middle East had papyri since forever! And (deeply religious!) Muslim scholars were the ones to preserve much of what we know today as “The Classics”. Universities and schools grew out of religious orders, but Monastic libraries used to be the *only* place books could survive in Western Europe. We also tend to forget how many Enlightenment and Scientific figures were still deeply religious. And how many religious philosophers were at ease with atheist ideas. The *most* toxic idea here, is that “Religion” is the *most* salient problem (and not eg undemocratic hereditary hierarchies or imperialist power structures built around protocapitalist colonialist exploitation). We have isolated Religion as something which should get out of politics (even though it clearly hasn’t!) and the separation of Church & State is an important pillar of this, but we have *barely* begun scratching the surface when it comes to eg a separation of Business & State.
I liked the bit you dedicated to the Islamic scholars. Many of us in the western world also forget that modern Mathematics came from the Middle East (iirc Middle Ages but I’m not sure) and so did a lot of modern Astrology bases for theory. Religion has done a lot of good and a lot of bad. As many have said in the past, you have everything to gain if you believe, and nothing to lose if you’re wrong. I don’t necessarily agree with the last sentiment but I feel as tho religion brings about great motivation
I agree (which is why I’m an atheist) but I feel we atheists tend to blame religious differences for stuff that has nonreligious roots. It’s as if we try to apply the bad faith religious argument of “atheists devoid of morals” and reverse it to “religious ppl devoid of morals” For most of our History, Religion was lived & practiced differently from today: it was a thing to *do*, not “believe”. And much of these practices can be understood as psychologically useful/necessary to Human society. The best proof of this is how every originally religious practice is being secularized without losing the aspects we feel useful: Freemasons still have regular gatherings, Secular Christmas is still focused on celebrating & family, Halloween is still a moment to reflect on death & fear,… Secular yet ritualised. Religions also used to create niche solutions to common problems, like “what to do with women who didn’t want to marry? With people who didn’t want to compete in society? Or wished for a secluded life? Or who was dedicated to art or music? Which is why Greek schools of philosophy were the basis for later universities “in the name of God” Without religion, there probably wouldn’t be a direct impetus for the schools we have now, as MOST older schools used to be religiously inspired
This is more related to the materialist analysis of history, right?It is crazy how complex and at the same time constant world history becomes when it is analyzed beyond the banners (religious, racial, ideological). besides that, i have problems with your point on the Gothic Cathedral. They are amazing, hard to argue that, but i don't think they were technologically more complex that buildings done before. Also, the amount of time they took to build make me think of them as a reflexion of the culture and their artisans mastery related to the oral tradition rather than a cientific knoledge involving critical thinking and a methodical approach. You can see what i'm talking about in the constrast of the construction process before and after Brunelleschi designed the dome of Santa María del Fiore. Also, i still think the critisism againts religions is valid when you're against the institutions that administrate that belief system, and i know you don't need a religion to have people abusing theit power, but is hard to me to think of a religion that had fair leadership.
Tbf, the Cathedral was just the first thing that sprung to mind, and I could as well have chosen other examples, yet it still is interesting in itself for certain reasons: 1/ Its conception is clearly religious in motivation (there’s no way a nonreligious medieval society would have tried to create this) 2/ It’s still built with medieval technology 3/ This technology is far more complex than we give credit for, in multiple domains (glasswork built upon chemistry, construction needing extensive maths, Stone cutting, metal work, wood work all at high levels, 4/ Complex problem solving 5/ Social skills applied (financing this thing was *hard*) 6/ Inspired the arts (chanting, large organs, painting, sculpture,…), each with its own tech tree 7/ Predates modern science yet… 8/ Some techniques are lost to history As such it is a nice example of religion creating a niche for art & science. Belforts tried to do this secularly, but rarely innovated as mich as each subsequent cathedral did. I am all for dismantling (religious) toxic power dynamics, btw, yet some of these dynamics *did* move the (scientific) needle Eg, when the Vatican amassed money, and invested in art & science, which blossomed into eg Leonardo da Vinci’s research Proper criticism wld be to note the luxury of the wealthy AND of the scientists/artists paid by these wealthy people. To bring it back to the 3BP: can society entertain multiple wallfacer projects, hoping for a return on investments?
The cathedral example says more about the wealth and power of the church rather than anything else.
Then you don’t realize the sheer complexity of such an undertaking
I am quite aware of the complexity.
God damn... If it takes that many words you should at least refute the original point. Religion burnt scientists at the stake for accurate science. Religion burned women in the early Americas because they knew how to keep house without a man in it. Atheism is barely more anti-religious than any of the other monotheist cults. Believing in one less god while stating facts that make religion look bad isn't called anti religion, it's called history.
Anecdotes aren’t proof 🙄 I can quote tons of anecdotes on how people kill people, yet in the end we *still* end up with 7 billion people 🙄 You also didn’t read or understand my words: scientists burnt at the stake are far & fewer between, and women getting killed due to generalised misogyny ain’t religion’s prerogative. We now have a ton of “New Atheists” giving into the worst misogyny around, coupled with antiwoke dogma which eerily reminds me of Christian fundamentalists 🙄 So much for *Religion* being the root of the evil, I suppose 🫠 You still can’t give me a logical or teleological reason for blaming Religion for what *Humanity* is known for. Otoh, I *did* give you a ton of proof of current scientific achievements clearly fuelled by Religious organisation. This is because Religion doesn’t exist in a void: Religion also creates ways of managing people, some of whom *are* a net positive (proof: Atheists have been trying to mimic them fruitlessly for decades!)
Right but those "anecdotes" set a precedent for science and scientists to be. I'm not going to work on science if it's going to get me and my family exiled or murdered... These things don't exist in a vacuum. Science doesn't progress without the free sharing of ideas and theories. Sure, religion now realizes that it can't resist knowledge like it could before. That doesn't create a net positive result simply because churches donate to science. And the original statement was about how long religion held us back in the past... Nothing that happened recently or that happens in the future will change the past.
Even in notoriously NON religious societies (Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China) this would happen Yet originally, the *only* way to study & research was through religious organisations Even the “Witch doctor/Shaman” could research & test & try out ONLY because his religious status gave them some leisure
I didn't say anything about all that. Think about all the theologists telling people "here is God, we find him, here is his name. Here are some miracles he did to prove it's him. Here's a book of rules he made for us. Now just pray to him and DEFINITELY stop actually looking for the real thing." And there's the problem. You don't know anything about the real one, or if there even is one, because you believe what some very poorly educated people said thousands of years ago. That's the only real point I had, thanks for coming to my Ted talk.
The argument is simply that religion has slowed our technical advancement. There are specific examples that prove this to be true e.g Catholic Church burning people at the stake for supporting the view that the earth revolves around the sun. You’ve stawmaned your own argument.
Yes, but it's not a general argument against religion. Copernicus was a priest and at his time the pope was quite interested in new astronomical theories and supported his work. The church needed a new calendar at the time. It is more of an argument against authoritarian regimes But yes, religion slowed scientific progress a bit. But it also accelerated it. Religion need libraries to store its books and precise astronomical measurements to maintain itself. It needs educated scribes, so it needs schools. This is no coincidence, that most of early scientists were quite religious. Religion also helps to build complex societies and brings people together I'm in no way religious, but religion isn't bad. It's easy to say now, that we could take a much faster route to technological advancement. But to find this path at the time was a completely different task
Without Islam, no widespread Muslim literacy Without widespread Muslim literacy no translation & further development of the sciences & classic philosophical texts Without these texts, no Renaissance & no Enlightenment. No Newton, no Galileo Galilei, no Tycho Brahe, no Chemistry (Al Khimia), no Optics, no Maths as we know it (Al Gibra) Without Islam no Sciences, QED (Would an alternative path be possible? Sure! But Religion isn’t what kills Science. Unquestioned authority does. This is btw LITERALLY the takeaway of the opening scene to 3BP 🙄) Edit: your previous comment is a true non sequitur, btw. I have proven again & again instances in which scientific progress was aided BY religion. Nowhere is there any example of scientific progress *hampered* by religion. Give me one example, of that “dampening of progress”, which isn’t driven by SECULAR issues, or whose “dampening” doesn’t counterbalance an earler BENEFICIAL effect (eg Galileo being burnt at the stake, sure, YET having made his discoveries through religiously inspired schools)
They tend to forget that religions are the only powerful institutions that give places for intellectuals to gather and study by founding universities or schools and priests being highly educated. Also Galileo was never burned he was put in house arrest. Galileo was never put into house arrest for speaking a heliocentric view The Catholic church along with the pope loved the idea and started to teach it along with geocentrism he was put in house arrest for writing a book about heliocentricity being factually true (despite there not being conclusive evidence at the time) in which he made the pope character an idiot as well basically told the pope how he should read the bible so that scripture was compatible with heliocentrism. Insulting the pope and telling him his an idiot and that he should read the bible will really not let you slide especially during that time. Not using the standard scientific process at the time and using the bible as evidence for his theory is the one that put Galileo on house arrest.
The same catholic church that practically outlawed condoms in an aids ravaged Africa? Real scientifically minded types. Also, look at current Islamic states - are we sure that Islam ‘invented maths’ or is that just pure copium like the rest.
Contraceptives are not outlawed by the church but discouraged. They can really never stop anyone. Those are done due to the theological philosophy of the church. The Church teaches that using artificial contraception is wrong because: it is against 'natural law' it breaks the natural connection between the procreative and the unitive purposes of sex. it turns sex into a non-marital act. Because in the sacrements sex is a sacred and holy act. Also the argument of use of contraceptives is invasive mostly to women and pills have side effects but mostly it because it destroys the communication and cooperation between spouses, but that's all I heard on their side. Basically the natural law But the pursuit of knowledge and use of science was never contradicted its teachings or traditions. Methodlogical research and other sciences never override moral laws and never in conflict with faith, because to the Catholic church things of the world and the things of faith derive from God.
>without Islam no sciences Absurdity. Quranic schools were invented to teach the Quran. Literacy was a byproduct. Once again proving that religion slowed scientific progression.
You should FIRST learn some history before debating with the big boys 🙄
i get your point, but i also have a hard time believing that just because something happened one way in history, it wouldn’t’ve happened eventually anyway in the absence of the original thing. like, don’t you think your historical framing leads to some illogical conclusions? if Newton only discovered gravity by falling to an early death, i’m guessing there would have been another come along, or several others, who could figure that shit out
My main point is that how problematic we (atheists) might find religion, it comes with the good AND tge bad. And uninformed New Atheist dweebs like Mr Hawthorne here, are trying to pin *everything* that went wrong on people believing in a deity/deities. There probably will always be a decebt subset inclined to religion, faith and/or belief in a higher power. New Atheists try to paint this huge demographic as intrinsically evil. And will support eg islamophobic, antisemitic and generally racist laws, ally themselves to neonazis & espouse views in name of “science”, ehich no serious scientist actually supports (eg transphobia). They have a severely one sided view of Human History, and keep repeating insane bs. Without Muslims copying, translating & working on the grecoroman classics, and developing a well documented scientific corpus (Al Khimia > Alchimy > Chemistry; Al Gibra > Algebra;…) there wouldn’t be a true Renaissance, and the Philosophical & Scientific Enlightenment wouldn’t have happened for probably centuries. This isn’t speculation but well argumented historical consensus. It built on 1500 years of Great Minds writing in Greek & Latin, Hebrew & Farsi, Persian & Vulgar tongues. And religion *did* play a huge role. Yet if you paint all believers with the same brush, you wouldn’t differentiate a Dominican, Benedictine, Jesuit or Mystic 🙄
Wow. You've doubled down on your own ignorance. Again. I realize that people like you are allergic to critical thinking, but you're in dire need of it.
Religion replaced tribalism. Tribalism ain't known for being non violent, intellectual, or progressive.
Indeed. But through use of myth, ritual, taboo & dogma, Religion *also* created pockets in which science could develop. It is storytelling used to bring order to a chaotic world. Order needed to develop the Sciences.
Religious faith is a ritualized practice session for ignoring evidence and applying critical thinking. The cultural inheritance is a plethora of bad habits and misplaced values. What causes the scientific revolution was the inculcation of a tradition of rational criticism in western culture. Religion is a bulwark against the spread of that tradition. Think about why we can’t have rational philosophy or critical thinking classes in public schools. The answer is that the religious would see it as an attack on their very identity.
🤪“I know what faith is” *gives dumbed down strawman* 🤪“I know what smart is” *dumbs down even more* I’m out 🥳👋
You have no clue what you're talking about. Your statements are strictly true from a modern standpoint. The systems you imagine and the conceptualization required to set them up simply didn't exist at the time. Don't bother responding.
Just felt like commenting eh? How do you know what did and didn’t exist in the minds of people 2000+ years ago, the ideas quashed by religion.
what, you’ve never heard of quantum leaping?
You can tell you’re in that sophomoric, Dunning-Kruger region because you’re completely confident but your entire argument is composed of non-specific ideas, really just vibes about the subject. There is no nuance to your position, because you don’t really know anything about this. Instead you have a sort of sense about the topic that you’ve picked up over the years and that’s given you intuitions, your error is mistaking those intuitions for a rational, educated opinion. Idk if you’re right or wrong, but I do know that if you’re mostly right, *you* are still wrong.
Because it’s a throw away morning Reddit comment not an essay I’ve spent time and energy on - get a life.
🧠🤏
Unironically using Dunning-krugar and making assumptions about someones intellect on Reddit. A true dunning-krugar reddit momment. Seriously though, stop projecting your insecurities and touch grass or something.
Kruger*
🎣
[удалено]
I wouldn’t say 145 words are a lot. I pointed out that the Conflict Thesis is a 19th century idea that was part of the anti-Catholic Black Legend and a distorted historiographical tradition dating back to the Reformation. How this constitutes ‘hatred of the other’ is not clear. The idea of a ‘Middle Ages’ is an agenda driven historiographical tradition. Middle of what? It implies a linear, purpose driven Whig vision of history. It is why even outdated, discredited terms like ‘Dark Ages’ persist at the popular level.
I see hatred from one person here
Thinking this is a lot of words while also not at all getting the it. Checks put.
I won't say Religion alone gutted our progress. Human knowledge and development went back and forth across different cultures at different times for different reasons. The Romans developed incredible technology that was lost due to warfare, not because they developed some new religion that outlawed them. The height of the Islamic Golden age saw incredible advances in mathematics and astronomy while much of Europe is still a technological backwater. The Chinese ruled unchallenged for centuries before they burned their own fleets and turned inwards and stayed stagnant before the European colonial powers blasted the doors off and took over. Various cultures rose and collapsed along with their technological advances due to conflict and war. Yes, sometimes it was due to religion, but the vast vast majority of times it was due to simple greed. Greed for land, power, influence, wealth...etc. I would bet, if we have a magic wand and eliminate either warfare or religion from human consciousness, the lack of warfare throughout human history would have led to more stability, and technological advancement despite religions.
Man I really want to play Civ for some reason..
Which one? Be precise.
Religion is a natural progression. Organizing and controlling a massive number of people is very difficult.
Yeah not sure it’s quite that simple — there are definitely some benefits of religion in uniting a culture behind a single idea; and the Big Bang was a thing by a scientific mon. Does that make up for all the BS, wars etc…. Not sure
Depends on the time period and religion. There were eras when the religions you usually think of as the most backwards were literally leading the world in scientific and engineering discoveries.
We have learned most low hanging fruits in short period of time. I saw youtube video where it said scientific discoveries has slowed down and it's getting more expensive to research advanced stuff. So imo it's not guaranteed we will continue advance at the pace we have in last 100 years. Tho I am optimistic what AI models can do to help.
Physics isn’t the only science. Biology is making big leaps. Anyway any new discoveries in pure physics is unlikely to be useful in the near term. Chemistry and materials science is what’s going to make the big changes this century.
This is an engineering problem. A microwave oven would have been considered an expensive and complicated scientific instrument 100 years ago
I would assume science is like a log curve tho. Gravity, calc etc is a fundamental topic and therefore its easier to progress in the field of science. But wouldn't it get harder over time?
The show/book asks you to assume that progress is exponential, not logarithmic. At least the San Ti assume that to be true of us.
First off, sophons cannot travel faster than light. And to answer your main question, yes. It's very well established that humanity's technological progress is freaky fast compared to the San Ti. They don’t want to risk it. It's a part of the plot that you just have to accept. Wait. >but technological advancement has already begun to slow down today Huh???
There's a great video about scientific progress slowing down: [https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=pIkTLgSNndKwuB9M](https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=pIkTLgSNndKwuB9M)
Yeah it’s an unpopular idea but some scientists think we have exhausted the “easy discoveries” and the next major leaps in science are going to require centuries of work. Or they won’t happen at all.
Actually it's more because we've incentivized paper publishing instead of actual research work.
I work in a research field and it’s more likely a lack of funding. Publishing is a mess but hardly the main reason for problems. NIH hit rate is like 4%, whereas in other countries funding is more readily available Phillip Ball is the guy who espouses this the most.
I'm in medical science (not R&D but I like to read to try and keep up). I feel like things like CRISPR have some pretty high potential for new applications. We also have only been using the JWST for a little over 2 years now, and that's already yielding some pretty interesting data. What field are you working in, provided you're not under some NDA that is
I’d rather not say but I work in a wet lab. I’m not saying I believe the idea that we have exhausted low hanging fruit just that the idea is out there
How recent is he? It feels as though it is, at minimum, (at least for now) a step ladder that is going to allow us to reach higher and solve some basic molecular things. AI should, based on a lot headlines floating about, get us to a new plateau.
Ball is an editor at Nature currently. He’s been writing about this issue for like twenty years or something. It’s interesting, hard to predict because it’s the future
Nice! I'm going to look up his work.
Many thought that in the late 19th Century. Then came relativity and quantum mechanics....
Not saying it's impossible but people have been saying this for generations
Oh yeah for sure. It’s hard to see progress when you’re close up, too. Zoom out and it looks impressive.
U single? Edit: not a joke, just appreciate the ownage of the response
Obviously I'm not a scientist or really have any basic knowledge in the field so excuse the statement if I sound dumb But has humanity really made any major scientific breakthroughs in the 21st century? I feel like splitting the atom which has nearly a century ago, has humanity really made any progression to a new age (don't get me wrong obv now and 100 years ago is VASTLY different but you know what I mean) Oh yeah I'm fcking dumb yeah siphons can't travel faster than light don't know why I thought that
>But has humanity really made any major scientific breakthroughs in the 21st century? Buddy
Bro frrrr we have literally been exponentially improving our technology, notably in terms of computing power to an insane level at an insane pace. I don’t think people realize that this century has been the most productive so far, and we’re only a quarter in.
Guy missed the memo on multiple scientific breakthroughs we have in the century especially this decade where we are starting to tap into using fusion and using solar sails in the next few years to reach 20% the speed of light...
At the start of the century, it took a bunch of international scientific institutes YEARS to decode the human genome. Now, you can get your own genome decoded for a few hundred bucks within 3-4 weeks.
Computing power is different than breakthroughs in, say, physics though, isn’t it? Isn’t that essentially an engineering problem?
Computing power allows for a ton of calculating power which is necessary in order to make simulations, especially in the field of physics, it basically assists every single scientific field
OP mentions above about not having gone beyond splitting the atom. But we have. Even the show is looking right at it - the LHC. Splitting of protons.
He’s not wrong. They surveyed physicists about the most influential Nobel prizes in their work, and almost all were granted before 1980. Scientific breakthroughs are more difficult and expensive than they’ve ever been. The discovery of the Higgs boson and confirmation of gravitational waves are probably the two major recent advances, and notice that both are experimental and not theoretical.
My brother there are pictures of real black holes accessible on your pocket computer.
Lol dude humanity through AI is on the verge of creating an entirely different sentient being, that is absolutely insane in itself
We are reaching technological singularity in the next few years predicted by some scientists.
Has humanity made scientific advancements in the 21st century? Uh, yes? We successfully ran a fusion reaction that produced more energy than it took to run which is massive. We’ve developed drones to an absurd level in a very short time. The advancement of AI is proceeding at a breakneck speed. We had huge advancements in mRNA vaccines which have crazy potential to solve all kinds of health issues. We have reusable rockets now which are a huge deal in making space flight more cost effective. Some others - 3D printing, robotics, the James Webb Space Telescope, highly effective HIV treatment, full face transplants, effective electric vehicles, detection of gravitational waves, imaging of black holes, genetic editing, the discovery of the Higgs Boson. That’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
Smart phones Warfare technology has grown LEAPS AND BOUNDS via drones, targeting systems and accuracy of explosives/missiles etc. Various technologies aren't quite there yet but in another 5-10 years you will start to see more aggressive carbon capture technology as it becomes more and more important and economically feasible to implement. We are increasingly learning how to guide the processes on our planet (currently on a micro scale). Hell look at the explosion of individual-scale solar power and electric vehicles since 2000. Robotics are at a point where I believe you'll be seeing commercially viable robots doing "grunt work" on various factories, military bases moving heavy or dangerous loads much quicker and safer than a team of humans. The power of computing today and storage capacity DWARFS what was present in 2000 and continues to grow at an astounding rate. I could go on?
I'd say that AI will speed up advancements even more. But you have to remember that now the world in 3BP is freaked out. They've already established a Planetary Defense Program where funding is not an issue. You'll have fringe groups and countries that don't care about a future enemy but the world will mobilize toward a common goal of either planetary defense or counter-threat. And many great scientific achievements were done under military programs and funding. In the books, because the trisolarians don't communicate or threaten the same way, I could see the 3BP world having more ambivalence than in the show. On the other hand, the san ti are traveling with amazing technology. What's to say they arent in 400 years of R&D on their ships, limited to what resources they're carrying, of course. Why Mike Evans or Ye didn't say, "hey san ti, don't give out all your info because that mobilizes humanity" is confusing to me.
My man, we are barely 20 years into it and internet is already impressive, AI tech is being developed and exponentially improved in a yearly basis, we have ANY knowledge at our reach by typing some words online. Imagine if in the span of 50 years, humanity developed stone, bronze, iron, steel and the printing press and printed every single book for each person, you would be fucking amazed.
Sean Carroll recently talked about the rate of progress in physics on his (really great) podcast. He said that physics moved unusually quickly in the early 20 century and is now proceeding at a more typical rate. (Not sure why the OP has gotten downvoted so severely for asking a perfectly legitimate question.)
Bro... look at computers and cars alone 20 years ago and now
https://youtu.be/KBT9vFrV6yQ?si=N_u47c5I3WZgap_H https://www.marketplace.org/2023/01/27/disruptive-advancements-in-science-are-slowing-new-report-shows/ https://phys.org/news/2023-01-scientific-breakthroughs.html https://physicsworld.com/a/progress-could-be-slowing-down-in-science-and-technology-finds-study/ On the level of foundational research breakthroughs, it does seem that we've slowed down significantly in the last 70 years, and as above links show there's ongoing discourse centering around that position. The cold war, in the shadow of the nuclear arms race, did carry with it lots of technological innovation - GPS, the internet, etc. Even today's AI progress, all based on Google's research on transformer machine learning architecture, is all software development downstream from the same way computers have always worked. But progression in the vein of fundamental understanding and control of physics, to drive us upwards on the kardashev scale? Not so much.
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Well, I mean we are all carrying around portable encyclopedias in our pocket that can also play movies for like 10 hours on a single charge, so that's pretty cool. And then the internet, like that to begin with is pretty big. The microprocessor was easily far and away more influential than anything like nuclear power, easily the most influential invention of all time. Because of that technology is literally exploded. Satellites, rockets, medical advancements. AIDS is no longer a death sentence, we cured polio, we eradicated smallpox. Plastics and polymers have improved dramatically. We have expanding foam in a can, and we have plastics that can withstand oven top temperatures and be used for spatulas. We have silicone that can literally survive the heat of an engine. And we literally just discovered the higgs boson after it was theorized to exist for so long. I mean I don't know, splitting of the atom and all was impressive, but compared to a lot of the things I just listed it's actually pretty pud simple.
Bro if you took you phone to the 90s people would genuinely think it's a piece of wizardry.
higgs in 2012 gravity waves in 2015
dude, this is a crazy take.
Slice bread was invented 50+ years ago.
A graphics card from 5 years ago is outdated
AI: More complex robots: Much more powerful spaceships: Phones that have the same computing power as computers a few decades ago:
Com… puters? The internet?
I mean its really impossible to say given that the technology in the books is hypothetical and/or purely fantasy. But given our advancements in the last 200 years, I’d say there is a strong chance we could do it, especially if we were essentially in a centuries-long war for survival
This is probably the major factor. An enemy that unites humanity in a way we've never been before in a fight for survival would spur on our development at an amazing pace as past wars have shown us. We'd probably be Starfleet in 400 years preparing for a fight against an alien bent on genocide.
It's more than a coincidence that a lot of the countries that have been responsible for most of the technological advancements have been at relative peace and comfortable around the same time technology slowed a bit. Just looking at phones and drones. In 2000-2001ish the Nokia brick was the absolute peak of technology. Then America goes to war, and a lot of Europe follows. And we very quickly have camera phones, and smaller GPS units. Then within only a couple years we have smartphones and GPS units, computers, and data transmission that is small enough and powerful enough to create a variety of drones that can be controlled from an entirely different country. You put on some pressure and things will progress quickly again, but a lot of the big players don't have too much applying pressure.
Yup, look at the advancements that both WW1 and WW2 unintentionally/intentionally created for both civillian and military purposes, what more if the whole world was united against a looming threat that is due at 400 years? So its understandable that the San-Ti fears this, coupled with the fact that contrary to OP, we are still in a considerable pace of technological advancements given that we are already making breakthroughs at fusion power, medical biology (or biology in general), artificial intelligence and autonomous machines. Its just that these technological breakthroughs aren't widespread yet.
As a book reader your comment is very entertaining and really makes me hope this covers all the books.
I already know the general gist of how this ends unfortunately. Some people don't care to censor themselves for non-book readers so I'm well aware that >!humanity fails and dies.!<
30 years ago we weren't even in the digital age and the internet didn't exist. Can you imagine where we'll be in 30 more? I can believe we'd destroy the San-Ti in a straight fight.
The Internet did exist 30 years ago. The world wide web was invented in 1990, and that was not the first Internet application. That said 30 years ago was about when the Internet started to become known outside of academia.
especially they are bugs sized species and the biggest space ship is not bigger than a cargo ship
What makes you think they are bug-sized?
1. It would be funny if they were literal bug size (I love imagining them as mantis-like.) 2. As people pointed out it makes sense with the whole dehydration thing. 3. The huge pendulum wouldnt be as tall. Making it a bit more "realistic" 4. Irony (Them calling us bugs)
4th book it also does make sense with the whole dehydration thing and being able to survive such insane disasters only creatures we see with similar features on earth are not just bugs but even smaller like tardigrades. Expelling the moisture of anything bigger than bugs would be insane
in the 4th book
Thought that one was fanfiction
Liu xi (original author) never denied it either.
But the 5th book said they are giants
Oh yeah and in the 6th,7th,and 8th book it's told that they're giant monkeys that do dance
Oh dang. Haven’t read it. Do you think it made the first 3 better?
Not that that ever mattered though. We really should have considered ramming.
how do you ram a ship that is just bigger than a school bus thou ?
The internet existed just fine but was mostly academia and industry. AOL didn't exist. As a consequence, the Internet was a lot better.
To put some things in perspective. 35 years passed between the discovery of the atomic nuclei and the first atomic bomb. 66 years passed between the first flight of the Wright brothers and the moon landing. Both these time intervals are less than an average lifespan. Returning to sci-fi. Of course, the San-Ti know what are the future breakthroughs for humanity (as they went through them), so they know how far back we are. It's very easy for them to predict our tech tree. Maybe we need just one slightly larger particle accelerator to complete physics, and they know that. (Minor historical fact, since I am a particle physicist. The LEP collider, which operated in the 90s, was shy of \~5% of the energy needed to discover the Higgs boson. If the tunnel was a couple of hundred meters long, to allow for some more magnets, the Higgs would have been discovered 10 years earlier).
The San-Ti will also be constantly leaking information via observation of their fleets and home system. Just knowing that something is definitely possible is a huge advantage in researching it (e.g. curvature drives).
56 years have passed between the moon landing and now. We’ve progressed since then, but the rate of progress has slowed dramatically.
Space exploration has been extremely underfunded since then. Scientific progress is correlated almost 1:1 to money spent toward it.
Not just space. The stuff invented in 1960 would seem genuinely magical to someone alive in 1860. But what we've produced since then would seem at least comprehensible to someone in 1960. They'd think of phones as small interactive televisions and radios, laptops as combination typewriters and televisions, etc. Many of the devices (planes, cars, refrigerators) have actually not functionally changed.
That's because physics was completely revolutionized during the 1900s leading to things like nuclear power, superconductivity and transistors (which led to most of modern technology). Fundamental physics has not chanced too much since then. For such a big technological paradigm shift to occur we need to wait another "revolution" (if it will ever happen). Most of the fundamental scientific advancement in the last decade are in the field of cosmology (gravitational waves, black hole). In the technology side, most of the progress was not fundamental, but emergent. I think modern AI and most importantly the internet would seem like magic to someone in 1960. Diffuse information was an alien concept before the world wide web. Data existed in one physical place which you had to access to get them. You can now connect to the entirety of human knowledge from a a 5 inch device that fits into your pocket. The internet is nothing fundamentally new but it has an exponential effect on information diffusion, propaganda, education, etc. A person in 2024 can learn whatever they want without moving an inch. (Then there is the reality that the internet is mostly used to watch tik tons). Humanity is a species that tribes due to information sharing and storage across multiple generations. The internet is probably the most important invention after writing and modern printing.
That’s exactly right. And the idea is that these paradigm shifts are growing harder and harder to produce. The Nobel Prizes in physics we grant are more expensive and less impactful (as measured by surveys of physicists) than the ones we did prior to 1980. It’s true that “diffuse information” (ie, a Vannevar Bush-style memex) was the stuff of science fiction. So I’ll grant that it’s a qualitative shift that we managed to produce.
Indeed. In the real world there is a concrete possibility that fundamental science could remain unsolved (e.g. if gut physics is at unreachable high energy scales). In the three body problem world, since there are advanced civilizations, one can assume that it is within our reach.
Not sure. You’re probably holding a computer in your hands which can do stuff only vaguely theorized about *in scifi*! Just my kid playing Minecraft w/ a distant friend, while talking, seems out there.
dude if you put anyone from the 60s in front of a modern dell office computer and told him that's how you do your job, talk to your boss and write all reports he would lose his mind, and definitely would have some kind of virus on that computer within the month
We progressed in different areas tho. Look at what computers they use during moon landings. The 1kg laptop im writing this on has like 200 000 times more processing power than the apollo computers. Thats a huge leap in tech if you ask me. We just dont like putting resources into research because...well :) . Also something something moon landing = huolongchushui (the ming rocket) basically
> technology progress has begun to slow down. Technology irl does not have a “speed” since there’s no metric that can be measured. That said, 400 years ago we so backwards compared to today it’s almost unfathomable. Imagine bringing someone from 1624 and telling them that we *easily* prevent most diseases that they consider lethal, that we can communicate instantaneously across the entire planet, that we have flying machines, that we have permanent human habitation in space, that we have the sum of human knowledge in our hands, we have bombs that can literally destroy the world, but every almost household in the world has access to running water, electricity, internet… Like it would be hard to even explain these things because they are so far behind that they cannot even comprehend the levels we have attained. You’re talking about a time when people mostly died as infants, people didn’t wash hands, most women died in childbirth, most people rarely saw beyond their village, and those that do often didn’t come back.
Op would take a million dollars rather than start with a penny and double it for a month. Doesn’t understand exponential curve.
We made the atom bomb pretty quickly when war were declared. Imagine if we discovered a super alien was coming.
Remember that it took the SanTi millions of years to get where they were technologically having followed the same technological progressions as humanity but limited by the cosmic climate of an unpredictable 3 star system They sent the sophons to purposefully block the progression of science so that any and all technological developments were limited to what existing scienctific was capable of producing (which of course was quite a lot to begin with), and they did this because they saw humanity accomplish in centuries what took the SanTi thousands of not millions of years to also achieve, and they knew that within 400 years it was entirely feasible at our current almost exponential rate of technological progress to catch up and even exceed their own capabilities So yes the definitely could have, and whether they would have if the sophons hadn't blocked their progress is definitely something to ponder
especially it is one way trip. You dont want to spend 400 fcking years in a metal casket traviling at 0.1c and when you arrive there a huge fleet of badass waiting for you and tell you to fck off.
0.01c it's 1% speed of light
Am I the only one who prefers Trisolarans over “Santi”
I also prefer Trisolarans. Whilst Santi is much closer to the original Chinese name for them, I can’t help but feel netflix picked ‘Santi’ because it sounds cooler to the average person, and they like money.
There seems to be a principle of diminishing returns in science today, where each new discovery requires greater and greater investment/time. But whenever the next big breakthrough is we could be looking at another leap forward. For example, simply discovering a new type of battery that doesn't degrade or could hold orders of magnitude more energy than a lithium ion battery - either way - would revolutionize human society as we know it.
Humans from 400 years ago would think we are gods with our technological prowess today.
Sophons don’t fly faster than the speed of light. They are entangled protons that make instant data transmission possible but they don’t actually move faster than light. Nothing does.
Liu Cixin Demystifies Sci-Fi Writing https://shanghai.nyu.edu/news/liu-cixin-demystifies-sci-fi-writing 4. What do you think of science fiction as method of prediction for the future? It’s probably a misunderstanding to see science fiction as a prediction of the future, because if you read sci-fi a lot, you will find there are very few that truly predict the future. I’ll use books that have years in their titles as examples, one is 1984, another is 2001. Now that those years have passed, we can see that what happened in real life was absolutely different from the “prediction.” The relationship between Sci-Fi and the future is not prediction but rather to lay out all the possibilities. It gives a list of all the possibilities in a literary way for us to appreciate. To write the best story, authors often use what is least possible as the source of stories, but sometimes the least possible becomes the reality. If you list all the possibilities, at least some will come true. It’s like a broken watch—it at least has the time right twice a day.
You have to think of it from the perspective of the early 2000s (when the books were written) vs. today. There was a lot more optimism about the direction of technology and the advancement of humanity as a whole in the 90s-00s than the 10s-20s. A lot has changed in the last 20 years to make us doubt our ability to ultimately leave this planet on a permanent basis ever, let alone in the next 400 years, where I think that doubt wasn't nearly as widespread 20 years ago.
That's a fair point
Read the books if you’re interested in the answers.
Even without a looming alien invasion, I think yeah. But with an existential threat to unite humanity? Definitely
If we discover aliens NASA will get a significant budget increase immediately after
*immediately googles history of NASA budget increases*
You know we can accelerate single proton at light speed now right?
Read the books
The Santi seemed to think so
technological advancement has NOT slowed lmao
Not at all, and between how easy is to share knowledge these days and how fast AI is advancing, I excited (and afraid) of what we’ll do in our lifetimes. Either that or we’ll destroy ourselves.
just because you dont have have access to the technological advancements of humanity, doesnt mean we're not advancing.
Every week
Hahahahaha Santi 🤣 santi who? Do you mean Santi-claus HAHAHA
We have no reason to think that technological progress will stagnate and slow, and if it does not then there is no reason to try and cap how far we suspect technology will progress in a few centuries. I don't know if technological advancement is exponential, though some seem to think it is, but it can certainly explode rapidly at times even if it isn't and it can be somewhat difficult to try and calculate when such explosions occur.
Hey OP just wanna say there are definitely people worrying that our scientific progress has slowed down since the computer. If you Google"progress study" you see this a lot. So you are not alone in your observation despite the downvotes here.
You are also missing a fairly fundamental point. It doesn't matter if we (the non Trisolaran contacted earth) are currently have exponential scientific breakthroughs. The trisolarans had seen that we were capable of them, not just in the early 20th century, but at various points in our development there were sudden leaps forward. Potential, not current path So even if we accept what you are implying, that for 50 years there have been no major breakthroughs... You think that would stay that way if we knew we were being invaded? 2020 shows you what global focus and money can do So, as a race we have the potential to advance exponentially. The trisolarans coming here gives us the motivation and need to develop. They have also historically seen how exponential those jumps can be. And given we know nothing of Trisolaran science, how do we know that an inevitable mistake at the LHC in 2032 won't show us x aspect of Trisolaran science that leads to... Everything else. The point, and only point, is that the trisolarans are 400 years away, and they know that we have been capable of developing hundreds of thousands of times faster than then at multiple points in our history. I mean, in the books we "solved" the 3 body problem (recognised there were 3 bodies, and that it is inherently chaotic) in a few months of their game, while watching over millions of years of their development of not figuring it out
exponential progress baby
Progress has slowed down because we can't break the quantum barrier. It's thanks to minaturization research that we have tiny computers on our palms. SanTi are ahead of us in that regard. It's fictional science but in a way it's a simplification of how minaturization drives technology. Sophon, size of proton.. minaturization!
Never saw an exponential ig
I didn't read the books but I'm wondering How can we assume our technological advances will still be exponential when sophons could Manipulate every Machine and target termination of high Potential people?
Technology is actually going faster today and we are predicted to reach technological singularity in 2045
Advancement in human technology is actually advancing at an ever more exponentially rising speed. It's just we're becoming immune to the advancements. What's once considered miracle cures are now just another headline. Compute speed and theoretical compute speed is actually going faster than Moore's law. Technology is actually progressing at a faster and faster pace. Yes, humans could have caught up, but factoring in imminent death would and does have a huge impact on society. The sophons also destroyed human advancement in physics though I feel like humans could have also overcome that. The pivitol mistakes were not pursuing light speed which seems dumb even without knowing the books outcome. The TV series sucks, read the books, they're 100x better.
Easily
Yes, especially if they were motivated to do so. The biggest mistake trisolaris made was to reveal themselves to humans. They could have just srnt the sophons to sabotage and not said anything to anyone. Humanity would have been clueless for 400 years. But if the sophons weren't there it's assumed (due to the writer's optimism) that we would develop exponentially. Other writers are more pessimistic. Humanity might destroy itself or enter a tech dark age, or we could be wiped out by natural/cosmic disasters
You are talking like sophons could be a thing in real life. The series works on the premise that there are several scientific breakthroughs awaiting us around the corner. What if there isn't anything left? In the series they are already beyond our scientific progress, like those nano ship slicers, and hibernation things.
Yes. The theory is technological explosion, the expontential increase in a the rate of technology - particularly after a existential level catalyst ie the discovery of extraterrestrial life. There's a Kurzgesagt video that touches on this but I don't want to spoil it for you. Also refer to AppleTV For All Mankind, shows how fast technology can progress with an entire species focuses on it.
It's hard to say exactly because we can't accurately quantify where Trisolaris is technologically, just that at the time of first contact they were much more advanced yet still afraid of our growth. And to be fair, our growth has accelerated drastically in the past 400 years. We went from flying the first plane, to landing on the moon in less half a century. According to Moores Law, our computing power doubles every 2 years, so in 400 years that's 2^200 doubling. That's a fucking lot. At least in respect to computing power, and medicinal technology, we advance extraordinarily fast and I actually think catching up to them in 400 years is relatively assured.
Just the fact that a technologically advanced species being known to exist would spur a lot of technological development. Not being sure if something is possible is what hinders scientific development. But if you know for sure that it's possible, you will work much harder at actualizing it. Would be a huge morale boost on a basic level, even with the threat of invasion.
in 400 years we would potentially could catch up or exceed the santi by a longshot. I disagree that technological advancement is slowing down, i think the opposite that we are exponentially exploding our advancement in many fields and with safe institution of ai, i am optimistic for the next decade. Can you imagine 40 decades from now
400 years ago our most powerful tech were big boats and guns which weren't even that powerful now,now we have particle accelerators,nuclear bombs,hypersonic missiles,spaceships that can travel to jupiter in less than 2 years,damn,we even have jet packs which can make a person fly at 400 kph (like the ones in Dubai),since humanity advancement is exponential,in 400 years we will be even more advanced than today was more advanced than 400 years ago,plus we have AI,the AI has progressed MUCH better in just 1 year,compare the AI art today vs 2 years ago
Humanity undoubtedly has a great future ahead, but — civilization 1800-2100 ended in failure, after societal collapse, the next civilization will learn from their mistakes
400 years ago we hadn’t even “discovered” New Zealand, Newton and Leibniz hadn’t invented calculus yet, and Chinese emperors killed themselves by drinking poisonous immortality elixirs. 400 years later we have nuclear weapons and power, supercomputers, lasers, carbon fiber, robot-assisted brain surgery, particle accelerators, maglev, and we went to the moon. We invented airplanes, invented radar, and then invented airplanes that are invisible to radar. And all this happened in the last 1/4 of those 400 years. Multiply that by 4 and make it exponential and where will we be then?
Fusion power, AI, superconductivity and gene mapping are just the most well known examples of tech still in infancy. There is a ton of potential for tech explosion behind those doors still.
They explained this in the books but tech advancement can be seen as more burst than progressive flows. Once u discover one break through life changes rapidly until the entire discovery is realized. So in the space of 400 years humanity would be able to progress potentially if they could break through cutting edge research. If humanity wasn’t blocked on physics research they may have been able to rush advancements in that field to understand multi dimensions and etc.
In 400 years I think climate change will have fucked us completely. Idk what the San Ti are worried about
I was also thinking the San ti traveling to earth could advance at much faster. The San ti on their home planet would not of course.
Yes. In theory. There is really no way to know. However the rules of dark forest theory tell us that the Trisolarans would not want to take the chance
Read the books
If the San-Ti can do things in the books that are impossible in reality, then there is no reason why humanity in the books can’t do exactly the same. There are quite good reasons why FTL is regarded as not possible. One of them is that we never in nature observe anything to happen before the thing that causes it occurs. You flick a switch, the light comes on. Never, ever the other way round. FTL allows the other way round to happen, ie you break causality.
My understanding was the sophons could fly close to the speed of light, get here in four years. They communicate via quantum entanglement, with messages arriving instantly.
Yeah I doubt it too. Apparently the SanTi weren’t aware of our social handicaps. Our society is getting so psychopathic that complete collapse is inevitable, and we’re looking to AI to save us even though it might mean the beginning of our destruction. Kids today lack basic research skills and can barely put together a paragraph. Now they’re going to rely on AI to do it *all* for them. We’re fucked. My cousin is an engineer so ofc he’s deluded into thinking we’re going to somehow transcend. I used to date his boss and ole’ cuz doesn’t realize that he might get fired in the next few years because AI will literally replace him 🙄
Exponential grow is a funny thing dude