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Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

charltonteaching.blogspot.com

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Re: Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

#11

This is so ridiculous I don't even know where to begin. Apparently, and without any evidence given, humans cannot fly to the moon anymore and that's why we don't go: we lost the ability to do so and we're ashamed to admit it. Again, there's no evidence for this, and no attempt to explain how or why we have advanced so far in so many other areas. Then, as if this stupid theory wasn't enough to offend the intelligence…

All I needed to read in order to figure out that this guy is a complete loony:

Since the mid-1970s the rate of progress has declined in physics, biology and the medical sciences – and some of these have arguably gone into reverse, so that the practice of science in some areas has overall gone backwards, valid knowledge has been lost and replaced with phony fashionable triviality and dishonest hype. Some of the biggest areas of science – medical research, molecular biology, neuroscience, epidemiology, climate research – are almost wholly trivial or bogus.

If anyone really thinks progress has slowed in either physics, biology, or the medical sciences since the 70s, I would be happy to debunk those claims, but I'm not going to even bother up-front, it's so absurdly wrong that I doubt anyone will even ask for a reference...

Re: Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

#12
post #9
post #3

I'd be interested to see comparisons between the engineering of getting humans to the moon versus keeping the LHC working.

Apollo was way bigger than the LHC, $200B (today's dollars) vs $7B. The engineering of the LHC is impressive, but a lot of it is scaling such as bigger semiconducting magnets. With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

> With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

Tang wasn't invented for the space program, it was merely a commercial food product they happened to find a use for. The Space Pen was inspired by the needs of the space program and was used in it, but wasn't a prerequisite for it.

http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2011/01/tang-...

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Re: Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

#13
The author's entire argument rests upon this proposition:

"That landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans."

Yet there utterly no justification of this statement.

I would have thought that a professor of theoretical medicine would have some understanding of the importance of justifying one's arguments with hard evidence, but apparently not in this case.

Re: Human capability peaked before 1975 and has since declined

#14
post #12
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo was way bigger than the LHC, $200B (today's dollars) vs $7B. The engineering of the LHC is impressive, but a lot of it is scaling such as bigger semiconducting magnets. With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang.

> With Apollo everything was unknown, huge rockets, space suits, life support, space rendezvous, cameras, pens, even Tang. Tang wasn't invented for the space program, it was merely a commercial food product they happened to find a use for. The Space Pen was inspired by the needs of the space program and was used in it, but wasn't a prerequisite for it. http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2011/01/tang-... h…

Tang was a joke.

I believe the color video camera for was specially made by RCA, but the workhorse still camera was an off-the-shelf Hasselblad.

I had thought that the Space Pen was an existing commercial product. Apparently I was only half right. Thanks for the link.

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