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Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

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Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#21

Post by flukus »

eb0la wrote: post #9
flukus wrote: post #2

There's more of us. Specifically, there's more of us contributing to human advancement than ever before. "Luxuries" like literacy are a pretty new advancement.

I was a bit skeptic about your comment and Jaruzel's one until I saw this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:P... Population is doubled every 2 generations during the 20th century. If nothing else changed, the probability of human advancement should have been at least 2x. There are other factors like better life expectation that speed up advancement a lot (more probabilty of having adva…

Not just the raw population, 100-200 hundred years ago most of that population was involved in agriculture, now it's a few percent. Dabbleing in science used to be a rich mans hobby, now it's a career path for many.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#22

Post by tnecniv »

This isn't a simple question, but I just wanted to mention that around the turn of the 20th century, there were a lot of changes in math.

A bunch of fields got reformulated and there was a rush of mathematicians coming up with new ways to express problems, which led to brand new fields. These ideas then filter into other sciences, allowing for those researchers to better describe and solve problems, etc.

That isn't to say this is the only reason, but it's a contributing factor.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#23

Post by Jaruzel »

brianwawok wrote: post #14
Jaruzel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. In 1900 there were 1.2 billion people on the planet, and it took over 100,000 years to get to that number. In only 116 years we've added another 6 billion to that total. :( ...and people say we're not-overpopulating the planet...

I had a bowl with 1 cracker in it for 3 weeks. Over the last 24 hours it now has 7 crackers. And people say my cracker bowl is not overpopulated... Look. Raw numbers mean nothing. What is the sustainable population of this planet. 1 billion? 10 billion? 100 billion? I have no idea. As tech improves, our impact per person could be lower. So perhaps the limit today is 5 billion... But in 20 years it could be 20 billion…

Ultimately though, we WILL run out of habitable space.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#24

Post by Jaruzel »

pitaj wrote: post #18
Jaruzel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. In 1900 there were 1.2 billion people on the planet, and it took over 100,000 years to get to that number. In only 116 years we've added another 6 billion to that total. :( ...and people say we're not-overpopulating the planet...

10 billion people could fit within the USA with a population density of less than New York City.

However, 9.999 billion people wouldn't want to live there if Trump was president. (Sorry, couldn't resist...)

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#25

Post by h1d »

grif-fin wrote: post #11

I guess it would be correct to say: Many reasons and very hard for me with my knowledge to judge which ones had the most effect. But since it is an interesting question I will throw a guess at it. I think reading through the history we may owe a lot to WWII. One of the cruelest thing ever happened to humans may have redirected their global way of living together. As soon as the competition got redirected a bit toward…

While war certainly helped, even tortures and human exeriments advanced medical fields but I doubt electricity or capitalism came from war.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#26

Post by h1d »

flukus wrote: post #2

There's more of us. Specifically, there's more of us contributing to human advancement than ever before. "Luxuries" like literacy are a pretty new advancement.

If you add all the people who ever lived on earth, it's still less than people who are alive right now.

Industrial growth, more room for more population, more manpower to evolve, loop until earth cannot sustain certain limit of population unless there's a breakthrough to feed 10s of billions.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#27

Post by h1d »

Jaruzel wrote: post #23
brianwawok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a bowl with 1 cracker in it for 3 weeks. Over the last 24 hours it now has 7 crackers. And people say my cracker bowl is not overpopulated... Look. Raw numbers mean nothing. What is the sustainable population of this planet. 1 billion? 10 billion? 100 billion? I have no idea. As tech improves, our impact per person could be lower. So perhaps the limit today is 5 billion... But in 20 years it could be 20 billion…

Ultimately though, we WILL run out of habitable space.

Could live vertically, even above ocean if tech allows it (with instant transortation maybe.). Theoretically we have some good amount of room left.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#28

Post by h1d »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #16

Technology and human knowledge advanced. Human nature didn't.

Funny maybe in 200 years where there are so much more advancement in tech, people will stay as dumb as today. Same should've been said from people from 500 years ago. Maybe we are dumber even.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#29

Post by NumberCruncher »

h1d wrote: post #28
NumberCruncher wrote: post #16

Technology and human knowledge advanced. Human nature didn't.

Funny maybe in 200 years where there are so much more advancement in tech, people will stay as dumb as today. Same should've been said from people from 500 years ago. Maybe we are dumber even.

I wouldn't say we are dumb but humanly irrational.

Re: Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields?

#30

Post by NumberCruncher »

h1d wrote: post #28
NumberCruncher wrote: post #16

Technology and human knowledge advanced. Human nature didn't.

Funny maybe in 200 years where there are so much more advancement in tech, people will stay as dumb as today. Same should've been said from people from 500 years ago. Maybe we are dumber even.

I wouldn't say we are dumb but humanly irrational.
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