The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
theatlantic.com
The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
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Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#2There is a Strugatsky brothers short story, in which most of the inhabitants of a planet seem to have suddenly left via some portals, but there are a few who remain, highly armed, violent, and apparently seeking to prevent anyone else from using the portals.
TFA reminds me of this story (which reminded me of the situation sketched by TFA when I had read it, except perhaps for the ratio of leavers to left behinds) but I cannot recall its name?
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#3Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#4The article is about how (well akshually) deployment of new ideas has greater impact than the inventions themselves.
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#5This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world.
1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing.
2) Turns out that people aren't going to inject themselves with uncertain technologies, to the point of irrationality. Contrast this to one of the usual response to "we need less medical regulation" which is that people are stupid and will hurt themselves with unproven products. My suspicion is that over the long term this irrational looking swarming behaviour actually turns out to be pretty good at managing risk no matter how crazy the individuals in it are behaving.
The problem in building, construction, technology and mining is pretty consistent. We see the strategies that work in Asia and maybe eventually in Africa - if you let capitalism happen it has powerful enough results at a such speed vs. central planning that it can be rightly called a miracle.
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#6There is a Strugatsky brothers short story, in which most of the inhabitants of a planet seem to have suddenly left via some portals, but there are a few who remain, highly armed, violent, and apparently seeking to prevent anyone else from using the portals. TFA reminds me of this story (which reminded me of the situation sketched by TFA when I had read it, except perhaps for the ratio of leavers to left behinds) but…
I know one familiar-sounding, but different (without violent armed remainers) novel by Clifford Simak: "City".
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#7This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world. 1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing. 2) Turns out that people aren't g…
Do you have any evidence to suggest mRNA research was slowed by regulation that was loosened up in the face of COVID? My understanding is 1) it builds on decades of publicly funded research, originating in military programs, and 2) it was being developed nonstop and every prior attempt had serious adverse effects (specifically serious allergic reactions).
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#8This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world. 1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing. 2) Turns out that people aren't g…
"ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing"
Are patients ready for that level of risk? Are children ready for that level of risk? Outside of emergencies, does anything justify that level of risk?
"We see the strategies that work in Asia and maybe eventually in Africa - if you let capitalism happen it has powerful enough results"
So Asia is capitalist? But other countries are not capitalist? This sentence seems to imply that America is not capitalist but Asia is capitalist. I've seen this kind of writing before. Without a rigorous definition of "capitalism" then this kind of thing quickly becomes "capitalism is all the stuff that I agree with and socialism is all the stuff that I disagree with."
"if you let capitalism happen it has powerful enough results at a such speed vs. central planning that it can be rightly called a miracle"
This suggests that capitalism is the opposite of central planning, but we could clearly design a highly decentralized version of Communism:
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-pragmatic-co...
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#9There is a Strugatsky brothers short story, in which most of the inhabitants of a planet seem to have suddenly left via some portals, but there are a few who remain, highly armed, violent, and apparently seeking to prevent anyone else from using the portals. TFA reminds me of this story (which reminded me of the situation sketched by TFA when I had read it, except perhaps for the ratio of leavers to left behinds) but…
This story is embedded into their novel "Жук в муравейнике" ("Beetle in the Anthill"), so it does not have a name, never being a separate short story.
Re: The Eureka Theory of History Is Wrong
#10This article is dancing around the issue; making fast progress has been made systemically illegal. Now we have evidence of exactly how damaging the regulatory state is in the the medical world. 1) Turns out those heartless capitalists could be producing vaccines in ~2 years. The tech is there, the regulators aren't ready for the level of risk in the COVID response as a routine thing. 2) Turns out that people aren't g…
Do you have any evidence to suggest mRNA research was slowed by regulation that was loosened up in the face of COVID? My understanding is 1) it builds on decades of publicly funded research, originating in military programs, and 2) it was being developed nonstop and every prior attempt had serious adverse effects (specifically serious allergic reactions).
Then where are all the other mRNA vaccines? If it is a tech change rather than a regulatory exception there should be a whole bunch of other vaccines coming out by now, they've had long enough.
COVID appeared in March, they had the vaccine in clinical trials by April. The technical aspects aren't a factor here - the time taken to develop a vaccine is basically instant.