215. The Theory of Accelerating Change 

Ask Veritasium.

I *very deliberately* don't advertise or use clickbaity titles, & I bet The Algorithm doesn't like how I'm not monetized. ;) I'd rather have a small audience who's happy to be here than a mainstream one that hates me for being famous.

Awe come on! You are smarter than to think in this thin dichotomy You can be both popular, financially supported and still keep your awesome relevance and purity! DON'T fight it!

@@THUNKShow Like the other commenter said, maybe you think of too much of a dichotomy. I only found your channel as it was in the subscribed list of PBS Spacetime, would be great for more people to be able to experience this content that you've put so much time and knowledge into!

So there are two of us!

Wow you got a heart! (A tiny little one!)

George Carlin famously said that one day Earth will be just fine but with no people and a little tiny bit of plastic!

I recently got pointed at "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber, which advances a thesis something like "The shape of modern society is not an inevitability - it is the result of conscious & strategic political decisions made by early humans, & could very easily be different if different decisions had been made." It's interesting to reflect on who made the call that sustainable ways of life were undesirable (for whatever reason) & what might have happened if they'd made a different decision. Kinda plays with your notion that early humans aren't to be emulated for sustainability. I'm just worrying about the human toll RN, "Will we end up sterilizing the planet?" is a tic too ominous for me.

Boh. TYVM. 😊

Definitely! Also see: billionaires dropping fortunes to barely achieve what the Soviets did 60 years ago. 🙄

@@THUNKShow What is seriously needed to be thought about though is how right now we're leaving space innovation to our best and brightest tech companies meanwhile China is shooting for space through state-funded r&d. In light of this informal race for a new space frontier, It's somewhat concerning to think that China is taking the model that has proven to have worked in the past while the west is placing its bet on launching space-corporatism.

💯 Couldn't agree more! FWIW I think the incrementalism of new tech (e.g. the new iPhone is the old iPhone with better components, Skyrim 5 coming out over & over again) as well as the inaccessibility of tech for a substantial portion of the population (try getting internet in a rural area) are good rebukes for the assertion that tech is obviously accelerating history & "progress" for everyone.

@@THUNKShow Good point! Passenger jets might provide a nice case study. Underneath a few superficial gadgets, we're literally still flying in the same core model of jets my grandfather would have in the 1960s. Tech acceleration? Aw, you mean Concord? Supersonic passenger flight? Pfft. Nope. Until really recently there hasn't been any meaningful paradigm shifts in the way we even view the development of passenger air travel conceptually. Why? The societal structure related to the tech demanded cheap, fairly fast flight. Not warp 5, and certainly not more expensive flights. Since nothing significany cheaper or significantly faster at the same price point had been developed, and crucially, was not worth developing for the established actors in the industry, (especially given the demands of the economic system they operated in), passeneger air tech development effectively stalled... ...And then covid and global warming happened 😅

Xob - Always like your comments!

Glad the levity landed! :D

I've heard the current situation described as "We're deferring basic maintenance & infrastructure spending in favor of shiny new tech problem-solving, & it's just a matter of time before the rot catches up with the bleeding edge."

Uh...weirdly enough, I can! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WbLS3rGtKDM.html

Oh Baron you are a card!

⭐

So it IS a race!

@@bthomson We call it the "rat race".

Maybe the human race?

Maybe we need a sermon!

Agreed - I hate preaching. Wish there wasn't a pressing need to say *something.*

Please notice that accelerating technological change is - or at least has been - a fact... on information technologies (printing press, telephone, computer, internet...). On other fields, not so much. And I say at least has been, because currently the industry is making it be. This is Moore's law, which does not happen because it happens, but because great effort. We cannot just wait for a technology to arrive last minute. We have to work for it. Also notice, as you said, as long as it is cheaper to burn coal or natural gas it gives whoever does it an economic advantage. So... What can we do without such last minute technology? Well, change that. Change the incentives. Oil companies have subsidies that are not matched for renewable energy. There are, of course, incentives to keep motor fuel cheap. A lot of voting citizens need cars, because cities are built for cars. And thus politicians have incentives to keep the oil companies incentives in place. So, change that. Sure, we can throw a technology at it (electric cars), but since we are talking of what we can do without such energy… An urbanist revolution! Ok, no, I'm not saying that will solve it. We still need some technologies, but we are going to get those technologies faster if there is an economic incentive. And if people don't rely on cars as much, cheap gasoline is less of an issue, and then changing industry incentives is easier.

​@@Theraot I think both of you are kind of right. I think its practically impossible to stop climate change this instant just by changing industry incentives. Now I think industry incentives are important in this issue but in reality we can only really use them to slow Carbon emission down at this moment which I still agree should be done because It gives us more time. Its also going to be extremely difficult to persuade countries like china who produce the most amount of carbon and poorer countries starting to gain their footing with carbon. Ultimately we should have incentives to slow the process down but we still have to wait for the technological change so it has an economic incentive.

@@judgefish4044 I believe the disagreement is on whether or not the incentives should come before or after such technologies. On that note, what does "wait for technological change" mean, in practice? On one hand it sounds a little bit like waiting for a technology to happen, not putting the effort to develop it. And I would agree that most people is not in the position to work on technological development… But there are things that we can do without whatever change you are waiting for. I will come back to that. On the other hand it sounds a bit like "the missing link". For whatever fossil record you have, we can imagine something between it and modern humans. You find some "missing link" in between, and we can imagine something between that and modern human, so we are always missing a "missing link". It is a Zeno's paradox. So, what technological change, in concrete, should we wait for? Going back to things that we could do without a new technology, here is a lovely example: - A lot of land is taken by parking lots. - Cars expend most of their time parked. - People don't like cars heating in the sun while parked. It makes so darn good sense to not let that sun to waste. Put a roof on parking lots. Put solar panels on that roof. Charge batteries in situ. Use them to charge electric cars parked there for a fee. Anybody with a parking lot would turn it into an income. Drawbacks? Sure: - It requires maintenance. Which means creating jobs. - It requires initial investment. Thus, it is not happening because we have to put money to make it. That is, it lacks an economic incentive. Technologies? Of course, we could wait for better batteries or better solar panels. But we could do it now too. And if there is more demand for batteries and solar panels, there is more incentive to work in their development. Ok, I have to admit, this won't work everywhere. If a parking lot is full all the time. Or if it is a multistory building. The energy production that the roof can make is going to be less than the demand from the cars... If we assume all the cars are electric. Which they aren't. Which begs the question, will they be able to evolve fast enough? It is a risk. Alright, but we are throwing electric cars at it because we need cars. What if we didn't? Regardless of gasoline vs electricity. Why would people have to be stuck in traffic to commute to begin with? We can throw remote work, or a darn urban redesign at it. Remote work is an information technology, it enjoys incredible growth not being limited by material issues. However, alright, it is not for everybody. What about that urban revolution? Public transport is efficient. Bikes are cheap. Roads should not have intersections. More lanes solves nothing. Have less road intersections, so road travel has less interruptions, so it flows better. Which also means that big roads would not be used for short distances, which means they would have less cars, so they can have less lanes. So there is room for public transport and bike lanes. Of course, every city has its own challenges, so even if I were an expert in urban planning - which I'm not - I could not prescribe an universal solution. But there are changes that could be done that do not require new technologies. But are expensive. For starters, you need to close roads for work. And well, is there money? Is there an economic incentive?

​@@Theraot All I'm arguing is that right now we do not have the technology to stop climate change. I agree that we can put money and work within our own lives to try and stop climate change but it just doesn't look like we are going to be able to stop it just from that. It looks like we'll need more technological innovations before we can start stopping and then reversing climate change. This isn't me saying we shouldn't do that stuff what I'm saying is even if we did, it would help, but we would still need technological innovation to start putting a stop to climate change. Right now even the most prosperous nations on the planet are having difficulty tackling climate change for a variety of reasons. Poor and competing countries like china are not likely to implement any of what you have said but if green/renewable energy starts to become more efficient/profitable we could see that change. I don't know when that will be all I'm saying is that I think that the technology isn't there yet.