The Not-So Good Old Days

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The advancement of information sharing technolgies such as the printing press, computers etc. has gone a long way to providing an insurance policy against giant backwards steps in technology. Short of world ending cataclysms generational knowledge put down into readily sharable media means the likelihood of regression into the stone age technology era is approximately 0.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by VetLegion
On a serious note, back when the average lifespan was 25 years, it didn't mean nobody lived past 25. If you lived till 20 you had a solid chance of living to 50 or more. All those kids dying was what skewed the statistics.

For example, during the Roman times the average lifespan was ~20 years or so, but it took about that many years (I forgot exactly how many) of service in the Legions to get a pension. It wouldn't have made sense if nobody lived past 30.

I think this "skewing" of the average lifespan by young deaths is counterbalanced by all the Jews living hundreds of years. Abraham was, what, 900 when he died?

[Arrian]

Originally posted by General Ludd


The human race has never had to live with the possibility of it's extinction untill only very recently.

Have you ever heard of asteroids?

edit: beaten to it. Nevermind.

-Arrian

[Sandman]

As an aside, how do you actually measure technological progress?

[King of Rasslin]

Number of patents.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Q Cubed

That's just your claim. You keep saying that, but it doesn't make it so.

You'll have to explain that line. Which part isn't so? The claim that dedication isn't iterative and continual, or the claim that knowledge accumulation/technological progress is iterative and continual?

Your logic is circular. You keep saying technological advancement is continual, but that's it. You aren't saying anything else.

[Sandman]

Originally posted by King of Rasslin
Number of patents.

That would mean that there was no technological progress before the 15th Century.

[Kidlicious]

I would say measure it by income/capita

edit: add in a factor for hours worked.

edit: also add in stepwise events like technology for penis regeneration

[Odin]

When it come to the Dark Ages one must not be to Western-centered, Byzantum and the Caliphate preserved a good majority of Graeco-Roman technology and learning and then some (such as innovations in math, chemistry, and optics). The pre-Western Dark Ages were only a regression in the old Western Empire, elsewhere it was mostly a plateau

[Q Classic]

Your logic is circular. You keep saying technological advancement is continual, but that's it. You aren't saying anything else.

? You keep saying that technological advancement ends, but that's it. You aren't saying anything else. (Outside of piss-poor analogies which don't hold up to any form of scrutiny...)

If I may phrase it in your language...

Given my experience, it has strongly suggested technological advancement is continual, as even in moments of retardation, it as still progressed forward and advanced upon itself by feeding off of itself.

If you want to concede that at this point the argument is a quagmire, with your (fallacious) side going off your "experience" and my (correct) side going off my "experience", then that's fine. Doesn't change the fact that your arguments were enormously weak, particularly in your attempts at analogizing.

With respect to measuring progress, I figure the patent remark was facetious. I would, on the other hand, measure it in terms of an estimated total amount of knowledge. Everything in the past is recorded in some form for the future; what is lost has often already been assimilated, fed into something new.

If you're looking for specific metrics, then no, I can't give you anything. Why? Because technological progress is in itself intangible, being a concept, not an object.

[Saras]

I went to see a lecture by a philosophy professor about the "end of science". There's plenty of theories around and it was a very interesting lecture; of all the theories he personally believed the one of decreasing marginal rate of advancement, due to skyrocketing costs of fundamental research and decreasing "size" of steps of advancement. It seemed logical to me as well.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kidicious
I would say measure it by income/capita

edit: add in a factor for hours worked.

edit: also add in stepwise events like technology for penis regeneration

Nothing gives me more hope for the future than the progress on penis regeneration.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Japher
I'd rather be rich and stupid... ppl really hate that

You wouldn't stay rich for long.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Lorizael
We've already had what, six mass extinctions on this planet? How many were caused by humans?

There were five before and we are causing the sixth one.

[Bosh]

Hunter gatherer life was actually pretty sweet. Low population density kept rates of disease pretty low and there was usually enough food around that it didn't take more than 4 hours of work per day to stay fed. Shame about the occasional bouts of starvation and warfare that were needed to keep the population sufficiently low, but overall I think that life was OK right before farming kicked in then there were a few thousand years of peasantry. That sucked