# Why technology accelerates



## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

FearAndTrembling said:


> Well, yeah, but gas is much simpler a phenomenon than human activity.


I'm not entirely convinced of that... or, human activity might be a lot more simple than you think. I think there is a certain bias that comes from being a part of it, within it as it happens, etc. Makes you think events are more important than they really are. From a distance, though, the growth of humanity would really not look much different from the growth of mold on an orange.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Amine said:


> I'm not entirely convinced of that... or, human activity might be a lot more simple than you think. I think there is a certain bias that comes from being a part of it, within it as it happens, etc. Makes you think events are more important than they really are. From a distance, though, the growth of humanity would really not look much different from the growth of mold on an orange.


I don't think it can really be debated. Humans, for example, include levels of organization of physics. But then levels of organization beyond that. With more complexity. How can one say that a single atom for example, is as complex as a ton of different atoms coming together in an emergent, and dynamic process? The brain is more complex than hydrogen. For the same reason tissue is more complex than a cell, an organ is more complex than a tissue, and an organism is more complex than an organ. Because it includes all the lower levels of organization, and then some.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

FearAndTrembling said:


> I don't think it can really be debated. Humans, for example, include levels of organization of physics. But then levels of organization beyond that. With more complexity. How can one say that a single atom for example, is as complex as a ton of different atoms coming together in an emergent, and dynamic process? The brain is more complex than hydrogen.


Yeah, I mean obviously. But I still don't think humans are that complex compared to cosmic scales. In those terms we might as well be gas particles or mold spores.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Amine said:


> Yeah, I mean obviously. But I still don't think humans are that complex compared to cosmic scales. In those terms we might as well be gas particles or mold spores.


A dog is the result of much more complex processes than a mountain for example. Space is filled with .....space. And gas and rock. Most of space barely even contains any atoms. There is nothing going on there at all. It is actually less complex than the phenomena on Earth. A rock isn't complex, no matter its size. It somehow just doesn't magically become complex, because there is a lot of it. It's still the result of the same simple processes.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

FearAndTrembling said:


> A dog is the result of much more complex processes than a mountain for example. Space is filled with .....space. And gas and rock. Most of space barely even contains any atoms. There is nothing going on there at all. It is actually less complex than the phenomena on Earth. A rock isn't complex, no matter it's size. It somehow just doesn't magically become complex, because there is a lot of it.


Sure. But none of that changes the uncanny fact that the history of cellular life can be fit to a certain growth law.


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## Scrabbletray (Apr 27, 2014)

@Amine
The events in your graphs are all completely arbitrary. There is no consistent logic behind what is chosen. By cherrypicking random events a person could easily make a graph that looked like whatever they wanted. Do you really think the development of the computer and PC are events as big as the development of life and the Cambrian explosion? Those graph are completely absurd even at face value.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

a1b2c3d4 said:


> @Amine
> The events in your graphs are all completely arbitrary. There is no consistent logic behind what is chosen. By cherrypicking random events a person could easily make a graph that looked like whatever they wanted. Do you really think the development of the computer and PC are events as big as the development of life and the Cambrian explosion? Those graph are completely absurd even at face value.


That's why I posted the one with 15 independent sources all saying the same thing. Apparently they disagree with you.


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## Scrabbletray (Apr 27, 2014)

Amine said:


> That's why I posted the one with 15 independent sources all saying the same thing. Apparently they disagree with you.


The graph is complied by an individual writing a book to prove the point you are trying to make. The fact he can find 15 people to support his conclusion doesn't prove it. I'm sure he probably sold tens of thousands of copies of his book, but it's still only his opinion. It requires completely cherrypicked events and the general trend it is suggesting is contradicted over and over again in history. I can't tell you how many times in just my own life I've heard that "Technology X will change the world" and 98% of the time it never did. The same is true for people continually extrapolating out graphs into the future without any regard for the unforeseen changes that always occur. Based on what I always heard was fact growing up the world would be out of oil now, Japan would have the world's largest GDP, electricity demand would be triple what it is now, personal computers would be running at 100Ghz, the hole in the ozone would be gigantic, etc. Even the things you talk about in your post as being 5 years away were supposed to be 5 years away 15 years ago.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

a1b2c3d4 said:


> The graph is complied by an individual writing a book to prove the point you are trying to make. The fact he can find 15 people to support his conclusion doesn't prove it. I'm sure he probably sold tens of thousands of copies of his book, but it's still only his opinion. It requires completely cherrypicked events and the general trend it is suggesting is contradicted over and over again in history. I can't tell you how many times in just my own life I've heard that "Technology X will change the world" and 98% of the time it never did. The same is true for people continually extrapolating out graphs into the future without any regard for the unforeseen changes that always occur. Based on what I always heard was fact growing up the world would be out of oil now, Japan would have the world's largest GDP, electricity demand would be triple what it is now, personal computers would be running at 100Ghz, the hole in the ozone would be gigantic, etc. Even the things you talk about in your post as being 5 years away were supposed to be 5 years away 15 years ago.


I love how you keep going back to what you've seen in your life as proof..

Yes, there is always a lot of hype before something gets big, and the bubble pops. That's happened with things like 3d printing and google glass.

Some predictions are too weak, some are too strong. You can find many examples of both. I will look some up that are far too weak, if you want. There are plenty of people like you who say the exact same sorts of things, which turn out to be ridiculously false in the opposite direction later on. In fact, I would venture to say that the predictions which fall short are usually much more egregious than the ones from people who say things like "well where's my flying car!?!?!"

Just because something was "supposed to be 5 years away 15 years ago" doesn't mean "it will never happen." It will some time or another. Either that or something better will just leap frog it. These things happen.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

I mean look, the whole point of this thread is that I am proposing a mechanism by which we would expect technological growth to accelerate. It's not just about me showing that it _is_ accelerating and showing charts and graphs, but I am trying to say why it would happen.

It makes sense that as our ability to communicate with not only others but ourselves gets faster, so will the pace at which things happen. How can you really deny this?


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## Tezcatlipoca (Jun 6, 2014)

Also consider how this ties in with Internet of things and the virtual wealth oculus creates


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## skyrimorchestra (Jul 23, 2014)

It sounds like you are all talking about Moore's Law, which is a legit scientific observation.


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## HFGE (Jul 19, 2014)

skyrimorchestra said:


> It sounds like you are all talking about Moore's Law, which is a legit scientific observation.


A minor nitpick but it's really more of an axiom than a law. A law implies that there is some unseen force that drives it to be true. While Moore's Law is simply a target that engineers and designers aim for. I suppose people call it Moore's Law to make it seem more firm and final as Moore's Axiom doesn't quite have the same authoritative weight to it.


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## skyrimorchestra (Jul 23, 2014)

HFGE said:


> A minor nitpick but it's really more of an axiom than a law. A law implies that there is some unseen force that drives it to be true. While Moore's Law is simply a target that engineers and designers aim for. I suppose people call it Moore's Law to make it seem more firm and final as Moore's Axiom doesn't quite have the same authoritative weight to it.


I don't know about you, but I prefer _Moore's Thing He Said One Time_.


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## HFGE (Jul 19, 2014)

skyrimorchestra said:


> I don't know about you, but I prefer _Moore's Thing He Said One Time_.


Hahahahah! I love it and that would certainly be more honest! :laughing:

You must be an engineer too. :tongue:


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

Don't underestimate how pivotal this new cognitive computing revolution we are seeing is. If you want to know the next leap in communication speed, it's here. Watson can analyze massive volumes of text that would take a human lifetimes... and provide actionable information from them. Things are about to get even faster.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

Siri’s Inventors Are Building a Radical New AI That Does Anything You Ask | Enterprise | WIRED

Siri version 2 is coming out soon and it is called "Viv." You may want to familiarize yourself with that name..

It will be Siri but smarter and more conversational... being able to understand more of the nuances of language and combine search results from different elements of a sentence to provide answers. And it will be more integrated into the tech than Siri was.. more accessible. You could just say hello to it, and it's ready. With Siri there was a lot of button pushing and waiting.

Soon enough this sort of thing won't just be on our phone but on every smart object, and we are going to make more and more objects smart. You'll talk to Viv on your phone, in your car, in your home, etc. Typing inputs into a keyboard and going to search engine webpages is about to go the way of the typewriter, basically. People are just going to talk to their computers now. Like a conversation.


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

This impact of this new "Watson Discovery Adviser" is really starting to hit me. At first I thought it was impressive, but we all already know about Watson, yatta yatta yatta...

But..



> In a retrospective, peer reviewed study released this week by Baylor College of Medicine and IBM, scientists demonstrated a possible new path for generating scientific questions that may be helpful in the long term development of new, effective treatments for disease. In a matter of weeks, biologists and data scientists using the Baylor Knowledge Integration Toolkit (KnIT), based on Watson technology, accurately identified proteins that modify p53, an important protein related to many cancers, which can eventually lead to better efficacy of drugs and other treatments. A feat that would have taken researchers years to accomplish without Watson's cognitive capabilities, Watson analyzed 70,000 scientific articles on p53 to predict proteins that turn on or off p53's activity. This automated analysis led the Baylor cancer researchers to identify six potential proteins to target for new research. These results are notable, considering that over the last 30 years, scientists averaged one similar target protein discovery per year.


That's actually incredible. There is literally more research on p53 than any one person could read in a lifetime. Watson can read it in something like a day, and come up with useful information about it.

Um, wow. This is going to greatly accelerate the research cycle. That's good news.


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## RobynC (Jun 10, 2011)

@_Amine_

1. Technology accelerates because it depends on a base of knowlege to work with; as that base of knowledge builds, it advances faster. It's not complicated really

2. Would you consider it to be an example of Strong A.I.?


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## Amine (Feb 23, 2014)

RobynC said:


> 1. Technology accelerates because it depends on a base of knowlege to work with; as that base of knowledge builds, it advances faster. It's not complicated really


Makes sense to me. Not to others. The counterpoint is that we never know when we'll get to hurdles that we can't jump over, no matter how quick our connection is.



> 2. Would you consider it to be an example of Strong A.I.?


No, not at all. Strong AI, at the very least, would be of human level competence in a variety of tasks. It must have general, not narrow, intelligence. You can tell Watson to help you with medical research, but you can't ask him to walk your dog, write you some music, etc. Strong AI would need a dynamic intelligence capable of learning and performing any cognitive task. And some would argue it would need physical abilities as well. Basically a strong AI would pass the turing test and be completely indistinguishable from a human, if not smarter. Watson is quite impressive and relatively dynamic, but not particularly close to that yet.


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