Phil - thanks for keeping up on this. It’s hard to allocate my attention, as there’s a great deal to follow these days. As I follow Space X’s progress, I am frequently awed. For me, it represents an example of the good which motivated human activity is capable of accomplishing. I’m acutely aware of the many possibilities for humanity’s changes of direction – the inflections underway. I have considerable anticipatory grief that I will not be around to know where many of these positives will go. AI, is another whose fuure I will miss.
Here’s where we differ! I am glad I am old. Through no skill or hard work on my part, I happened to be born in a time and place which represented a local maximum in the grand function of human progress. I have enjoyed these undeserved good times, and – like the rest of us – failed to change the obviously poor direction in which society was heading.
There is little doubt that even better days lie in the future of humanity; that is the thesis of Matt Ridley’s “The Rational Optimist”. But equally rationally, those better days will be for our grand-children or great-grandchildren or beyond. The rising generation is going to pay the price for our mistakes.
Please note that I did not mention culture, society or politics. Mainly I would like to know the future of space travel, AI, and scientific evidence for the existence of God - which is clearly growing. I don’t think we differ.
Me too! However, the timescales on those exceed my probable remaining years on this planet – maybe by an order of magnitude or more.
Time! Fifty years ago, man stood on the Moon. Maybe in another ten years, man might stand on the Moon again. Seventy years ago, fusion energy was twenty years in the future. Today, fusion energy is twenty years in the future. The timescales for what we would like to see are very long.
I am impressed with the work of Hans G. Schantz (occasionally of this parish) who hypothesizes that science took a wrong turn somewhere in the past. When we think of arrant pseudo-science nonsense like “climate change” (a.k.a. global warming) and the CovidScam, he clearly has a point. The universities have become nearly worthless; the great industrial research labs have mostly been sacrificed in the interests of short-term profits. Today’s crippled science celebrates what are at best partial answers, such as the Big Bang and natural selection, as the total answers to life, the universe and everything.
But eventually, this foolishness will get blown away and human progress will resume its fitful journey forwards. We won’t live to see it, but I doubt that in this giant universe anyone will ever live to see the ultimate answers to everything.
