> Paradigm shifts happen because the new paradigm explains the unexplained and importantly also covers the old model

Empirically it seems that paradigm shifts are more driven by deaths and retirement rather than improved fit to the data. Moreover the way that you reconcile old data with the new model can be contestable; it's not like everyone all at once says "oh this new model is clearly a strict superset of the previous one, time to adopt it". With all that said I think one could argue that this stuff is basically noise and that the process still 'trends toward progress' (and I'd agree). But I would say that the scale of noise can also be quite large relative to things a human might experience in their life. I was sort of imagining social-disruption (like a dark-age type regression) as the 'backwards paradigm shift'.

> but there's likely not going to be major "relativity" moments from here on out

I cannot understand how anyone treat this as something that can be objectively concluded; by definition these kinds of radical paradigm shifts are basically unforeseeable up until they happen. I called it the "End of Science" to draw a parallel to "End of History"-type thinking because both (IMO) take this view of "there will be no more revolutions, only incremental adjustments on an unshakeable core into infinity", which I feel is personally a 'vibes based' assessment of things. It's not even that I disagree with it so much as I feel like the statement is basically (and will always be) a pure guess, one which many people have made and been wrong about in the past.

> I cannot understand how anyone treat this as something that can be objectively concluded

Mostly because the room for the unexplained in physics is really small. It's possible that we end up finding some sort of big revelation about quantum physics that completely changes how we view relativity. But even in that case we are more likely to find that relativity is just a simplification of a more complex model with better explanatory power. Very much like how Newtonian physics still works really well from quite small things to anything most humans will deal with on earth. It's only when you start talking about uncommon experiences in extreme environments where relativity starts being a requirements to make the math work.

> there will be no more revolutions, only incremental adjustments on an unshakeable core into infinity

I guess I'm just more comfortable with that position. A lot of the revolutions in science circled around detecting and measure things previously immeasurable and unsee-able. The study of EMF exploded when it did because that's also when our ability to generate and measure electricity in more than just a party trick happened.

We are at a point where things are more of an unknown unknowns with no theoretical way to observe. The physics models at the fringes are mostly centered around things we can't measure.

There just aren't interactions we can't currently predict. The only one I know about is radioactive decay.

And a lot of this shows in modern society. In physics, the last major paradigm shift was relativity. That's a nearly 100 year old model at this point. Everything we have currently is just incremental improvements on the physics model.

I don't think this is because we just aren't as smart today as we once were. Quiet the opposite. There are far more people on the planet. There are almost certainly a lot more "Einsteins" trying to find a new paradigm and they've simply failed over the decades because it's seemingly increasingly unlikely that there is something to find.

> Empirically it seems that paradigm shifts are more driven by deaths and retirement rather than improved fit to the data.

Indeed, Kuhn's own work acknowledged this.