| ▲ | sph 11 hours ago |
| Why do we need constant innovation? |
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| ▲ | hodgehog11 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Because if spread equally and used responsibly, it raises quality of life for everyone. Generally speaking, the vast majority of people alive today have far easier lives than hunter-gatherers. There is less famine and starvation. There is less fatal disease, etc. |
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| ▲ | sph 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Because if spread equally and used responsibly That ‘if’ is Atlas carrying the entire world on its shoulders. It should be clear by now that at global scales and with competing interests, the entire premise is impossible. | | |
| ▲ | halperter an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the point hodgehog was trying to make is that overall wellbeing increased. Famine is down, disease is down, wars are down, security up, well-being up. Innovation overall benefits everyone in the long run. Global scales aren't the problem---goods once reserved for the wealthy are being copied and produced at markedly lower prices, with examples such as EVs and drones. I realize that "overall" is doing some heavy lifting but I think it's rather unreasonable to dismiss the entirety of human technological progress as only benefiting the elite. | |
| ▲ | tancop 26 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | only if you assume capitalism is the only stable economic system. without wealth differences there is nothing other than your own abilities that can make access to tech unequal. | |
| ▲ | hodgehog11 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not really, western countries were doing a lot of that in the 20th century (amongst themselves, anyway). Then the 80s happened. Or what, do people think that the boomers were all that good, that they genuinely earned everything they got? The generations before just worked out how to govern properly. | | |
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| ▲ | nerdsniper an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It's inevitable. We can't stop innovating. |
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| ▲ | 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | TacticalCoder 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Why do we need constant innovation? Because, for example, no parents should lose their kids to leukemia. At 17 y/o I was save from peritonitis / sepsis first misdiagnosed as harmless belly pain and hidden by painkillers. Then it became a matter of hours and from the moment the doctor saw me again and I undergo surgical operation, less than two hours happened. My father got diagnosed a stage 3 bladder cancer with metastasis to the prostate about 3 years ago. He's still there and doing better. That's why we need innovation. And, no, science ain't a bag out of which you pick what suits you (medicine) and leave out what you don't like (the Internet / LLMs / etc.). |
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| ▲ | dragontamer 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > And, no, science ain't a bag out of which you pick what suits you (medicine) and leave out what you don't like (the Internet / LLMs / etc.). Uhhhh. Sure it is. We stopped nuclear weapons development. At best, rogue countries can catch up to where we are but there's no political will to build even bigger or more powerful bombs anymore. Thats an entire branch of science that we've literally cut off on a worldwide basis. Science is, and must, be controlled to stay within the realm of useful to the people. The minute it is no longer serving us is the minute we should work on getting rid of it. Fortunately, science isn't a cohesive bathtub where everything must be thrown away with the baby. We can (and do) pick-and-choose what to develop. | | |
| ▲ | TurdF3rguson 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nuclear weapons development hasn't stopped outside of US. Maybe you mean it hasn't spread to any new countries lately... which is true but I wouldn't count on that lasting. | | |
| ▲ | dragontamer 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Both USA and Russia, have decided that ~Megaton Hydrogen Bombs are the biggest we're going to get and we don't plan to build anything bigger than that ever again. The USSR wanted to make sure they were the ones who built the largest bomb of all time (the Tsar Bomba at 50 MTon). And after that, development on more ferocious weapons has stopped. |
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| ▲ | uguudting 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | elzbardico 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because our economy is based on the sacred right to compound interest, and the only way this can work is with continuous growth. Lacking new markets, given the population growth is accelerating, the only way we can keep this running is by increasing consumption via new gadgets and innovation. |
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| ▲ | 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
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| ▲ | bel8 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Because I would like for a future with better health. And technology is a great catalyst for that. |
