Early on this interview [0] he says that his grandfather visited Napoleon in Elba (in 1814). It's always sort of mind-blowing how few generations, albeit long-lived ones, are required to reach to a very different era, where there existed this weird short-lived French empire. In this case just 3 or 4 generations are needed?
Another instance is President John Tyler's grand children still being alive [1]. John Tyler was born in 1790 when George Washington was still around, although I doubt he had any contact with Washington.
Well, I think it's also telling that now Napoleon's reign could be thought of as "this weird short-lived French empire", because while it short-lived, the Napoleonic empire in many ways set the stage, created the model for the modern world. Certainly, Napoleon was defeated but the forces of France at that time represented a kind of progress, a kind of progress that other nations were only able to defeat by adopting - the mass army at the service of a centralized state implies a kind of democracy and mass participation in life that a feudal system couldn't manage (to name just one of enumerable example). That's why even in defeat, Napoleon represented a fundamental change in the world.
I think this is one of the most fascinating things about him to me, because he was born in 1872 and lived to 1970, so he went from living in a society where it was still common to travel by horse and buggy to one where we had nuclear energy and easy air travel, etc, and he never lost his sharp mind, so you get to hear the perspective of someone who went through all of that. I highly recommend giving his autobiography a read to anyone interested in his life.
For some time I have been thinking about why it seems like scientific progress has slowed down compared to a century ago, and then one day I came across a clip of an interview with Professor Russell where he was saying that if technological progress continued at the current rate, then very soon humanity would drive itself extinct from the creation and use of weapons that were too powerful and too easily produced. I wonder if the slowing of scientific progress might be in some ways a saving grace, where if too advanced of technology was developed too quickly, then society would be unable to evolve in time to handle it responsibly without major potential for calamity.
Would just like to point out that Vaclov Smil says the time period between about 1870-1910 is unmatched by any other time period before or since, excepting a sliver of the Han dynasty, as measured by the rapid surge in invention, innovation, and the rapidity with which those new ideas were employed in the broader society (rate of adoption). He goes on to say that even in today’s seemingly endless cycle of new products and legitimate advancement, we’re making only point solutions in comparison. For instance, the whole-house AC power system would be easily recognizable by Edison today. Improved, yes, but compared to going from nothing to the direct-to-home and whole-home solution set, it’s illustrative of relative stagnation. To be clear though, he said that it’s unrealistic to expect society to perpetuate those periods, as they are flukes - again, only twice in recorded history. I’m not doing the depth of his reasoning justice by any means, but I think his would bring another interesting angle to the idea that you relate from Russell.
A common theme amongst optimists is how much technological advance we have seen and how these advances seem to be accelerating. I am of the opposite camp and believe, roughly, that the rate of progress has been steadily declining since we landed on the moon in 1969. While I can’t explain the 1970s and 1980s, the modern Gilded Age’s lack of technological progress is easier to understand. The intellectual lobotomization of smart, young STEM talent has been an explicit strategy by Big Tech fueled by unseemly profitability and hi flying stock prices. If you can’t innovate but are wildly profitable, wouldn’t you also just pay the incremental talented engineer to work for you on anything versus working for a competitor or, worse still, work for themselves and invent something disruptive that could impact your monopoly? Of course you would...and they have.
If you were a bright, ambitious engineer graduating in STEM in the early 1960s this wasn’t the case. You went to work on something meaningful. The momentum towards spaceflight was a call to arms for the smartest and hardest working amongst us. These bright men and women worked to invent new capabilities and entire ecosystems in fuel cells, gas storage systems, thermodynamic materials, engines, mechanical timers and clocks and control systems to name a few. The cost of the entire Apollo program was $25 Billion or $150 Billion in today’s dollars.
Big Tech spent $75B on R&D in 2018 alone. Put another way, this means that in two 2018 equivalents of R&D spending, Big Tech could have sent people to the moon and back. It's fair to say, however, that what we have witnessed instead can graciously be described as something less ambitious and impactful than that.
This misallocation of capital won’t end until we demand it - every government, regulator and individual now has a role to play whether you know it or not.
If you're interested, and happen to be in Hamilton, Ontario, he donated his archives to McMaster University. They have thousands of documents and things like his Nobel Peace prize. It looks like a lot has been digitized now.
I've been to the archives (used to be a philosophy student there) and got to go through some of his letters. I remember reading a bunch of letters he wrote back and forth with Muhammad Ali during the vietnam war. They actually have some of his furniture and a portrait, IIRC too. They recently moved it all from the university archives into a dedicated house as well! The university has a special visiting professorship related to it as well https://philos.humanities.mcmaster.ca/visiting-bertrand-russ...
Thanks, always enjoyed BR commentaries on history and modern perspectives.
Particularly enjoyed this one with CC on. "Don't upset the apple tart" for "grown ups had the apple tart" and some other Monty Python-esque machine gaffes.
> Well I think there are three things that are needed if the world is to adapt itself to the Industrial Revolution. The troubles we are suffering now are essentially troubles due to adapting ourselves to a new phase of human life, namely the industrial phase. And I think three things are necessary if people are to live happily in the industrial phase. One of these is world government, the second is an approximate economic equality between different parts of the world, and the third is a nearly stationary population.
If you are curious his grand-father knew another great mind John Stuart Mill, also Bertrand Russell wrote this thing called principia mathematica and wrote 30 pages on proving 1+1=2 using formal logic. This man has achieved so much for one person, most notably writing history of Western Philosophy [1]
[+] [-] sndean|5 years ago|reply
Another instance is President John Tyler's grand children still being alive [1]. John Tyler was born in 1790 when George Washington was still around, although I doubt he had any contact with Washington.
[0] https://youtu.be/fb3k6tB-Or8?t=129
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyler#Family_and_personal...
[+] [-] joe_the_user|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anaphor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dddbbb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] goolulusaurs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aksss|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sooheon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cambrianentropy|5 years ago|reply
A new space race
A common theme amongst optimists is how much technological advance we have seen and how these advances seem to be accelerating. I am of the opposite camp and believe, roughly, that the rate of progress has been steadily declining since we landed on the moon in 1969. While I can’t explain the 1970s and 1980s, the modern Gilded Age’s lack of technological progress is easier to understand. The intellectual lobotomization of smart, young STEM talent has been an explicit strategy by Big Tech fueled by unseemly profitability and hi flying stock prices. If you can’t innovate but are wildly profitable, wouldn’t you also just pay the incremental talented engineer to work for you on anything versus working for a competitor or, worse still, work for themselves and invent something disruptive that could impact your monopoly? Of course you would...and they have.
If you were a bright, ambitious engineer graduating in STEM in the early 1960s this wasn’t the case. You went to work on something meaningful. The momentum towards spaceflight was a call to arms for the smartest and hardest working amongst us. These bright men and women worked to invent new capabilities and entire ecosystems in fuel cells, gas storage systems, thermodynamic materials, engines, mechanical timers and clocks and control systems to name a few. The cost of the entire Apollo program was $25 Billion or $150 Billion in today’s dollars.
Big Tech spent $75B on R&D in 2018 alone. Put another way, this means that in two 2018 equivalents of R&D spending, Big Tech could have sent people to the moon and back. It's fair to say, however, that what we have witnessed instead can graciously be described as something less ambitious and impactful than that.
This misallocation of capital won’t end until we demand it - every government, regulator and individual now has a role to play whether you know it or not.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] interestica|5 years ago|reply
https://www.mcmaster.ca/russdocs/russell.htm
[+] [-] anaphor|5 years ago|reply
It's a really interesting story of how they even acquired the archives https://brighterworld.mcmaster.ca/articles/celebrating-50-ye...
[+] [-] seesawtron|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ak39|5 years ago|reply
Particularly enjoyed this one with CC on. "Don't upset the apple tart" for "grown ups had the apple tart" and some other Monty Python-esque machine gaffes.
[+] [-] jmiskovic|5 years ago|reply
There's a full transcript here: https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/2019/02/02/a-conversation-with...
[+] [-] bori5|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lihaciudaniel|5 years ago|reply
1.https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/243685.A_History_of_West...
[+] [-] Angostura|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetBen|5 years ago|reply
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