These are mostly not scientific, but engineering breakthroughs (a lot of the science necessary for it was developed long before).
> Then there was the space race, putting men on the Moon, sending probes to other planets, and it looked like the wildest science fiction might be in reach. Then... stagnation.
Which shows that science works/worked pretty well, just the society/economy to back it was too weak. For me a really strong pro-science argument.
> For the most part, today we have the same things we had thirty or forty years ago, just incrementally better or more efficient
Bullshit: Try to use a computer or cell phone that was built 30 or 40 years ago.
> These are mostly not scientific, but engineering breakthroughs (a lot of the science necessary for it was developed long before).
That's reasonable. But the public sees the whole stack re: technology/engineering/science as the same thing. If something stalls in one part, it affects the other two.
Come to think of it: any undiagnosed failure in the education system could easily lead to a broad stagnation, so it is certainly hard to tease these things apart and allocate blame.
> Which shows that science works/worked pretty well, just the society/economy to back it was too weak. For me a really strong pro-science argument.
Supposing that you are right. Why then does society/economy remain too weak to fully back the science? What is the grit in the gears?
> Bullshit: Try to use a computer or cell phone that was built 30 or 40 years ago.
I think we are, certainly I am, excluding progress in computer science. That's the one general area of brightness.
Whether that's enough to counteract weakness in cheap energy production/storage, biotechnology and medicine, spaceflight (until very recently), effective transport etc, is another thing.
Hoarding of capital is probably a part of it. Downward pressure on wages is incompatible with creativity in the workplace.
Of course computation is the exception here. There's a small number of fields that have had good progress, but the major areas have stagnated. Is the invention of the Net enough to overcome this?
It is fine to say that maybe there were quite reasonable constraints, that say, are preventing the Tyranny of the Rocket Equation from being turned over, and pauses in specific technological change are normal, but none of that addresses the question of why has a broad based stagnation set in for so long.
You just can't turn to the current generation and say:
"That's IT! There's no More. Didn't you see how amazing things were from 1700 to 1950? Where is your appreciation! Now Fuck off"
They will at least want to know why?!
That's how it feels to me reading the Wall Street Journal these days. Everything in the past was amazing and this generation are just entitled lazy slobs who got everything gifted to them on a platter.
I think you need a critical mass of people to accept that stagnation has occurred before we can get broad based growth again. Awkward questions that haven't been asked before need to be asked. Right now my generation is sitting on its laurels because it believes, as Thiel describes it: we can just sit back and wait for the Movie of the future to unfold forever.
That won't happen as long as people like this:
thisisjasonsilva.com
are being taken seriously.