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Re:Closest Temperate World Orbiting Quiet Star Discovered by DubiousPusher on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @03:44PM (#15707557)
I mostly agree. I used to buy into the narrative of human progress over the course of 10,000 years of civilization. Now I see human knowledge/achievement much more as an ebb and flow with some momentum retained across time and societies. I see our current state of progress as a kind of happy accident. Some combination of Secularism, Legalism, Bureaucracy, Entrepreneurship, Socialsim and Education has created the imperfect but better world (mostly better for humans) we inhabit today. Which means to me that none of us really know what's created this progress and we can't be entirely sure what has arrested it at times. There isn't an arrow of human progress but a churning jumble that right now has come out with a relative lull in human suffering and a corresponding bump in personal convenience.

The upside of this is that if we can maintain this cocktail of traits while curbing the more obviously dangerous ones, we may be able to surpass greatly what we've accomplished so far. I hope anyway.

Re:Closest Temperate World Orbiting Quiet Star Discovered by wallace_f on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @04:06PM (#15707790)
I really think the lesson is one of competition. Without it, we'd never have the V2, and even if we did have the V2 we would still never have had the Saturn rockets. The Russians would never have developed the RD-180, and so SpaceX and BO would never exist.
Re:Closest Temperate World Orbiting Quiet Star Discovered by na85 on Wednesday November 15, 2017 @07:48PM (#15709412)
WWII is what gave us the V2. Reducing the deadliest conflict in human history to "competition" is... Troubling.

Ultimately what seems to drive us forward (IMHO), is finding new ways to kill each other.