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Comment on Scientific unprogress...
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, while I agree that things are pretty shit and regressive, let’s not downplay the achievements we’ve had in the past 10 years:
- Completion of The Standard Model of Physics with the detection of the Higgs Boson.
- mRNA technology, which is now a serious candidate for curing HIV, and is potentially capable of being used against most viral diseases.
- Imaging a black hole. Doing it again. Providing more proof of general relativity.
- Measuring gravity waves. Doing it as a normal measurement now.
- Salt batteries are finally reaching the market, which will eventually end the destructive mining and refinement of lithium.
- The James Webb Space Telescope, which was already making breakthroughs and creating new questions within the first 3 months of activation.
- Solar power becoming incredibly cost effective.
- Cybernetic limbs for the physically disabled. Yes, cybernetic limbs.
- Though overused; medication that effectively combats eating disorders.
These are just the ones I know from the top of my head.
Cornelius_Wangenheim@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Right, yeah. That too.
TomArrr@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yea, but apart from Higgs Boson, mRNA, salt Batteries, James Webb Space Telescope, cybernetic Limbs and CRISPR-cas9, what 'ave the Scientists ever done for us?
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Polio vaccine?
infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Though overused; medication that effectively combats eating disorders.
I’d argue underused / inappropriately prescribed by social class. There are millions who could benefit from them who have poor access, while if you have money the Rx just gets thrown readily at your feet.
Valmond@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Extreme longevity shows serious advancements (but in mice only).
Common let’s pile up some more good stuff!
mrbutterscotch@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
Thank you. With all the awfull stuff going on the atm I tend to forget all the amazing things we humans still achieve.
vin@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Gravity waves detection and cheap solar cells are mind-blowing to me. Gravity waves for just the sensitivity achieved and solar for how rapidly it’s improved. It used be a cute technology used in calculators, impossible to match economically turning a generator or directly burning stuff, and now it’s the default first choice.
humanspiral@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
These are monetizable inventions, that are allowed, when big money backs them. Climate fuckery threatens incumbent big money, even when it threatens the little people’s property values and cost of living.
nBodyProblem@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Also, it’s engineers who land robots on other planets, not scientists
Sl00k@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
No reason to pin two bad bitches against each other.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m not sure I mentioned anything about landing on other planets… However, engineering and science are closely related.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I don’t want to downplay some of the amazing things in this list but i dint think the standard model of physics as made by humans can ever be completed.
What did happen is that something like HB must exists in order to make most of other things work. Now that we know HB is verifiably real we tied up a major loose end.
But there is still many stuff unanswered and a “complete model” would require constant revision.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The standard model of physics is not implying it has the answer to everything, or that there is nothing new to discover. The standard model of physics is the periodic table for fundamental particles. The bits that make up all the other parts.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
How are you certain there are no undiscovered fundamental particles involved to quantum gravity and dark matter?
BanMe@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The periodic table is predictive. From a few elements, the rest could be projected and expected, like the Higgs-Boson. The table makes no predictions for things we cannot measure and are in fact theoretical, like dark matter which lacks any empirical evidence. Would be awesome if it did because then it wouldn’t be theoretical anymore.
Thorry@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
One of the most important ones that a lot of people use every day are the huge advancements that have been made in creating modern chips. It might not be something new and exciting, but it actually involves very groundbreaking work and huge breakthroughs. Not just the crazy machines that ASML makes, thought to be breaking the laws of physics just years ago. But also advancements in manufacturing, being able to create super advanced 3D structures and large scale manufacturing at a very high level, yet with a surprising consistency in quality and low cost. Not just for ever bigger, more efficient and faster chips, but also things like MEMS at tiny sizes and low cost.
Often it’s taken for granted what we have. People saying stuff to the sentiment that this isn’t the future, everything is boring, we haven’t got flying cars or people living on Mars. But the fact we all got this ultra powerful computer, with a high resolution high framerate self emitting screen, no active cooling, a bunch of sensors, lots of memory and storage and hyper connected to all sorts of networks, all powered by a high capacity high power low wear battery should be mind blowing. And not just that, but it fits in our pockets and they are so cheap everyone has at least one. Just because we’ve chosen to spec our tech tree into the small stuff instead of the large stuff, doesn’t mean we haven’t come a long way.
I think people look at the past at new “inventions” and think that’s the way progress is. New revolutionary stuff. It’s why people often invest in crowd funding of obvious scam products. They want something that changes the game. In reality it’s a lot of little steps that create a big change over time. And imho this has always been the case. We always hear about the Wright brothers “inventing” the airplane. Like they had some magic sauce and thought of something nobody else thought of before. Then made it and bam the world was changed. In reality they didn’t invent anything, they developed it. They made prototypes and iterative refinements. And they were far from the only ones working on the exact same concept. If they didn’t finish first, someone else would have within the same time frame. But the romantic story of two American blokes with the right stuff changing the world all on their own just sounds good.
So let’s also celebrate the thousands of smaller breakthroughs that got us where we are today.
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
You’re right, I try to remind myself to marvel at the incredibly cool science we wield every single day.
But I’m also pained because I understand where the “boring future” folks come from too:
Where would we be if all this incredible technology was actually designed for humanity and not simply for profits at all cost? If optimizing for humanity was the target instead of exploiting it?
Smartphones, for instance. Small, networked computers! In your pocket! Wow! I’ve always wanted a pocket laptop! But they sure don’t feel like it. They’re designed to be content (mainly ad) delivery devices and data miners first, and useful machines second.
(There are some tiny niche actual-computer palmtops now which are pretty cool.)
I think that’s the part that gets people kinda depressive about modern science breakthroughs. The coolest stuff, the working folk don’t even get to tangibly feel much benefit from.
Discovery is locked behind paywall research journals and implementation is marketed in the interests of capital and used against us to make us work harder for longer hours for less pay.
What’s happening to space is a VERY stark illustration of all this. NASA unifying humanity and working globally on projects like the ISS was INSPIRING.
Now it’s all about private interests and their stupid desires, like space hotels for the elite.
I bet we’d marvel at technology designed for human beings, and not sheer exploitation.
Kratzkopf@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
I love your enthusiasm! But as someone who works in semiconductor development, I feel a bit like it is time to abandon this branch of the technology tree for now again. Maybe I am just disheartened from the PhD stress, but where does it really lead to right now? Following up on Moore’s Law right now just seems to promise higher efficiency and lower electricity demands while actually that is mainly greenwashing attempt IMO (lower resolution technologies are more energy and resurce efficient when considering resource demand during production; high device density leads usually to increase of the number of transistors which are operated parallely, so while the single FET is more efficient in dynamic operation, the whole chip might have much higher leakage). At the same time this efficiency is used as justification to just increase the calculation load whithout considering if it is useful (e.g. LLMs). Resources might be better allocated for More than Moore/architectural approaches e.g. for neuromorphic computing to actually reduce the immense AI computing load coming up.
Sorry for the rant, I think I gotta quit my job.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think it is still mindblowing in the gaming/simulation realm.
This is something that gets a lot of human passion poured in and (to an extent) gets hardware utilized quite efficiently. It’s also a miracle for number-crunching researchers, or those who’s only hope of investigating something is simulation, heh.
But yeah, it feels like other aspects got drowned in eshittification. My phone would be able to host the whole old internet, pretty much! There should be so much collaboration, but manpower is instead poured into reinventing corporate infrastructure like 100,000 times over?