The notion of inexorable, accelerating human progress is fairly new (starts in the late 19th century and only becomes mainstream after WW2)
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If you asked an intellectual in 1500, they would tell you that the peak of civilization was old Rome and that Europe had gone downhill since
Progress is one of those modern ideas that have been artificially retrofitted to all of human history
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darwin "on shoulders of giants", and greeks built on discoveries. but idea that progress is always good & end in itself is modern
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daoists, vedanta, classics believed in non-linear progression; wheel of fortune, becoming. darwin intro'd direction to "fitter"
End of conversation
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it's backprop' applied to history :)
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Progress depends on the objective function. It seems technology, democracy, and capitalism/trade have most improved humanity's fitness.
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Exponential growth looks very linear in early stages. Being able to see it once it's more evident shouldn't be a criticism
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Think mini-batches. Noisy updates at the century scale, but a fairly clean trend over the last 60K years. And we generalise well!
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The modern world is still new, agreed, but the trend of "increasing energy usage" applies on a longer timescale and is a proxy for progress.
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Life has continued making progress in finding ways to gain access to more energy and better utilize it. Intelligence is an offshoot of that.
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