Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields? - ForFreedom
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dirktheman
The Industrial Revolution made a lot of manufacturing processes much, much
more efficient. Before the revolution, you had one manufacturer of everything
in every region/village. One blacksmith, one seamstress, one cobbler, one
baker, you name it. The Industrial Revolution made large-scale manufacturing
possible, freeing up a lot of time for things like education and innovation.

Think of it. In today's society, there is almost nothing around you that
hasn't been manufactured by one single person from a to z. The amount of
collaboration and globalization in our society is mindboggling, something that
was unthinkable before the Industrial Revolution.

So it's not just the past 100 years, it's more like the past 200 years. It's
easy to look at someone from 1840 as ancient, simple even. Just keep in mind
that things like the steam engine, photography or electrification were just as
novel and influential then computers or the internet in our age.

~~~
insoluble
Before the industrial revolution, almost all manufacturing of common goods,
including food, was performed by human hands and feet. This limited output
capacity to that of human strength and endurance; and it was exhausting for
humans, preventing most humans from having time or energy for intellectual
activities.

On the contrary, there were a handful of areas where humans had already begun
to exploit motion and force outside of human muscle to carry out work. One
long-time example is using horses, mules, and other animals to provide force
for transporting goods over distances. Even humans were payloads transported
upon animal backs. Another key advancement for humans was using water and wind
to transport large amounts of goods from one place to another. Sailboats
allowed for transporting of goods a very long distance. In today's age we may
take self-driving transport for granted, but once upon a time humans actually
had to transport goods by hand and foot.

Why the industrial revolution was a powerful next step in exploiting nature is
because it allowed not only transport of goods, but also finer, more complex
tasks to be carried out without requiring human muscle. Now sewing, grinding,
cutting, molding, bending, digging, and drilling could be done by machine in
large quantities with good reproducibility.

Hence, first humans exploited nature (and other animals) for transporting
goods. Then humans began exploiting oil, coal, and electricity for carrying
out more complex physical tasks that require large amounts of force. As
machines grew finer, they were able to manufacture smaller, more precise
goods.

The next stage was to allow humans to carry out not only large scale physical
tasks without continuous human effort, but also to carry out intellectual
tasks in mass without continuous human effort. This is where computers come
in. They exploit nature to get information processed quickly and reliably.

At least a few areas remain where humans are doing the heavy lifting. One is
reproduction. Humans are still required to take care of new humans while they
are brought from incapacity to self sufficiency. This is still a difficult,
time-consuming task, especially if the goal is having quality output. Another
area where humans still do heavy lifting is learning. Unfortunately learning
has not become much more efficient or quicker than it was in the past. Humans
are very slow at learning, and a massive human effort is generally involved.

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tnecniv
This isn't a simple question, but I just wanted to mention that around the
turn of the 20th century, there were a lot of changes in math.

A bunch of fields got reformulated and there was a rush of mathematicians
coming up with new ways to express problems, which led to brand new fields.
These ideas then filter into other sciences, allowing for those researchers to
better describe and solve problems, etc.

That isn't to say this is the only reason, but it's a contributing factor.

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flukus
There's more of us. Specifically, there's more of us contributing to human
advancement than ever before. "Luxuries" like literacy are a pretty new
advancement.

~~~
Jaruzel
Seconded. In 1900 there were 1.2 billion people on the planet, and it took
over 100,000 years to get to that number.

In only 116 years we've added another 6 billion to that total. :(

...and people say we're not-overpopulating the planet...

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brianwawok
I had a bowl with 1 cracker in it for 3 weeks. Over the last 24 hours it now
has 7 crackers. And people say my cracker bowl is not overpopulated...

Look. Raw numbers mean nothing. What is the sustainable population of this
planet. 1 billion? 10 billion? 100 billion?

I have no idea. As tech improves, our impact per person could be lower. So
perhaps the limit today is 5 billion... But in 20 years it could be 20
billion.

~~~
Jaruzel
Ultimately though, we WILL run out of habitable space.

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h1d
Could live vertically, even above ocean if tech allows it (with instant
transortation maybe.). Theoretically we have some good amount of room left.

~~~
brianwawok
At even midsize population density, I am pretty sure we have space for WAY
over 100 billion people on this planet. Food production needs some more work,
perhaps a bit of us eating lower on the food chain..

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grif-fin
I guess it would be correct to say: Many reasons and very hard for me with my
knowledge to judge which ones had the most effect. But since it is an
interesting question I will throw a guess at it.

I think reading through the history we may owe a lot to WWII. One of the
cruelest thing ever happened to humans may have redirected their global way of
living together. As soon as the competition got redirected a bit towards tools
which required more investment in science many miracles like medical, space
and communication advancement happened.

One of my favorite yet most saddest quotes which may relate to above would be
when Neil deGrasse Tyson said that (not exact word order): "Unfortunately no
discoveries have ever been made for the sake of science all have been driven
from war or other secondary factors.".

So to sum up, we have been going into the loop of advancement & war
destruction for many centuries. I guess in last 100 (or 75) years we did it
less, so the 'secret' is there.

~~~
h1d
While war certainly helped, even tortures and human exeriments advanced
medical fields but I doubt electricity or capitalism came from war.

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babyrainbow
What are these advancement that you see that made you ask this question?

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ForFreedom
If you go back 100 years and fast forward to today, this period is where
humans have advanced most than all of the 5000 years

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joeclark77
I think you're evading babyrainbow's question. Many new technologies have been
developed, true. But we've also spent the last century conducting experiments
in communism and genocide. So on the whole, are we (and I'm including the
whole human race in "we") better off _in all respects_ or only in some?

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eicossa
Look at the Old Testament for descriptions of _too many_ genocides. . If
graded on a curve, the 20th century comes out as a pretty nonviolent genocide-
free century.

~~~
joeclark77
That would be _some_ curve.

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kpil
Literacy and education, starting to be seen as useful for all classes in the
19th century, following a long period of scientific progress among the higher
classes during the 17th and 18th century.

Cheap manufacturing of more or less everything, including high quality food,
newspapers and books.

More people, although there are many countries with a lot of people and no
scientific advance, so you also need the above.

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vmorgulis
It's because of the progress of agriculture in Europe at the end of the middle
ages:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-
field_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system)

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ap46
There's this thing called Accelerated Returns.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change)

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NumberCruncher
Technology and human knowledge advanced. Human nature didn't.

~~~
h1d
Funny maybe in 200 years where there are so much more advancement in tech,
people will stay as dumb as today. Same should've been said from people from
500 years ago. Maybe we are dumber even.

~~~
NumberCruncher
I wouldn't say we are dumb but humanly irrational.

