Post AQJKA6SE7JAIeFxhiK by DiegoBeghin@masto.bike
 (DIR) More posts by DiegoBeghin@masto.bike
 (DIR) Post #AQJKA32ao9sU3swgqG by Alon@mastodon.social
       2022-12-05T15:00:00Z
       
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       So much of Progress Studies is this weird combo of saying on the one hand that the world is the best it's ever been and will keep getting better, and on the other hand that science, media, and any other institution that tech moguls want to change are in decline from their past greatness. The exact same set of people who know not to be romantic for the past suspend their sanity checks when talking about an imagined midcentury golden age of science, which can only be restored via DARPAization.
       
 (DIR) Post #AQJKA3yNLK6Ax5ypuK by jfred@jawns.club
       2022-12-05T15:28:50Z
       
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       @Alon I think both positions are lacking some nuance. Life expectancy for example was the highest it had ever been pre-pandemic. (It's dropped in some places since 2020 for obvious reasons.)But also, as you well know, the US has a hard time building transit these days in a way we didn't in the past.I think progress isn't uniform across every field and in some cases we have gone backwards.
       
 (DIR) Post #AQJKA52fMr7oGgzmEa by Alon@mastodon.social
       2022-12-05T16:18:36Z
       
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       @jfred Yes, but.1. The transit costs issue is about horizontal rather than historical learning. We're not telling New York to imitate the New York of the 1910s but to imitate the Continental Europe of the 2010s.2. In science specifically, the quality of mid-20c work is often overrated - social science was full of trivial claims, p-hacking, and just plain bullshit (leading to the psychology replication crisis). Math was more solid but is also very good today and getting better.
       
 (DIR) Post #AQJKA5mOcphkYWOIVs by Colinvparker@mathstodon.xyz
       2022-12-05T21:54:25Z
       
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       @Alon @jfred I guess it depends what “mid-20c” means, but there was a brief period where people who grew up using draft animals for transportation flew in jet planes, and I don’t think we’ll match that level of rapid change again.
       
 (DIR) Post #AQJKA6SE7JAIeFxhiK by DiegoBeghin@masto.bike
       2022-12-05T22:39:58Z
       
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       @Colinvparker @Alon @jfred I'd say we've done some amazing progress in vaccines and medicine. For example, the effective treatments for AIDS, and of course the recent mRNA vaccines which still have a lot of promise.