We are witnessing a new scientific 'Golden Age'

Well obviously, teenagers (or even anyone of any age, but usually teenagers) still being supported by their parents, or the government, or living on the streets, CANNOT VIABLY SUPPORT any offspring at that moment, and SHOULDN'T BE HAVING KIDS. If they do, they should be fixed really, but the less severe suggestion would be to make them either abort or give it up for adoption.

 

Gives us the ability to communicate much more effectively. Just a minor thing. My wife and I share shopping, meaning sometimes I do it, sometimes she does. We have apps on our iphone that allow us to share a grocery list. I can add to it, as can she. It is pretty much always with us. Ends up saving a lot of extra trips to the store, as we can instantly communicate this with each other. We can do the same thing with our calenders, etc.

In addition, if nothing else, the iphone (and other smartphones) are keeping our economy going. Entertainment is productive. It hires a lot of people, etc. Using a reductive view, like you seem to have, our economy would be almost nothing.

 

The point is that we are still nowhere near the point where Malthus' views are applicable. When I was a teen, the talk was about that when our world got to 5 billion, we would all be starving, etc. We are over 8 billion now, and the proportion of starving people is lower than it was at 4 billion. Malthus is just not applicable yet.

 

Computers aren't taking away from my face to face conversations, and don't for most of us. They are taking away from my TV time, but that's no loss.

We have numerous energy sources that can replace fossil fuels. The problem is that they are too expensive or have other drawbacks.

 

What's the point in having a big economy if it is filled with a bunch of useless junk?

 

Which means we haven't had a golden age in energy sources yet, which I think is the most important area in science.

 

And these will, eventually, provide benefits to society. Confirmation of entanglement, for example, has profound implications for computing, communication, potentially transportation or material science...

Not even close. Computing has opened the doors wide for medical and biotech development. It's literally not even remotely equivalent. You're trying to compare something like the polio vaccine to, say, being able to regenerate a patient's own skin after third degree burns in less than a week.

A few big ones yes. What we have today are a massive number of smaller advances, interspersed between a regular supply of 'revolutionary' studies. We live in a scientific golden age because scientific progress doesn't rest on the shoulders of a few heroic men, it rests on the continual achievements and hard work of literally millions of people.

And it has been continually refined--is being continually refined today. It wasn't discovered as one big block of understanding back in the 1900s, quantum theory has taken literally its entire existence to come to the modern understanding--which is itself not even remotely complete.

That's your own personal opinion, I guess. It doesn't seem like a very good choice.

Yet until recently you could have provided no examples of alternative metabolic systems to photosynthesis or cellular respiration.

There are relatively few chemically viable options for complex life. It's not an infinite variety simply because many elements don't have the chemical versatility required.

Yeah, now we're making similar developments today, like the recent flood of exoplanets. You can suggest they were "theorized" in the 20th century, but the observations themselves were often unexpected and far from predictions.

I would also add that you're basically comparing the last 11 years to the previous 100 years. The fact that you're even attempting to do this indicates just how sharply scientific progress has sped up in the 21st century. That it's a reasonable proposition to try to compare them is itself testament to the rapid progress being made today. I am quite sure that you could find no 11 year period of the 20th century with a comparable density of scientific achievements as the period of 2001-2012.

You are pulling out every development made in the entire 20th century in your attempt to prove that the last eleven years were inadequate. You don't see how that dminishes your own argument? That it took 100 years of scientific study to make an adequate comparison to the last eleven? Hell, even if you limit yourself to the "first half of the 20th century", that's still weakening your argument.

 

We are never going to get to that utopian point. There is always a downside to any form of usable energy. If we had a source of cheap limitless energy, we still would have to be careful using it--why? Well, the endpoint of all energy is heat.

 

If people use it, it's not useless. My DVD player, for instant, isn't useless. It provides me with enjoyment. There is really no such thing as useless if somebody wants it. Even pet rocks weren't useless.

 

Yes, we are seeing some great advances in science but no need for seatbelts. While we might assume knowledge increased through internet accessibility would dramatically increase research and breakthrough capabilities, science, at least in the US, has been stymied by changes invoking business models. Research and creativity do not perform well under such an environment, especially when profits are not realized or understood. Such models also promote bias agendas where funding pressures skew data interpretation.

Science acceleration has slowed dramatically after the demise of the Apollo program. Kids no longer find science appealing, preferring studies involving law or business. In fact, the US no longer produces enough scientist and engineers to fill needs with the void being filled at universities and our National Laboratories with incentives to bring in scientist from other nations.

While I understand what you are saying, I would have to disagree that we are in any "golden age" of science.

 

Like nothing ever witnessed before, to be perfectly honest.

No it hasn't. Not even slightly.

So what? It's still science, even if it's not Americans doing the research.

 

This may interest you.

http://www.politicalforum.com/curre...istent-organic-pollutants.html#post1060832799

 

A guage of a society's technology is their ability to measure.

Measure time, measure distances.

Advancment is exponential by nature because we apply what we learn today to learning more tomorrow.

For instance, we learn something about refraction and lens grinding and build a telescope or microscope and probe even further.

Every 18 months computing power doubles, just the thought of that alone makes my head spin.

Nowadays we have more people working in more and more diverse fields.

Why, at this rate we should have the transporter, anti-gravity and the force field sometime next month...

Thx

 

Don’t delude yourself, science is declining and significantly more then slightly. Science used to be about discovery but is now constrained by bureaucracies that have little concern about increased knowledge if money and benefit returns are not perceived. Much of what is now being witnessed was paved by scientist of yesterday where they worked in well-funded universities, national laboratories and large companies like IBM, Bell and GE procuring Nobel-Prize winning research. Many of these scientists would spend virtually all available time … weekends, evenings and holidays contemplating and pursuing scientific questions but today’s scientist are snarled by declining funds and limited time for research. More and more time is sacrificed with chasing money from proposals grants or industry partnerships.

Perhaps we will live to see another “Golden Age’ but we are far from one today.

True and while the US no longer produces enough scientist and engineers, the void is being filled but it does bring a question of ethics in stealing the best and brightest from other nations.

 

That's no more true today than it was forty years ago. There's literally no significant evidence suggesting that there is any kind of slowdown--in fact, the evidence seems to imply the opposite conclusion.

Funding isn't declining, and there's far more scientists available to do the work--and far greater time-saving and intelligence-enhancing resources, like mature data processing systems. Certainly the low hanging fruit is gone, but apparently having ten times the number of hands and poles that are a thousand times more effective at grabbing fruit can compensate.

Hence the need and availability of more people, and the creation of ancillary industries, like grant proposal writing and such.

I can't see how anyone could possibly describe the current situation as a scientific golden age. More research is being conducted than ever before, and reaching conclusions faster than ever before, for lower prices than ever before.

How is that unethical? Cultural advantages are advantages too.

 

Silicon instead of glass chips for quantum computers...

Silicon chip enables mass-manufacture of quantum technologies
September 4, 2012 — Scientists from the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics have developed a silicon chip that will pave the way to the mass-manufacture of miniature quantum chips. The announcement was made at the launch of the 2012 British Science Festival

 

Oldjar07-

While I believe the rate of progress to at least be the same (if not accelerated), I think the focus of science and technology has shifted to different fields, such as biochemistry, genetics, quantum physics/mechanics, and data manipulation. Either way, though, it is amazing and inspiring!

 

I'm currently struggling with my own former perceptions of the universe and my current dissonance with the multiverse theory which is akin to nothing more than atheistic faith. In short you know very little.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/warp-drive-may-more-feasible-thought-scientists-161301109.html

Crazy times indeed.

 

Yes, it has shifted to things that don't matter. If progress in science and technology has accelerated, why have energy prices and medical costs gone up? Why does the cost of materials keep going up?

 

This scares the crap out of me, and why I only use the computer at work from a shared work station.

I truly doubt we will see quantum computers in the hands of citizens anytime soon.

 

The biggest real threat is that we become too reliant on it and it is not something that is particularly robust, at least at this point in time.

 

The government hands out free money to people who didn't earn it. That is what causes prices to rise. Economics is a different world from the physical sciences.

 

Economics has everything to do with the physical sciences. And handing out money to people does not cause prices to rise. Energy prices are increasing because it is getting harder to find energy sources without other consequences. We are taking a step back technologically with solar and wind, which may increase prices further. Renewables are energy, labor, and capital intensive which means costs will be higher compared to 4th generation nuclear technology. Medical costs have gone up for a few reasons. One is that doctors are paid too much, and people get unnecessary treatments. When we should just let people die, we put them on a million dollar medical plan that keeps them alive for a few more months. Medical technology has improved in the sense that we can treat problems that couldn't be treated before, but a lot of those treatments are more expensive than the simpler ones. Medical technology hasn't improved unless we can treat more people or cases for a lower cost. This hasn't happened for the last 20+ years so medical technology isn't really improving. The same thing has happened with materials and energy over the last 20+ years. Even though power plants are getting more efficient in terms of energy, the increased cost of installing parts has outweighed the energy efficiency gain. Even though we have carbon fiber and nanotubes now, etc., they cost so much that they can only be used in very high end applications.