Comment on That Magical Click

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 06:24:14 GMT

Rather than being a sane view, this is a logical fallacy. I don't know of a specific name to give it, but survivorship bias and the anthropic principle are both relevant.

The fallacy is this: for anything a person tries to do, every relevant technology will be inadequate up to the one that succeeds. Inherently, the first success at something will end the need to make new steps towards it, so we will never see a new advance where past advances have been sufficient for an end.

The weak anthropic principle says that we only observe our universe when it is such that it will permit observers. Similarly, we can assume that if new developments are being made towards an aim, they are being made because past steps were inadequate. We cannot view new advances as having their chances of success biased by past failures since they come into existence only in the case that past attempts have indeed failed.

(I am aware that technologies are improved on even after they achieve their aim, but in these cases new objectives like "faster" or "cheaper" are still unsatisfied, and drive the progress.)

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