by lmpdev | 2025-07-20 13:00:18+00:00
Your response leans on pedantic literalism and techno-optimism.

Yes, continuous improvement is still happening – but that's exactly the point. We're now largely in the slow, incremental phase of a logistic curve, not the wild exponential boom of mid-century.

Declaring "Wright's law didn't end" doesn't magically revive Moore's Law or deliver another physics revolution. It just means costs fall gradually – a far cry from the paradigm-shifting breakthroughs we once took for granted. Take your example of airplane efficiency: you argue that a 1% improvement today has more total impact than a 10% improvement 50 years ago. Precisely – because we've already squeezed out the big gains. We're fighting over the last few percent now. That's diminishing returns in a nutshell.

Claiming "the LHC found nothing of note" is "just wrong" without elaboration is not a rebuttal – it's empty hand-waving. In truth, the LHC confirmed the Higgs (important, but expected) and thus far hasn't found new physics beyond the Standard Model. In other words, no earth-shaking discovery to mark on the timeline.

Similarly, quibbling that "the periodic table isn't complete because we might add element 119+" is technically true yet profoundly trivial. Synthesizing a superheavy element that decays in microseconds won't herald a new era of materials (you brought up material science, not me); it only underscores that we're tinkering at the margins of what we already know.

The original point – that the big foundational discoveries (DNA, the atom, electromagnetism, etc.) have been made – still stands. And yes, childhood mortality isn't zero and new diseases appear – but pretending the original claim was that "everything is 100% solved" is a straw man. Polio has been virtually eradicated worldwide; childhood mortality is down to a fraction of historic levels. These are monumental victories. Dismissing them because "many other things haven't been defeated" is like shrugging off the moon landing because we haven't colonized Mars. It's disingenuous nitpicking that ignores the broader truth: the low-hanging fruit has been plucked. Progress now tends to be harder-fought and incremental, exactly as a logistic curve (or plain old reality) predicts.

You insist "business has always been this way" – growth-obsessed and optimizing numbers – as if 5,000 years of merchants hustling invalidates any concern about today. This is a false equivalence. For most of history, economic growth was glacial and businesses were limited by local markets and resources. The modern era's exponential growth expectations are a relatively recent phenomenon fueled by industrialisation and cheap energy. Now we're hitting planetary and societal limits, something those ancient businesses never had to grapple with on a global scale. Pointing out that reality has a carrying capacity isn't "denial" – it's maths. We live on a finite planet. Endless exponential GDP growth in a closed system is fantasy. By slyly conceding that some companies "even expect to shrink" or that "plenty of countries have seen little growth for decades", you're actually reinforcing the original argument: perpetual growth is not guaranteed. Yet in the same breath you acknowledge businesses will "still try to grow" even in a no-growth world – which is exactly the problem being highlighted!

An economic paradigm built on eternal growth starts to cannibalise itself when growth dries up. Debt-fueled bubbles, resource depletion, and exploitative practices aren't signs of a healthy status quo – they're symptoms of chasing an impossible target. Teaching MBAs about logistic curves and limits to growth isn't frivolous; it's an attempt to inject reality into boardroom delusions. Dismissing that as irrelevant is just embracing willful ignorance.

And no, global progress isn't all wine and roses just because some developing countries are catching up. Your "from a global perspective there is no slowdown" line ignores that much of global GDP growth in recent decades came from population increase and China/India's rapid development – one-time events that don't prove infinite growth is sustainable. Meanwhile, frontier innovation and productivity in mature economies have slowed, a fact noted by plenty of economists. Simply put, we're coasting on momentum. Pointing that out isn't "glorifying the past," it's cautioning that the frenetic growth phase is leveling off – and our economic mindset needs to catch up.

You object to the statement that the only model left is "aggressively extracting money from customers," by rattling off examples of ongoing innovation. Sure, TSMC pours billions into next-gen chip nodes – but that actually supports the point about diminishing returns (each shrink is exorbitantly expensive and yields smaller gains). Yes, SpaceX built a new rocket infrastructure – an impressive outlier that everyone admires precisely because true game-changing innovation is so rare these days. Citing a local restaurant making "incredible food" or a rocket company revolutionising launch doesn't magically erase the countless counter-examples of businesses optimizing for profit at the expense of customer benefit.

Look around: software shifting to subscription models for basic features, appliances designed to break faster or use proprietary consumables, games riddled with predatory microtransactions, tech ecosystems that lock you in and harvest your data, airlines nickel-and-diming passengers for things that used to be free. These are all optimizations for revenue extraction, not for making your life better. My frustration was about this very shift – that many products and services nowadays feel like they exist to trap users in a maze of monetisation, rather than to deliver clear value.

Your response that "businesses still make lives better" reads like a blanket corporate press release, not an engagement with reality. Nobody said innovation has literally ceased. My claim was that the "large pile of low-hanging fruit" is gone – and you haven't actually refuted that. Incremental improvements and isolated leaps forward (like reusable rockets) happen, but they're increasingly hard-won. Meanwhile, companies flush with MBAs and pressured by investors turn to easier plays: locking in customers, eliminating competition, and squeezing every penny. When you counter with "but look at this new chip/rocket/restaurant," you're cherry-picking exceptions to downplay a broad trend that every consumer can feel.

The weakest part of your rebuttal is how it mischaracterises my original arguments and occasionally even undermines your own. You spend a lot of energy torching straw men. Nowhere did I claim "the world should revolve around me" – that's your invented absurdity. Complaining that products are not optimized for users (but for profit metrics) is not the same as expecting a personal utopia tailored to each individual. It's pointing out a systemic misalignment between what customers want and what companies prioritise.

The irony is that in your rush to refute every point, you often validate them. You argue "R&D has always had limited returns", which doesn't rebut the idea that current R&D is yielding less bang for the buck – it reinforces it. You point out how much harder it is now to get small improvements (exactly the complaint!). You deride the notion of a logistic curve, yet your own examples (small incremental gains, global catch-up growth slowing as it matures, etc.) paint a textbook logistic scenario. Your unwavering faith that "everything's fine, progress is progress" blinds you to the qualitative difference between transformative growth and grinding optimization.

It's like responding to someone worried about crop yields plateauing by saying "nonsense, we're still growing some corn every year." Totally misses the point. Finally, your tone doesn't do you any favors. Dismissing valid concerns as "cynical world-view" or implying anyone who disagrees just doesn't understand that "the world doesn't revolve around them" is more insulting than illuminating. It's possible to appreciate past innovation and be concerned about current trends – that doesn't make one a nostalgia-blinded cynic. Throwing out patronising asides might feel like scoring points, but it only highlights the emptiness of the rebuttal. When substance is lacking, sneering condescension fills the void.

Your response really tries to read like a thoughtful counter-argument and yet comes off as a knee-jerk denial of anything remotely critical of the status quo. Nobody is saying human progress stopped or that businesses overnight turned into pure evil. The argument is that we're entering a new phase: slower growth, harder innovation, and yes, a desperate push by many companies to maintain profits now that the easy growth is gone. You haven't disproven that; in fact, you've indirectly affirmed many aspects of it while arguing past the point.

To address this because it seems to be a repeated thought pattern underlying a lot of your responses lately: labeling every concern "wrong" or "cynical" doesn't make it go away. Sometimes metrics do plateau, sometimes the next big thing doesn't pan out (ask the LHC physicists hoping for new particles), and sometimes companies really do put profits over people in ways that hurt quality and trust. Acknowledging these realities isn't about glorifying the past – it's about not deluding ourselves regarding the present. No, the world doesn't revolve around any of us. But it's not supposed to revolve around corporate KPIs or your personal techno-optimism either. Progress isn't a given, and pretending otherwise is as misguided as assuming we were on an endless exponential.

A little less hubris and a little more humility about these limits would go a long way – especially before dismissing others as simply "wrong" without having the muscle to back it up.