Spectacular, But Boring

Unlike Tim, I did not like Gunpowder Milkshake. Maybe my standards are too high. I should be able to accept that not every movie can completely blow me away. It’s hedonic adaptation: when we’ve seen enough great movies, great movies become the norm, and it takes more and more to get that fix. What might have been revolutionary a few decades ago is now passable at best.

It’s pretty impressive to see human accomplishment flourishing over time. The Olympics™ have been a great showcase of that, I’ve seen a few videos pop up on Reddit comparing gymnastics in the early 20th century to gymnastics now and it’s like looking at neanderthals compared to Boston Dynamics robots. That’s not to say humanity doesn’t have massive, alarming, life-threatening, and deeply frustrating flaws, but when a person decides they want to do something and a few generations of other people focus on it as hard as they can, they’re able to accomplish something that our ancestors would have considered damn near impossible.

It makes me think of Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” The laptop I’m typing this on would have blown me away even fifteen years ago. We’re surrounded by amazing things every day, testaments to human accomplishment and ingenuity. We just get used to it. And when we get bored of the magic, we ask for more.

-KB