Whenever I study math or physics, I like how people from centuries back could think of profound ideas. This really strikes me when I realize that there wasn’t proper documentation of much of the past work in their field of study. Even if there was any, it wasn’t accessible to all. Collaborating was a novel thing back then. You don’t know which great mathematician had already proved a conjecture somewhere during the Bubonic plague, just waiting for his death to arrive and for the proof to get lost amidst all that was happening.
There was no proper notation for an entity, no proper definitions to work upon, and limited resources to develop something meaningful. One narrative that a string theory student shared with me was that he believes people back then discovered so many things because most of them were as intelligent as we are, and the problems they worked on were very fundamental. His stance was very firm that the work we are doing is much harder than what people 600-700 years ago did, and it is also so complicated that we are not able to acknowledge most of the breakthroughs that take place, and hence feel that the progress is not very foundational or rapid.
Let us conclude by working on an example. Consider Artificial Intelligence, how much of a technological advancement it is, and how much it will impact humanity at large. Some people think that it is equivalent to “discovering the wheel,” whereas there are equally contrasting opinions that say this is all a “bubble” soon to burst. I think of it as another once-in-a-century technological invention but not a reinvention of the wheel. I am definitely sure that AI will have a huge impact on how human civilization develops in the coming centuries, but is that all? Probably not. Think about when calculators were developed; they were one of the most fascinating pieces of technology someone could get their hands on, and people also started thinking it was the end of mathematics or computation as a career. The same was true for computers; people thought they would take over jobs. But what happened? They created significantly more jobs than they replaced. I also have such an opinion about Artificial Intelligence. It is definitely not something to think of as a “bubble,” but rather a tool to learn and use in your workflow as efficiently as possible.
