It’s an age of marvels
Imagining how Benjamin Franklin would react to today’s world, commenters trade examples of “everyday miracles” ranging from GPS, smartphones and MRI machines to industrial agriculture and the modern supermarket. Alongside awe at abundance, miniaturization and global logistics, many raise counterpoints about environmental costs, fragile supply chains, overmedication, inequality and our apparent inability to use these capabilities wisely. The thread ultimately contrasts unprecedented material and technological progress with political polarization, risk of catastrophe, and a pervasive sense that society is failing to fully appreciate or steward its own marvels.
GPS and technological marvels
- Commenters highlight GPS as especially mind‑bending: precise positioning from weak satellite signals, ionospheric correction, relativity, and receivers that don’t need accurate clocks by using extra satellites and Kalman filters.
- Related marvels: cheap survey‑grade RTK GPS; tiny Wi‑Fi microcontrollers; “computers in everything” (SIMs, payment cards, wall switches).
- Some note that for people who’ve lived through decades of exponential improvement, future devices feel like extrapolation rather than true shock. For 1940s–50s engineers, today’s miniaturization would likely feel otherworldly.
Everyday abundance and supermarkets
- Many argue a modern US supermarket would astonish most people before ~1900 and even late‑Soviet or Cuban visitors: year‑round fruit, global teas and spices, huge chocolate and snack aisles, bulk medicine, and soft toilet paper.
- Others push back that variety is uneven: deli and cheese counters can be generic, produce quality can be poor or flavorless, and US markets may offer less diversity than specialty shops or some foreign markets.
Costs, externalities, and inequality
- Debate over the environmental and geopolitical costs of year‑round imports (e.g., blueberries) vs efficiency of bulk shipping and possible modest impact under a carbon tax.
- Some note colonial exploitation and foreign interventions as part of how rich countries achieved current abundance.
- Others stress supply‑chain robustness: even COVID and Suez disruptions mostly raised prices but didn’t empty shelves.
- Several point out that despite abundance, homelessness and hunger persist; misaligned incentives (housing as investment, liability fears over food donation) are cited.
Attitudes toward progress and politics
- Thread oscillates between wonder at “miracles per square foot” and concern about overmedication, junk food, environmental damage, and political extremism.
- Some argue calls for violent revolution in wealthy democracies ignore how extraordinarily good current living standards are; others respond that current systems still produce severe injustices.
- Multiple comments note hedonic adaptation: people quickly normalize miracles (LLMs, smartphones, spaceflight) and focus on shortcomings.
Space, science, and “missed futures”
- Several lament that crewed Moon missions stopped; see decades of lost opportunity for deeper space industrialization and discovery.
- Others defend the pause as rational given cost and limited short‑term utility.
- On neuroscience, commenters clarify that having connectomes (C. elegans, Drosophila) is a huge feat but far from “understanding” the brain; they’re necessary but insufficient maps.
Explaining the present to the past
- Many enjoy thought experiments about showing modern tech, payments, or sports (e‑sports) to historical figures, often concluding that medicine, sanitation, and food security might impress at least as much as rockets or the internet.