Outside of physics, the evidence for progress is far weaker.
The economic growth of the last few decades suggests that some people, somewhere, are gradually getting more things right more often. Those genomes aren’t sequencing themselves. Or have I misunderstood you?
Specific technologies arise and fall. Capital accumulates and depreciates. Governments make up numbers. Physics touches everything, especially through solid state and semiconductor physics in recent years. Finally, as the post emphasized, ideas are a sort of capital, and accumulate over time, even if new ideas are no better than old ones, so long as the old ones aren’t thrown out.
The economic growth of the last few decades suggests that some people, somewhere, are gradually getting more things right more often. Those genomes aren’t sequencing themselves. Or have I misunderstood you?
Specific technologies arise and fall. Capital accumulates and depreciates. Governments make up numbers. Physics touches everything, especially through solid state and semiconductor physics in recent years. Finally, as the post emphasized, ideas are a sort of capital, and accumulate over time, even if new ideas are no better than old ones, so long as the old ones aren’t thrown out.