> economists think that we need central bank policies to control the whole thing (...) but it just doesn't work in the long run.
Roughly speaking, a central authority might work in certain scenarios, for a short time, to prevent situations where market participants might otherwise panic.
In the long run, the problem is the same authority does not have to all "local", decision-making information available to the individual market participants, and that might prevent the economy from reaching an optimal configuration.
Gravity is not a force. The surface of the Earth is moving up to the object in free-fall at an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. The force pushing the surface, and the pressurized atmospheric shell, upward is a result of the processes occurring within the Earth (likely, in particular, those within the the core).
> "The lack of experience played right into the government’s hand. Instead of portraying a leader in control of his domain and confident in his case and his company’s legal and ethical righteousness, the courtroom videos showed a side of Gates that had never been on public display before. He was petulant, petty, flustered, and dour. He was ineffectual. He was, in a word, beaten."
The article may come off a little bit too harsh on Gates, but it is essentially right in that the US Gov strategy may have been to score a PR win on Gates and Microsoft. In that way, Gates came across as more on the defence than he perhaps needed to be in the situation. The deposition ended up being a low point from the public's perspective, though any damage has mostly been undone in the 2+ decades since.
Looking at it in terms of one of the "golden ages" of recording music - back in the 1960s, think the Beatles - this would mean only returning to what has already proven possible before. Some artists in those previous eras were able to deliver remarkable music as much as twice a year over consecutive years.
Perhaps it was a less competitive industry at the time, but certainly less efficient (and relatively more expensive) production tools were available compared to today.
This is an age-old domain of thought known as philosophy of science [0]. Although, by prepending your post as "meta", perhaps you are already aware of it.
I should add: As a human being, it is probably impossible to separate the scientist from the philosophy in which they explore, proceed with, and promote their work. In some cases, it might not be something they are even aware of. Instead, the scientific system (as a sort of world institution) should itself be designed to always seek out and protect truth, regardless of prevailing contemporary knowledge.
The role of this "era" may be in reformulating quantum physics and, separately, general relativity in new ways that make the ideas more accessible to more people, and earlier in their lives. The goal could be to make of modern physics... the new classical physics. That is, we start to let go the crutches we still teach because it is thought that day-to-day life is more readily explained by Newtonian physics. We are now in era where most advances (e.g. smartphones among them) could not exist in their present form without modern physics.
Once more people accept the concepts of modern physics as a way of life (perhaps intuitively?), we will be in fertile territory for any potential new revolution in physics.
Somewhat related to some of the questions that have been raised here:
- for the set of matrices that possess them ("transformation matrices that only perform stretch/contract"), eigenvectors (with their associated eigenvalues) play a role quite analogous to the role primes play in the integer set. They provide a unique, identifying "spectrum" for said matrix. This is made explicit by eigendecomposition (spectral decomposition).
- with extension via singular value decomposition (SVD method) to any square matrix (e.g. "transformation matrices that might also shear, rotate"), certain operations such as exponentiation of the square matrix can performed very quickly once eigenvectors/eigenvalues have been obtained via the SVD method.
Of course, keeping in mind that Cook-era Apple is operating on a more massive scale (product shipped, wider distribution, more product lines).