Status: Wrote while reading, the post gets around to covering the same stuff, largely.
2 and 6 seem like the exceptions.
1.
But if progress is real and important—how do we judge this? How do we justify that improvements to material living standards are good? That technological and industrial progress represents true progress for humanity?
Maybe you don’t. (Simple model that is not meant to be entirely accurate:) Suppose there’s a society where aristocrats live in mansions and everyone else lives below the poverty line. In a way, technological and industrial progress that didn’t affect the lives of non-aristocrats, wouldn’t change things a lot. A world where more people can buy a plane ticket, is a very different one, from a world where only a few can.
A world where everyone can use the internet would be a different one. And for ‘declinism’ we have - ‘the internet was better when there were less people on it’. I disagree with that one.
Broadly, I’d say that things don’t all have to be better, even if most are. Something that’s really good can have some small downsides, even large risks—that require care to handle, so they don’t explode. ‘Nuclear power might be helpful for space missions.’ and all that.
How do we justify that improvements to material living standards are good?
Tautologically correct. It seems reasonable to ask something like ‘how do we figure out what changes are good, and what are bad, so we can move forward to a better world.’ In a lot of areas, that doesn’t seem hard, though.
2.
Thus progress is criticized from the left because it encroaches on the environment
This could use some pushback. Progress on tech that enables people to have these ‘better lives’ and doesn’t produce carbon emissions are appreciated in those circles, are they not?
That’s not to say that a large, vaguely defined group of people can’t be largely ridiculous.
, and from the right because it represents modern “materialism” and “decadence.”
Whatever they care about, I think the price of housing is also relevant to them. Material concerns are still relevant, even if it’s because of their necessity in other matters.
3.
fatalism
the belief that we are unable to comprehend complex systems or to control them; that tinkering with them will inevitably create unintended consequences and is therefore too dangerous to be attempted.
optimism
the belief that we do not need to, and that everything is already perfect.
Jokes aside,
Another is the idea that progress depends on limited natural resources, and that as these resources run out, progress will unavoidably stall.
The other case for ‘do you want to depend on oil forever? Because it won’t last forever.*’
*Relevant to plastic as well.
4
My identification of these three core ideas is partly descriptive and partly prescriptive. I think these concepts will strongly resonate with most of my readers, but I have chosen and formulated them according to my own beliefs, in a way that I think will form an intellectual basis for a progress movement.
I feel like I’ve read this article before from somewhere else.
5
I’ve deliberately left out any explicitly political premises. The progress community includes a variety of political opinions, from libertarians to progressives. Just recently, we’ve had Eli Dourado emphasizing the role of regulations in slowing growth; a the Innovation Frontier Project proposing increased federal spending on R&D in geothermal energy; and Ezra Klein advocating increased economic growth so that there’s more to redistribute to the poor. I would like the concepts of progress, humanism, and agency to serve as common ground from which we can have productive debates. With a shared goal, we can examine what policies and principles actually achieve that goal, and everyone can try to prove their case with history, economics, ethics, and logic.
Oh.
6
I think the three ideas I’ve outlined are necessary and sufficient to motivate such an endeavor. Declinism, romanticism, or fatalism would defeat that motivation. But a belief in progress, humanism, and agency entail it.
In contrast:
fatal fears
a) If we don’t understand what went right in the past, it may go awry, plunging us into darkness (without electricity and civilization and plumbing and the internet, losses more terrible than the missing light).
b) Today’s world is delicate. A stray asteroid could set the world on fire. (We need to expand.)
romanticism
example: The stars beckon.
(The obvious flaws could be, not understanding, and consequently not being able, to bring about a brighter future. Also romanticizing the present → not noticing its flaws → ? → making things worse.)
Declinism
Those rates are going down. We must bring them back up!
(Modus ponens versus Modus tollens, and all that.)
Status: Wrote while reading, the post gets around to covering the same stuff, largely.
2 and 6 seem like the exceptions.
1.
Maybe you don’t. (Simple model that is not meant to be entirely accurate:) Suppose there’s a society where aristocrats live in mansions and everyone else lives below the poverty line. In a way, technological and industrial progress that didn’t affect the lives of non-aristocrats, wouldn’t change things a lot. A world where more people can buy a plane ticket, is a very different one, from a world where only a few can.
A world where everyone can use the internet would be a different one. And for ‘declinism’ we have - ‘the internet was better when there were less people on it’. I disagree with that one.
Broadly, I’d say that things don’t all have to be better, even if most are. Something that’s really good can have some small downsides, even large risks—that require care to handle, so they don’t explode. ‘Nuclear power might be helpful for space missions.’ and all that.
Tautologically correct. It seems reasonable to ask something like ‘how do we figure out what changes are good, and what are bad, so we can move forward to a better world.’ In a lot of areas, that doesn’t seem hard, though.
2.
This could use some pushback. Progress on tech that enables people to have these ‘better lives’ and doesn’t produce carbon emissions are appreciated in those circles, are they not?
That’s not to say that a large, vaguely defined group of people can’t be largely ridiculous.
Whatever they care about, I think the price of housing is also relevant to them. Material concerns are still relevant, even if it’s because of their necessity in other matters.
3.
optimism
the belief that we do not need to, and that everything is already perfect.
Jokes aside,
The other case for ‘do you want to depend on oil forever? Because it won’t last forever.*’
*Relevant to plastic as well.
4
I feel like I’ve read this article before from somewhere else.
5
Oh.
6
In contrast:
fatal fears
a) If we don’t understand what went right in the past, it may go awry, plunging us into darkness (without electricity and civilization and plumbing and the internet, losses more terrible than the missing light).
b) Today’s world is delicate. A stray asteroid could set the world on fire. (We need to expand.)
romanticism
example: The stars beckon.
(The obvious flaws could be, not understanding, and consequently not being able, to bring about a brighter future. Also romanticizing the present → not noticing its flaws → ? → making things worse.)
Declinism
Those rates are going down. We must bring them back up!
(Modus ponens versus Modus tollens, and all that.)