I think the problem here is that you are trying to argue for a side: the progressives are trying to “to let things develop naturally,” and so are behaving in a better way than the conservatives who are trying to “destroy” things.
The truth is this: technology does create new options, as well as taking away some options for some [e.g. many people no longer have a realistic option to “never use a computer”]. This means that technological change drives moral and cultural change.
And yes there tend to be two attitudes both to the technologies and to the behaviors that they allow or prevent. But it is just false that one of those attitudes is right and the other wrong. Rather, in some cases those behaviors are beneficial, and in others they are not. Very often, it will not be clear at first whether the results of the new behavior will be good overall, and only later people figure out that they need still another technology, or they still need to fix remaining problems, or whatever.
I think the problem here is that you are trying to argue for a side: the progressives are trying to “to let things develop naturally,” and so are behaving in a better way than the conservatives who are trying to “destroy” things.
Not exactly. I am giving as a counterexample a class of situations where conservatives try to shape society while progressives are trying to let “nature take it’s course”.
I also didn’t put any value judgement in, at least not intentionally. I described it as “destroying weeds”, which is not a negitive thing. I would say that both sides are trying to “destroy weeds” and shape society they just have a different idea what those weeds are.
But it is just false that one of those attitudes is right and the other wrong.
I did not say there was.
I do think that in the majority of cases new technology overall makes our lives better, and it’s usually better to embrace the new possibilities first and then error-correct later to eliminate uses where it turns out the new technology was not as helpful as it appeared; usually the only way to find that out is to try it, and attempts to restrict it beforehand usually targets the wrong problems anyway. But that’s an object-level question that depends on the technology in question, not a universal truth.
I think the problem here is that you are trying to argue for a side: the progressives are trying to “to let things develop naturally,” and so are behaving in a better way than the conservatives who are trying to “destroy” things.
The truth is this: technology does create new options, as well as taking away some options for some [e.g. many people no longer have a realistic option to “never use a computer”]. This means that technological change drives moral and cultural change.
And yes there tend to be two attitudes both to the technologies and to the behaviors that they allow or prevent. But it is just false that one of those attitudes is right and the other wrong. Rather, in some cases those behaviors are beneficial, and in others they are not. Very often, it will not be clear at first whether the results of the new behavior will be good overall, and only later people figure out that they need still another technology, or they still need to fix remaining problems, or whatever.
Not exactly. I am giving as a counterexample a class of situations where conservatives try to shape society while progressives are trying to let “nature take it’s course”.
I also didn’t put any value judgement in, at least not intentionally. I described it as “destroying weeds”, which is not a negitive thing. I would say that both sides are trying to “destroy weeds” and shape society they just have a different idea what those weeds are.
I did not say there was.
I do think that in the majority of cases new technology overall makes our lives better, and it’s usually better to embrace the new possibilities first and then error-correct later to eliminate uses where it turns out the new technology was not as helpful as it appeared; usually the only way to find that out is to try it, and attempts to restrict it beforehand usually targets the wrong problems anyway. But that’s an object-level question that depends on the technology in question, not a universal truth.