I think I buy some of this—some ‘moral progress’ is increasing wealth allowing us to afford more luxuries.
But I think I’m mostly interested in a different sort of progress—the kind where someone’s idea of what ‘the good’ is changes.
But these are largely the same. We are now rich enough to eschew slavery, so we can afford the “luxury” of banning it (and calling it utter evil). It’s plausible that we’ll soon be rich enough that eschewing animal meat will no longer be onerous, et cetera.
There’s a concept that sometimes gets used of ‘technological completion’—that is, you don’t know every logical fact, but you have come across all of the relevant designs.
Relevant to what? As long as our preference/motivation systems are subject to change (both through evolution and eventually through deliberate modification), I don’t see why we’ll ever run out of novel stuff to want. It’s a different story if we’ll get a singleton that decides to implement some sort of lock-in, in which case the talk about completion and end-points makes sense to me, but hopefully that could be avoided.
But these are largely the same. We are now rich enough to eschew slavery, so we can afford the “luxury” of banning it (and calling it utter evil). It’s plausible that we’ll soon be rich enough that eschewing animal meat will no longer be onerous, et cetera.
Relevant to what? As long as our preference/motivation systems are subject to change (both through evolution and eventually through deliberate modification), I don’t see why we’ll ever run out of novel stuff to want. It’s a different story if we’ll get a singleton that decides to implement some sort of lock-in, in which case the talk about completion and end-points makes sense to me, but hopefully that could be avoided.