This forum and the movement in general are not really popular outside of some very small elite circles. I hope that changes and you manage to propagate the memes more widely. The normalization of declinism and romanticism^1 in most mainstream communities creates communication barriers and reduces the ability of society to make positive actions.
However, I am against progress maximalism as expressed on this forum. Let me elaborate my view, parts of which have definitely been expressed before:
The ideas of The Roots of Progress would be obviously correct in a world slightly different than ours.
I see “progress” as mining knowledge, enabling technology. There is no creation; every idea is waiting to get discovered, validated and applied. If something would improve our lives, it is indeed a moral imperative to “get it out of the ground”.
Almost all positive things that happened to humanity so far stem from mining technological progress (fire, agriculture, domestication of horses, fossil fuels, electricity, extermination of pathogens, contraception, computers, Internet), and the rest being some progress in social and political technology (religion, morals, basic freedoms, democracy, rule of law), with all of it being enabled by communication technology (language, writing, books, Internet platforms). We will make progress on all of the above in the future.
Of course, there is often negative “environmental impact”, coming from disruption or negative externalities . But in the end we always solve this by creating better social or scientific technologies, or the problems just disappear as people adapt.
Progress happens by mining for knowledge and applying that in the world. Some great people create new mines, others improve processes of existing mines. We need multiple mines doing their things, bringing about different ways to do stuff. Understanding the mechanisms behind mine creation and preservation will obviously give returns far exceeding the invested effort, if we leverage this knowledge to improve mining.
Unfortunately we find ourselves in a different world. A few years back we discovered mithril under a single mountain, which looks like it will make all but a tiny number of other ores obsolete in less than half of a human lifetime. Moreover, it is inherently easier to extract than what we are used to in other mines. The obvious goal missing from the progress framework is not to improve processes in all mines everywhere, it’s not even to optimize the mithril mining process. It is to make sure there are no demons of the ancient world^2 waiting inside.
The progress movement is nevertheless a positive thing, for various reasons:
if we close the mine for good, the spirit of progress must live on; almost no other mines can pose dangers that outweigh the benefits;
if for some reason the mithril vein is not as deep as it looks (and this is quite possible, but definitely not the modal outcome), we are soon again in the world where progress studies is obviously correct;
progress in other mines can make us better equipped for dealing with the one that matters;
(very ambitious) understanding the mechanisms of progress itself, if those generalize enough, might make us able to control the progress in the mithril mine.
But we must not forget that the following two bitter statements look more and more true each day:
Most existing problems look like they will be solved by default using just the outputs of the mithril mine! The actionable insights of progress studies will often be in areas which take several decades to give results.
Human agency is not infinite. We are not that smart. If we blindly rush into the unknown, it is possible we dig too deep. More importantly, given the mithril mine is going so well by default, focusing on minimizing the probability of things going wrong looks better than thinking about progress in areas which will get steamrolled by the mithril revolution.
^1: Romanticism of the past, or of nature, the status quo, or of anything that only looks nice but falls apart when faced with the test of “does moving in that direction really make our lives better?” ^2: It also makes sense to fight smaller negative externalities, because when the technology is so powerful, the sheer speed of deployment might overwhelm defensive mechanisms against irresponsible and bad-faith use, and be too fast for people to adapt while retaining sanity.
This forum and the movement in general are not really popular outside of some very small elite circles. I hope that changes and you manage to propagate the memes more widely. The normalization of declinism and romanticism^1 in most mainstream communities creates communication barriers and reduces the ability of society to make positive actions.
However, I am against progress maximalism as expressed on this forum. Let me elaborate my view, parts of which have definitely been expressed before:
The ideas of The Roots of Progress would be obviously correct in a world slightly different than ours.
I see “progress” as mining knowledge, enabling technology. There is no creation; every idea is waiting to get discovered, validated and applied. If something would improve our lives, it is indeed a moral imperative to “get it out of the ground”.
Almost all positive things that happened to humanity so far stem from mining technological progress (fire, agriculture, domestication of horses, fossil fuels, electricity, extermination of pathogens, contraception, computers, Internet), and the rest being some progress in social and political technology (religion, morals, basic freedoms, democracy, rule of law), with all of it being enabled by communication technology (language, writing, books, Internet platforms). We will make progress on all of the above in the future.
Of course, there is often negative “environmental impact”, coming from disruption or negative externalities . But in the end we always solve this by creating better social or scientific technologies, or the problems just disappear as people adapt.
Progress happens by mining for knowledge and applying that in the world. Some great people create new mines, others improve processes of existing mines. We need multiple mines doing their things, bringing about different ways to do stuff. Understanding the mechanisms behind mine creation and preservation will obviously give returns far exceeding the invested effort, if we leverage this knowledge to improve mining.
Unfortunately we find ourselves in a different world. A few years back we discovered mithril under a single mountain, which looks like it will make all but a tiny number of other ores obsolete in less than half of a human lifetime. Moreover, it is inherently easier to extract than what we are used to in other mines.
The obvious goal missing from the progress framework is not to improve processes in all mines everywhere, it’s not even to optimize the mithril mining process. It is to make sure there are no demons of the ancient world^2 waiting inside.
The progress movement is nevertheless a positive thing, for various reasons:
if we close the mine for good, the spirit of progress must live on; almost no other mines can pose dangers that outweigh the benefits;
if for some reason the mithril vein is not as deep as it looks (and this is quite possible, but definitely not the modal outcome), we are soon again in the world where progress studies is obviously correct;
progress in other mines can make us better equipped for dealing with the one that matters;
(very ambitious) understanding the mechanisms of progress itself, if those generalize enough, might make us able to control the progress in the mithril mine.
But we must not forget that the following two bitter statements look more and more true each day:
Most existing problems look like they will be solved by default using just the outputs of the mithril mine! The actionable insights of progress studies will often be in areas which take several decades to give results.
Human agency is not infinite. We are not that smart. If we blindly rush into the unknown, it is possible we dig too deep. More importantly, given the mithril mine is going so well by default, focusing on minimizing the probability of things going wrong looks better than thinking about progress in areas which will get steamrolled by the mithril revolution.
^1: Romanticism of the past, or of nature, the status quo, or of anything that only looks nice but falls apart when faced with the test of “does moving in that direction really make our lives better?”
^2: It also makes sense to fight smaller negative externalities, because when the technology is so powerful, the sheer speed of deployment might overwhelm defensive mechanisms against irresponsible and bad-faith use, and be too fast for people to adapt while retaining sanity.
You might want to consider posting this as a top-level post as well.