Progress

[Enki]

Juggernaut Nihilism and I have had many conversations about Progress. I felt like it might be a good thing to start a thread regarding Progress and what it means. I feel like every discussion of Progress is so dogmatic that it's difficult to get beyond people trotting out memorized talking points toward an earnest discussion of what Progress means.

I contend that we have passed a point of no return as it regards progress. I contend that we will never see another Dark Age, at least not in the way that we mean when we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire. Technological progress will continue until we destroy ourselves or hit some heretofore unseen material barrier, and end of science if you will. An omega point where we know everything there is to know about how matter works and as such the only thing left is to explore the universe and catalog forms throughout it. So it's either that, or a solar flare wiping out all of our computers a few generations after we have abandoned hard copies and we lose the vast majority of human knowledge.

I see no evidence that progress has stopped or slowed down. New discoveries are being made all the time in many realms from biotech to data science. The seeds of the next technological leap forward are already apparent for those that are aficionados of cutting edge technology.

Here is an excerpt from "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" by Carlota Perez

That is in fact the technological and business equivalent of what Kuhn defined as 'normal science'. Once the valid trajectories for new products and processes as well as for their improvement are known, successive and successful innovations will follow. they will be compatible among themselves, they will interact smoothly, they will find the required supplies, qualified personnel and market channels and will encounter increasing social acceptance based on leanring with the previous products.

On the other hand, these favorable conditions become a powerful exclusion mechanism for all possible innovations that are incompatible or not well geared to the existing framework. Attempts to introduce such innovations could be rejected by investors or customers or, as often turns out to be the case, could be successfully adapted in a minor way to the prevailing paradigm. For the moment, they grow restricted to whatever uses fit well in the existing fabric of the economy before their most important uses are even surmised. Railways were first developed to help get coal out of the mines; their real significance as the main means of transport of people and goods was difficult to even imagine in a world of canals, turnpikes and horses. b Oil refining and the internal combustion engine developed within the steam-engine world of the third revolution, being used mainly for luxury automobiles. Semiconductors, in the form of transistors, served to stretch the market for radios and other basic appliances of the mass-production paradigm by making them portable, before anyone could possibly conceive of a micro-computer.

The most conspicuous exception to the exclusion mechanism is war-related expenditure. The application of political and military criteria, rather than economic logic, opens avenues of research, technology and production that could lead far from the reigning techno-economic paradigm, usually involving extravagant costs that could not be normally recovered in the market. When the war takes place in the maturity phase of the paradigm, these voluntarisitc excursions into new technological territory could become a seedbed for the next technological revolution. The 1960s Space and Arms Race is, of course, the most notorious example of such expenditures.

Perez basically defines revolutions by their disruptive and violent tendencies. As opposed to a linear notion of progress where innovation builds harmoniously off of the prior innovations. Rather a spate of new inventions come along that obsolesce the old paradigm leading to a period of economic hardship as the obsolete institutions, skills
and regulatory regime has to be completely retooled.

Currently we are about halfway into a long wave cycle or Kondratiev wave, these last 45-60 years. I would place the beginning of the current cycle in about 1977 with the birth of the personal computer. So we are in the beginning of the second half. In the first half the innovations that occur are basically just augmenting the paradigm that preceded it. As such computers started off as glorified typewriters and slowly supplanted other functions that they did better than other methods such as graphic design. A web page was essentially little more than an online magazine. Web 2.0 it could be said, marked the second part of this wave, when the webpage stopped being a digitized version of a print publication and we started getting into the world of the web application. In this second half data science is coming into maturity and big data is advancing the knowledge of the entire world at a fantastic clip. My company built a database for the energy industry that compares EPA data to financial data and maintenance data for every power plant in the country. My Father-in-Law and his cohorts in the Texas Audubon Society have started in the last five years to collect the ONLY data ever collected regarding bird migrations. In 2012 the Obama administration demonstrated that superior voter intelligence capabilities are essential in political campaigns sparking an arms race in that market. Software simulations and massive data systems are allowing for research that was never before possible in the areas of climate science, genomics, astronomy, you name it. Cities all across the first world are engaging in open data initiatives to release demographic and other municipal data to allow developers in their society to use that data to help solve municipal problems.

Progress means that things that were not possible at all before are now possible. The railroads meant that farmers in the hinterlands could participate in commerce in the major cities and cell phones allow Amazonian farmers to cut about two to four weeks from their business cycle when bringing commodities to market in Manaus Brazil.

Conversely there are some less savory ideas that are made possible by advances, such as nuclear weapons, killer drones, global terrorism, and NSA spying. Progress is most certainly not omnibenevolent.

[monster_gardener]

Juggernaut Nihilism and I have had many conversations about Progress. I felt like it might be a good thing to start a thread regarding Progress and what it means. I feel like every discussion of Progress is so dogmatic that it's difficult to get beyond people trotting out memorized talking points toward an earnest discussion of what Progress means.

I contend that we have passed a point of no return as it regards progress. I contend that we will never see another Dark Age, at least not in the way that we mean when we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire. Technological progress will continue until we destroy ourselves or hit some heretofore unseen material barrier, and end of science if you will. An omega point where we know everything there is to know about how matter works and as such the only thing left is to explore the universe and catalog forms throughout it. So it's either that, or a solar flare wiping out all of our computers a few generations after we have abandoned hard copies and we lose the vast majority of human knowledge.

I see no evidence that progress has stopped or slowed down. New discoveries are being made all the time in many realms from biotech to data science. The seeds of the next technological leap forward are already apparent for those that are aficionados of cutting edge technology.

Here is an excerpt from "Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital" by Carlota Perez

That is in fact the technological and business equivalent of what Kuhn defined as 'normal science'. Once the valid trajectories for new products and processes as well as for their improvement are known, successive and successful innovations will follow. they will be compatible among themselves, they will interact smoothly, they will find the required supplies, qualified personnel and market channels and will encounter increasing social acceptance based on leanring with the previous products.

On the other hand, these favorable conditions become a powerful exclusion mechanism for all possible innovations that are incompatible or not well geared to the existing framework. Attempts to introduce such innovations could be rejected by investors or customers or, as often turns out to be the case, could be successfully adapted in a minor way to the prevailing paradigm. For the moment, they grow restricted to whatever uses fit well in the existing fabric of the economy before their most important uses are even surmised. Railways were first developed to help get coal out of the mines; their real significance as the main means of transport of people and goods was difficult to even imagine in a world of canals, turnpikes and horses. b Oil refining and the internal combustion engine developed within the steam-engine world of the third revolution, being used mainly for luxury automobiles. Semiconductors, in the form of transistors, served to stretch the market for radios and other basic appliances of the mass-production paradigm by making them portable, before anyone could possibly conceive of a micro-computer.

The most conspicuous exception to the exclusion mechanism is war-related expenditure. The application of political and military criteria, rather than economic logic, opens avenues of research, technology and production that could lead far from the reigning techno-economic paradigm, usually involving extravagant costs that could not be normally recovered in the market. When the war takes place in the maturity phase of the paradigm, these voluntarisitc excursions into new technological territory could become a seedbed for the next technological revolution. The 1960s Space and Arms Race is, of course, the most notorious example of such expenditures.

Perez basically defines revolutions by their disruptive and violent tendencies. As opposed to a linear notion of progress where innovation builds harmoniously off of the prior innovations. Rather a spate of new inventions come along that obsolesce the old paradigm leading to a period of economic hardship as the obsolete institutions, skills
and regulatory regime has to be completely retooled.

Currently we are about halfway into a long wave cycle or Kondratiev wave, these last 45-60 years. I would place the beginning of the current cycle in about 1977 with the birth of the personal computer. So we are in the beginning of the second half. In the first half the innovations that occur are basically just augmenting the paradigm that preceded it. As such computers started off as glorified typewriters and slowly supplanted other functions that they did better than other methods such as graphic design. A web page was essentially little more than an online magazine. Web 2.0 it could be said, marked the second part of this wave, when the webpage stopped being a digitized version of a print publication and we started getting into the world of the web application. In this second half data science is coming into maturity and big data is advancing the knowledge of the entire world at a fantastic clip. My company built a database for the energy industry that compares EPA data to financial data and maintenance data for every power plant in the country. My Father-in-Law and his cohorts in the Texas Audubon Society have started in the last five years to collect the ONLY data ever collected regarding bird migrations. In 2012 the Obama administration demonstrated that superior voter intelligence capabilities are essential in political campaigns sparking an arms race in that market. Software simulations and massive data systems are allowing for research that was never before possible in the areas of climate science, genomics, astronomy, you name it. Cities all across the first world are engaging in open data initiatives to release demographic and other municipal data to allow developers in their society to use that data to help solve municipal problems.

Progress means that things that were not possible at all before are now possible. The railroads meant that farmers in the hinterlands could participate in commerce in the major cities and cell phones allow Amazonian farmers to cut about two to four weeks from their business cycle when bringing commodities to market in Manaus Brazil.

Conversely there are some less savory ideas that are made possible by advances, such as nuclear weapons, killer drones, global terrorism, and NSA spying. Progress is most certainly not omnibenevolent.

Thank You Very Much for your post, Tinker Enki.

I contend that we will never see another Dark Age, at least not in the way that we mean when we speak of the fall of the Roman Empire. Technological progress will continue until we destroy ourselves

Maybe.

But it is not difficult to imagine how progress could be really slowed down by something the current mess in the Middle East setting off a Nuclear War with things like Nuclear Winter and maybe Salted Nuke fallout really damaging at least the Northern Hemisphere with the South Hemisphere just trying to survive and maintain order for a long time.....

solar flare wiping out all of our computers a few generations after we have abandoned hard copies and we lose the vast majority of human knowledge.

That could be another version of the above......

Also reminds me of the hype about Y2K....

Fascinating to think that Amish and Hutterites might be among the top survivors......

And German being one of the major languages on Earth or at least North America rather than one spoken only in Hell

Not the only pothole possible in the Road of Progress......

What about Global Warming ESPECIALLY if it is NOT man-made........

Also remembering what the Black Death did and that many of our antibiotics are becoming useless through overuse.......

Not that I want this to happen.......

The real Joker in the Deck might be that slowing progress in Space Exploration and Colonization might allow Mean Green Mother Nature to get in another one of her licks before we can deal with it......... space rocks hitting Earth being the obvious example........

[Torchwood]

Point of correction on the Dark Ages: a purely European phenomenon. It was the peak of civilisation in the Caliphate, T'ang dynasty China and in India. It is like judging China on what happened to it under Mongol and Western barbarians in the 13th and 19th/early 20th centuries respectively.

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Never have I been called crazy by so many people for taking a such common sense position.

There are a few relevant points I need to raise in my defense.

The first is that I am not saying that the teleological version of history proposed by Tinker and his fellow adherents to the Religion of Progress is impossible. He may be right, I suppose. Maybe this time really is different. It's been said before. Several times. Several million times, probably. But maybe this time it really is different. Maybe we just happen to be the lucky ones who are alive when It All Happens. It's statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. I guess I'm just taking the wait and see approach. Looking back through human history, there are no shortage of prophecies, every one of them demonstrably and self-evidently true, explaining how the big shift was just around the corner. They are especially predictable in times of social and economic turmoil and transition. In fact, if you look at the predictions of an imminent apocalypse/singularity today, you can practically graft them onto a hundred other periods in history with only minor changes. Those other hundred times, all the predictions turned out to be wrong. Maybe they're right this time, but if I was laying odds in Vegas...

Second, I think a common mistake that the Progress Cultists make is believing that everything that can be done will be done. In their minds, every possible invention that's ever been drunkenly scrawled on a napkin by a drunk engineering undergrad is going to Change Everything. This is why they can say, with straight faces, that the technology to, say, get us off of fossil fuels currently exists and only awaits implementation. That's an absurd claim, but I hear it all the time. When I raise the (minor) objection that it's not true, and that none of available alternatives, nor all them combined, come close to replacing the dependence of industrial civilization or our accustomed standard of living on fossil fuels, the answer is always some version of "Well, yeah, not industrial civilization. And most of us would have to stop driving cars of course. And of course everyone's standard of living is going to take a big hit, but that's probably a good thing in the long run..." A vast majority of the prototypes that cross your Facebook page with a clever quote from Neil Degrasse are never, and could never, see the light of day. I suppose that it's possible for us to build a few hundred thorium reactors, to replace the Nevada desert with solar panels, and to have a breakthrough in cold fusion. But because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. All signs point to there not being an alternative energy Manhattan Project anywhere on the horizon, and if the Peak Oil people are right and it's a slow price melt-up from here as we gradually exhaust reserves that were previously economically nonviable, then it's probably too late for such a project anyway.

Third, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here, although I recognize that it is always heresy to counter someone's civic religion (the civic religion, in this case, being the myth of infinite progress). I think it is simply common empirical sense that tend to revert to a mean; this means that when a long term pattern breaks exponentially in either direction, it is unlikely to continue moving in that manner forever. The mantra from the cultists is that "This Time Is Different", which is the same mantra you hear from supporters of every exponential break from the mean in finance and economics. In every case so far, time has proven that This Time Is Never Different. Now, this is the part where the cultist chimes in with his lines covering examples about how this time really is different: in this case he will say that there has never been a truly global civilization before, that there has never been 3D printing or Big Data or solar energy or whatever. Go back through triumphant press clippings from the 50s and 60s talking about fusion power and the Ford Nucleon. In every previous bubble, the true believers always have a million examples of unprecedented differences that prove, beyond doubt, that we are living in a new era and that anyone who can't see it is simply being willfully ignorant. And maybe we are, but I'm withholding judgment and playing the odds in my longer-term decision making.

Now, look, I know that this is not nearly as exciting as the progress myth. The excitement is why these great predictions remain forever popular despite their dismal prophetic record. I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage. But what's funny is the way most people react to what I think are my pretty measured responses to a thesis that bears all the classic signs of a bubble mentality: people are shocked, shocked that I tend to think that what has happened a hundred times before will more likely than not happen again in the future. Very often, I detect a tinge of moral outrage at my failure to throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. They often get very offended that I'm not particularly interested in discussing their particular list of reasons why This Time Is Different. I don't get offended at their position; but, then again, they're not insulting my religion.

Also, my position is usually misconstrued as being that there won't be any new technologies. And that's not really my position at all. My position is not that we will not continue to accumulate knowledge or technologies over time; my gripe is with the idea of progress. Folks like John Gray have more or less sketched out my position better than I can do on my own, though he is considerably less anthropocentric than I am. My position is that although we might figure out how to re-form the world, human nature and the basic character of life are, and will remain, stubbornly resistant to any such reformation. When I look back at ancient civilizations, I am usually struck not by how different our contemporary concerns and lifeways are, but by how similar. Imagine, thousands of years of technological accumulation and we're still a bunch of apes using pointy implements to stuff murdered flesh into our mouths so that we can have the energy to chase around potential mates.

Oh, and finally, after discussing this for awhile, the goalposts usually get moved onto another planet by the cultists. Eventually, they retreat to a position that is essentially that although our current iteration of technological civilization might fall into a global dark age, and even though humanity itself may blow itself to the verge of extinction, nevertheless some day, some way, things will work their way back to where they left off or, even failing that, it's important to remember that even after Rome collapsed, things were still happening in Late Antiquity. To which I usually reply, "Um, it sounds like you are just saying that things will continue to change. And all change counts as progress. If so, I guess I agree with the first half?"

[YMix]

I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage.

You're not talking to teenagers here. You can skip this kind of sentences.

[Enki]

Never have I been called crazy by so many people for taking a such common sense position.

There are a few relevant points I need to raise in my defense.

The first is that I am not saying that the teleological version of history proposed by Tinker and his fellow adherents to the Religion of Progress is impossible. He may be right, I suppose. Maybe this time really is different. It's been said before. Several times. Several million times, probably. But maybe this time it really is different. Maybe we just happen to be the lucky ones who are alive when It All Happens. It's statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. I guess I'm just taking the wait and see approach. Looking back through human history, there are no shortage of prophecies, every one of them demonstrably and self-evidently true, explaining how the big shift was just around the corner. They are especially predictable in times of social and economic turmoil and transition. In fact, if you look at the predictions of an imminent apocalypse/singularity today, you can practically graft them onto a hundred other periods in history with only minor changes. Those other hundred times, all the predictions turned out to be wrong. Maybe they're right this time, but if I was laying odds in Vegas...

I didn't stipulate that the Omega point would occur. I only stipulated it as one of the scenarios under which progress ceases. The way I see it the big shift happens every 60 years or so now. The generation with computers is as different from the generation with cars as the generation with cars is from the generation with trains as the generation with trains is from the generation with horse and buggy... More technological progress in the last 500 years than in all of the history that preceded it. Since the advent of science. You see it as predicting the future, I see it as predicting the past. Looks self-evident to me that being able to make bullet proof socks, send my life story to a stranger in Uganda and get gene therapy for my Cancer is a pretty big genuflecting deal.

Second, I think a common mistake that the Progress Cultists make is believing that everything that can be done will be done. In their minds, every possible invention that's ever been drunkenly scrawled on a napkin by a drunk engineering undergrad is going to Change Everything. This is why they can say, with straight faces, that the technology to, say, get us off of fossil fuels currently exists and only awaits implementation. That's an absurd claim, but I hear it all the time. When I raise the (minor) objection that it's not true, and that none of available alternatives, nor all them combined, come close to replacing the dependence of industrial civilization or our accustomed standard of living on fossil fuels, the answer is always some version of "Well, yeah, not industrial civilization. And most of us would have to stop driving cars of course. And of course everyone's standard of living is going to take a big hit, but that's probably a good thing in the long run..." A vast majority of the prototypes that cross your Facebook page with a clever quote from Neil Degrasse are never, and could never, see the light of day. I suppose that it's possible for us to build a few hundred thorium reactors, to replace the Nevada desert with solar panels, and to have a breakthrough in cold fusion. But because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. All signs point to there not being an alternative energy Manhattan Project anywhere on the horizon, and if the Peak Oil people are right and it's a slow price melt-up from here as we gradually exhaust reserves that were previously economically nonviable, then it's probably too late for such a project anyway.

Absolutely not. And Carlota Perez speaks quite specifically to the POV that economic realities dictate which technologies get used and which don't. This is why she made the case for the difference in wartime advancement versus economic advancement.

The technology to replace fossil fuels absolutely exists and awaits implementation. The only thing really holding it back are rates of energy production and the infrastructure to charge electric cars. If we had another New Deal style infrastructure roll out, the type of government spending that built the South's power infrastructure, laid the intercontinental railroads and built the Interstates, we would have electric cars now. Tesla motors is doing quite well, they are held back by a regulatory environment that makes it illegal for them to sell direct to consumer. Solar power is increasing in efficiency by orders of magnitude. The moment it reaches that point where you can paint a whole car in photovoltaic paint then it's on. A commuter car for city driving in sunny areas is totally feasible at that point since cars are parked and turned off the majority of the time. If your standard is being able to drive cross country in a straight shot then electric cars won't perform. But if your standard is to be able to drive 10 miles to work and 10 miles home with 10 miles of errands in between, it's already completely feasible.

Third, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here, although I recognize that it is always heresy to counter someone's civic religion (the civic religion, in this case, being the myth of infinite progress). I think it is simply common empirical sense that tend to revert to a mean; this means that when a long term pattern breaks exponentially in either direction, it is unlikely to continue moving in that manner forever. The mantra from the cultists is that "This Time Is Different", which is the same mantra you hear from supporters of every exponential break from the mean in finance and economics. In every case so far, time has proven that This Time Is Never Different. Now, this is the part where the cultist chimes in with his lines covering examples about how this time really is different: in this case he will say that there has never been a truly global civilization before, that there has never been 3D printing or Big Data or solar energy or whatever. Go back through triumphant press clippings from the 50s and 60s talking about fusion power and the Ford Nucleon. In every previous bubble, the true believers always have a million examples of unprecedented differences that prove, beyond doubt, that we are living in a new era and that anyone who can't see it is simply being willfully ignorant. And maybe we are, but I'm withholding judgment and playing the odds in my longer-term decision making.

I think your idea of progress and mine are different. Your idea is a progression toward Utopia. Mine is that technology will continue to innovate causing disruptions every half century. You are dismissing the evidence of progress that we can already see. Global interconnected commerce is now an every day thing. Past mercantilism where you put your entire life's savings into a shipment strapped it to some camels and headed to China simply isn't the same thing as purchasing a piece of software from England.

Fusion power is different from solar power in that Solar power is ALREADY IN USE for energy generation. Comparing experimental technology to mundane technology is a non-starter. Fusion in the 1950s = experimental, Solar in the 2010s = mundane.

Now, look, I know that this is not nearly as exciting as the progress myth. The excitement is why these great predictions remain forever popular despite their dismal prophetic record. I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage. But what's funny is the way most people react to what I think are my pretty measured responses to a thesis that bears all the classic signs of a bubble mentality: people are shocked, shocked that I tend to think that what has happened a hundred times before will more likely than not happen again in the future. Very often, I detect a tinge of moral outrage at my failure to throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. They often get very offended that I'm not particularly interested in discussing their particular list of reasons why This Time Is Different. I don't get offended at their position; but, then again, they're not insulting my religion.

Their predictions do not display a dismal prophetic record. The predictions have largely come true. We have lived in a society of never ending progress since before my great-grandparents great-grandparents were born. Do you use a chamber pot or do you have indoor plumbing?

The bubbles are CAUSED by technological progress.

Also, my position is usually misconstrued as being that there won't be any new technologies. And that's not really my position at all. My position is not that we will not continue to accumulate knowledge or technologies over time; my gripe is with the idea of progress. Folks like John Gray have more or less sketched out my position better than I can do on my own, though he is considerably less anthropocentric than I am. My position is that although we might figure out how to re-form the world, human nature and the basic character of life are, and will remain, stubbornly resistant to any such reformation. When I look back at ancient civilizations, I am usually struck not by how different our contemporary concerns and lifeways are, but by how similar. Imagine, thousands of years of technological accumulation and we're still a bunch of apes using pointy implements to stuff murdered flesh into our mouths so that we can have the energy to chase around potential mates.

So your ideas are based off of a straw man of changing human nature? If your contention is that we will continue to compete over finite material resources and our social structures will be organized to reflect that tension then of course I agree.

Oh, and finally, after discussing this for awhile, the goalposts usually get moved onto another planet by the cultists. Eventually, they retreat to a position that is essentially that although our current iteration of technological civilization might fall into a global dark age, and even though humanity itself may blow itself to the verge of extinction, nevertheless some day, some way, things will work their way back to where they left off or, even failing that, it's important to remember that even after Rome collapsed, things were still happening in Late Antiquity. To which I usually reply, "Um, it sounds like you are just saying that things will continue to change. And all change counts as progress. If so, I guess I agree with the first half?"

I think your rebuttal is based off of a straw man version of progress. I'm not talking about the Kingdom of Heaven. I am talking about technology unalterably changing the landscape in which we live. Progress is not constant change, it is constant technological innovation. Thus far the evidence bears out that technological progress is and will continue.

[Simple Minded]

I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage.

Suddenly...... I feel threatened...... but not so alone.........

These human feelings are so strange......

I guessing that boy genii get laid a lot more than crotchety old conservatives..... just sayin......

[monster_gardener]

I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage.

Suddenly...... I feel threatened...... but not so alone.........

These human feelings are so strange......

I guessing that boy genii get laid a lot more than crotchety old conservatives..... just sayin......

Thank You Very Much for your post, Simple Minded.

I guessing that boy genii get laid a lot more than crotchety old conservatives..... just sayin......

Probably true....

Unless the Old Men and Women have Money

[Simple Minded]

Never have I been called crazy by so many people for taking a such common sense position.

There are a few relevant points I need to raise in my defense.

The first is that I am not saying that the teleological version of history proposed by Tinker and his fellow adherents to the Religion of Progress is impossible. He may be right, I suppose. Maybe this time really is different. It's been said before. Several times. Several million times, probably. But maybe this time it really is different. Maybe we just happen to be the lucky ones who are alive when It All Happens. It's statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. I guess I'm just taking the wait and see approach. Looking back through human history, there are no shortage of prophecies, every one of them demonstrably and self-evidently true, explaining how the big shift was just around the corner. They are especially predictable in times of social and economic turmoil and transition. In fact, if you look at the predictions of an imminent apocalypse/singularity today, you can practically graft them onto a hundred other periods in history with only minor changes. Those other hundred times, all the predictions turned out to be wrong. Maybe they're right this time, but if I was laying odds in Vegas...

Second, I think a common mistake that the Progress Cultists make is believing that everything that can be done will be done. In their minds, every possible invention that's ever been drunkenly scrawled on a napkin by a drunk engineering undergrad is going to Change Everything. This is why they can say, with straight faces, that the technology to, say, get us off of fossil fuels currently exists and only awaits implementation. That's an absurd claim, but I hear it all the time. When I raise the (minor) objection that it's not true, and that none of available alternatives, nor all them combined, come close to replacing the dependence of industrial civilization or our accustomed standard of living on fossil fuels, the answer is always some version of "Well, yeah, not industrial civilization. And most of us would have to stop driving cars of course. And of course everyone's standard of living is going to take a big hit, but that's probably a good thing in the long run..." A vast majority of the prototypes that cross your Facebook page with a clever quote from Neil Degrasse are never, and could never, see the light of day. I suppose that it's possible for us to build a few hundred thorium reactors, to replace the Nevada desert with solar panels, and to have a breakthrough in cold fusion. But because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. All signs point to there not being an alternative energy Manhattan Project anywhere on the horizon, and if the Peak Oil people are right and it's a slow price melt-up from here as we gradually exhaust reserves that were previously economically nonviable, then it's probably too late for such a project anyway.

Third, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here, although I recognize that it is always heresy to counter someone's civic religion (the civic religion, in this case, being the myth of infinite progress). I think it is simply common empirical sense that tend to revert to a mean; this means that when a long term pattern breaks exponentially in either direction, it is unlikely to continue moving in that manner forever. The mantra from the cultists is that "This Time Is Different", which is the same mantra you hear from supporters of every exponential break from the mean in finance and economics. In every case so far, time has proven that This Time Is Never Different. Now, this is the part where the cultist chimes in with his lines covering examples about how this time really is different: in this case he will say that there has never been a truly global civilization before, that there has never been 3D printing or Big Data or solar energy or whatever. Go back through triumphant press clippings from the 50s and 60s talking about fusion power and the Ford Nucleon. In every previous bubble, the true believers always have a million examples of unprecedented differences that prove, beyond doubt, that we are living in a new era and that anyone who can't see it is simply being willfully ignorant. And maybe we are, but I'm withholding judgment and playing the odds in my longer-term decision making.

Now, look, I know that this is not nearly as exciting as the progress myth. The excitement is why these great predictions remain forever popular despite their dismal prophetic record. I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage. But what's funny is the way most people react to what I think are my pretty measured responses to a thesis that bears all the classic signs of a bubble mentality: people are shocked, shocked that I tend to think that what has happened a hundred times before will more likely than not happen again in the future. Very often, I detect a tinge of moral outrage at my failure to throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. They often get very offended that I'm not particularly interested in discussing their particular list of reasons why This Time Is Different. I don't get offended at their position; but, then again, they're not insulting my religion.

Also, my position is usually misconstrued as being that there won't be any new technologies. And that's not really my position at all. My position is not that we will not continue to accumulate knowledge or technologies over time; my gripe is with the idea of progress. Folks like John Gray have more or less sketched out my position better than I can do on my own, though he is considerably less anthropocentric than I am. My position is that although we might figure out how to re-form the world, human nature and the basic character of life are, and will remain, stubbornly resistant to any such reformation. When I look back at ancient civilizations, I am usually struck not by how different our contemporary concerns and lifeways are, but by how similar. Imagine, thousands of years of technological accumulation and we're still a bunch of apes using pointy implements to stuff murdered flesh into our mouths so that we can have the energy to chase around potential mates.

Oh, and finally, after discussing this for awhile, the goalposts usually get moved onto another planet by the cultists. Eventually, they retreat to a position that is essentially that although our current iteration of technological civilization might fall into a global dark age, and even though humanity itself may blow itself to the verge of extinction, nevertheless some day, some way, things will work their way back to where they left off or, even failing that, it's important to remember that even after Rome collapsed, things were still happening in Late Antiquity. To which I usually reply, "Um, it sounds like you are just saying that things will continue to change. And all change counts as progress. If so, I guess I agree with the first half?"

Well said JN!

As far back as I can remember, “experts” have been (almost annually or quarterly) predicting the imminent arrival of either the Age of Aquarius or Armageddon. Sometimes the same person changes from one view to the other in the course of 5-20 years. "Social Mood" determines which viewpoint sells better. They are like stopped clocks. They are often right but only for a limited period of time.

More interesting to me is the phenomena of perspective determining whether the individual, group, or society FEELS they are making “progress” or not. The child burning himself with a match, or the obese person suffering a heart attack might not think they are making progress in real time, while the observer, or even they themselves at a later date, may disagree. Same with financially ignorant businessmen, college students, municipalities, politicians, etc. living thru a multi-year or multi-decade period of debt…...

Kudos to Tinker for recognizing that not all “progress” will be defined as “good.”

ORZ saying: “The iron ore thinks itself senselessly tortured in the furnace. The tempered blade offsine steel looks back and knows better!”

[monster_gardener]

Never have I been called crazy by so many people for taking a such common sense position.

There are a few relevant points I need to raise in my defense.

The first is that I am not saying that the teleological version of history proposed by Tinker and his fellow adherents to the Religion of Progress is impossible. He may be right, I suppose. Maybe this time really is different. It's been said before. Several times. Several million times, probably. But maybe this time it really is different. Maybe we just happen to be the lucky ones who are alive when It All Happens. It's statistically unlikely, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. I guess I'm just taking the wait and see approach. Looking back through human history, there are no shortage of prophecies, every one of them demonstrably and self-evidently true, explaining how the big shift was just around the corner. They are especially predictable in times of social and economic turmoil and transition. In fact, if you look at the predictions of an imminent apocalypse/singularity today, you can practically graft them onto a hundred other periods in history with only minor changes. Those other hundred times, all the predictions turned out to be wrong. Maybe they're right this time, but if I was laying odds in Vegas...

Second, I think a common mistake that the Progress Cultists make is believing that everything that can be done will be done. In their minds, every possible invention that's ever been drunkenly scrawled on a napkin by a drunk engineering undergrad is going to Change Everything. This is why they can say, with straight faces, that the technology to, say, get us off of fossil fuels currently exists and only awaits implementation. That's an absurd claim, but I hear it all the time. When I raise the (minor) objection that it's not true, and that none of available alternatives, nor all them combined, come close to replacing the dependence of industrial civilization or our accustomed standard of living on fossil fuels, the answer is always some version of "Well, yeah, not industrial civilization. And most of us would have to stop driving cars of course. And of course everyone's standard of living is going to take a big hit, but that's probably a good thing in the long run..." A vast majority of the prototypes that cross your Facebook page with a clever quote from Neil Degrasse are never, and could never, see the light of day. I suppose that it's possible for us to build a few hundred thorium reactors, to replace the Nevada desert with solar panels, and to have a breakthrough in cold fusion. But because something is technically possible doesn't mean it's going to happen. All signs point to there not being an alternative energy Manhattan Project anywhere on the horizon, and if the Peak Oil people are right and it's a slow price melt-up from here as we gradually exhaust reserves that were previously economically nonviable, then it's probably too late for such a project anyway.

Third, I don't think I'm going too far out on a limb here, although I recognize that it is always heresy to counter someone's civic religion (the civic religion, in this case, being the myth of infinite progress). I think it is simply common empirical sense that tend to revert to a mean; this means that when a long term pattern breaks exponentially in either direction, it is unlikely to continue moving in that manner forever. The mantra from the cultists is that "This Time Is Different", which is the same mantra you hear from supporters of every exponential break from the mean in finance and economics. In every case so far, time has proven that This Time Is Never Different. Now, this is the part where the cultist chimes in with his lines covering examples about how this time really is different: in this case he will say that there has never been a truly global civilization before, that there has never been 3D printing or Big Data or solar energy or whatever. Go back through triumphant press clippings from the 50s and 60s talking about fusion power and the Ford Nucleon. In every previous bubble, the true believers always have a million examples of unprecedented differences that prove, beyond doubt, that we are living in a new era and that anyone who can't see it is simply being willfully ignorant. And maybe we are, but I'm withholding judgment and playing the odds in my longer-term decision making.

Now, look, I know that this is not nearly as exciting as the progress myth. The excitement is why these great predictions remain forever popular despite their dismal prophetic record. I know that I'm playing the role of the crotchety old conservative who just refuses to see the light, and that it's much sexier to be on the side of the boy genius currently working on the Next Big Thing in his dad's garage. But what's funny is the way most people react to what I think are my pretty measured responses to a thesis that bears all the classic signs of a bubble mentality: people are shocked, shocked that I tend to think that what has happened a hundred times before will more likely than not happen again in the future. Very often, I detect a tinge of moral outrage at my failure to throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. They often get very offended that I'm not particularly interested in discussing their particular list of reasons why This Time Is Different. I don't get offended at their position; but, then again, they're not insulting my religion.

Also, my position is usually misconstrued as being that there won't be any new technologies. And that's not really my position at all. My position is not that we will not continue to accumulate knowledge or technologies over time; my gripe is with the idea of progress. Folks like John Gray have more or less sketched out my position better than I can do on my own, though he is considerably less anthropocentric than I am. My position is that although we might figure out how to re-form the world, human nature and the basic character of life are, and will remain, stubbornly resistant to any such reformation. When I look back at ancient civilizations, I am usually struck not by how different our contemporary concerns and lifeways are, but by how similar. Imagine, thousands of years of technological accumulation and we're still a bunch of apes using pointy implements to stuff murdered flesh into our mouths so that we can have the energy to chase around potential mates.

Oh, and finally, after discussing this for awhile, the goalposts usually get moved onto another planet by the cultists. Eventually, they retreat to a position that is essentially that although our current iteration of technological civilization might fall into a global dark age, and even though humanity itself may blow itself to the verge of extinction, nevertheless some day, some way, things will work their way back to where they left off or, even failing that, it's important to remember that even after Rome collapsed, things were still happening in Late Antiquity. To which I usually reply, "Um, it sounds like you are just saying that things will continue to change. And all change counts as progress. If so, I guess I agree with the first half?"

Well said JN!

As far back as I can remember, “experts” have been (almost annually or quarterly) predicting the imminent arrival of either the Age of Aquarius or Armageddon. Sometimes the same person changes from one view to the other in the course of 5-20 years. "Social Mood" determines which viewpoint sells better. They are like stopped clocks. They are often right but only for a limited period of time.

More interesting to me is the phenomena of perspective determining whether the individual, group, or society FEELS they are making “progress” or not. The child burning himself with a match, or the obese person suffering a heart attack might not think they are making progress in real time, while the observer, or even they themselves at a later date, may disagree. Same with financially ignorant businessmen, college students, municipalities, politicians, etc. living thru a multi-year or multi-decade period of debt…...

Kudos to Tinker for recognizing that not all “progress” will be defined as “good.”

ORZ saying: “The iron ore thinks itself senselessly tortured in the furnace. The tempered blade offsine steel looks back and knows better!”

Thank You Very Much for your post, Simple Minded.

Is this the correct person ORZ am I wrong?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arilou#Orz

Please don't leave me in ORZ

http://www.internetslang.com/ORZ-meaning-definition.asp

Even if I look like an ORC.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Bajie

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

SM,

I disagree with the very idea of social or human progress. Unlike the accumulation of scientific understanding, the lessons learned by one generation are very often - generally, even - forgotten by the next. I find any version of history that reads, "A long time ago, offstage, a bunch of unimportant stuff happened and then, lift curtain, WE ARRIVED! Tadaaa!" to be ridiculous. Under other circumstances, most adherents of the Cult of Progress recognize orientalism when they see it and have the appropriate allergic reaction, but other times...

I also find it a little silly when they cite as evidence the fact that, out of several thousand years of human history, their predictions have been correct for the last couple hundred. Like the pumpers of the housing bubble laughing at the cautious suckers missing out on the big money in 2006, those poor schmucks who just couldn't see that we were in a new era. And, once again, maybe we are. Maybe Cause X really did change everything and we are the ones we've been waiting for, to which the entire rest of history was but a prelude.

As evidenced by my avatar, I tend to view history as a series of turns on the spiral; this is obviously anathema to the progress cultists. The difference is partly one of prejudice, to be sure, although I balk at allowing myself to be called pessimistic for failing to buy into the idea that techno-industrial civilization is subject to the same forces as every other civilization. And so I tend to see the latest jump from the mean in the same light as all previous dramatic jumps, as aberrations and likely targets for correction (and no, I'm not accepting the bubble we're currently in as evidence of an uncorrected jump). Our current race to the future was fueled by the discovery of the powered machine and a billion years worth of sun-power that we've burned through in a couple hundred years, and by a particular cultural milieu that began by viewing the entire universe as a clockwork machine. In an historical blink of an eye, we've burned through the easily accessible fuel - meaning that more and more resources are going into extracting what's left just to keep things going as they are - and destroyed large swaths of the natural ecosystem - and this with India and China still sitting somewhere under $5,000USD GDP per capita standards of living. The wars over the remaining reserves are already in full force, the ecosystem is beginning to rebel, and, significantly, many of the gains made by technology have begun to be clawed back by nature. A blogger I follow recently used antibiotic resistant bacteria as an example of this. Evolution is nature's answer to technology, and time is on the side of evolution. It keeps chugging no matter what, while technology requires vast inputs of resources and, more importantly, the interest and energy of human beings just to hold its ground. We've achieved a temporary domination over infectious disease in first world countries, but the biosphere is busy adapting to our methods and will without a doubt launch a meaningful counterattack.

I'm reminded of the old Indus river civilization of ancient India. Mohenjo Daro was periodically destroyed by floods, and as we unearthed the successive layers we found that each time it was destroyed, it was replaced by a settlement just a little shoddier, with just a bit less attention and craftsmanship. Some have speculated that the knowledge was simply lost, as it seems to have been in Egypt, where the early pyramids still stand strong and the later ones are cheap imitations reduced today to sand and rubble. But others, and I think this is more likely, see a civilization that gradually got tired of rebuilding something over and over, and devoting so many resources just to keeping its head above water.

Right now, the religion of progress is still a conceivable faith. There are strains, to be sure, as we see with the degradation of the biosphere and the fact that standards of living for the majority of first-world people seem to have topped out and begun to move backward, but we can still believe that They Are Working On It and will bail us out before anyone has to really worry about making any really inconvenient changes. My feeling is that when this god dies, and people no longer believe the silliness that everyone on the planet can enjoy a comfortable American middle class standard of living, which itself improves each generation, that the disillusionment will be devastating and total. After all, why did we poison the oceans and cut down the rain forests if I'm not going to have a better standard of living than my parents?

Or maybe not. Maybe from here it's just up up up to the stars and beyond.

[Marcus]

I hope this doesn't qualify as one of Tinker's "dragged-out-talking-points" but . . .

"The story of salvation on earth is the advance of the singular against the plural. Salvation came into a world of many gods, many lands, many peoples. Over against each of these it sets up a singular: one God, one world, one humankind.

"Correspondingly, the story comprises three great epochs. In the first, one God triumphs over the many false gods. This process fills the first millennium of our era, and its outcome is the Christian Church. Therefore church history is the interesting and important aspect of the first thousand years A.D. In the second epoch one earth is won from the plural of unconnected countries and undiscovered lands; no Chinese walls remain effective. This is the point at which we stand today: geographically, technically, statistically, the earth is finally one, and so indeed is the whole world of nature, thanks to modern science which Christendom created. The master institutions of the second millennium are, first the Papacy as a worldly power, then the system of territorial states which grew from under its wings. Therefore world history or political history is the theme of this period.

"Today we are living through the agonies of transition to the third epoch. We have yet to establish Man, the great singular of humanity, in one household, over the plurality of races, classes, and age groups. This will be the center of struggle in the future,... They pose the questions the third millennium will have to answer. ... The State is on the defensive because it is inadequate for the needs of the coming age. The theme of future history will be not territorial or political but social:..."

The Christian Future Or The Modern Mind Outrun, Rosenstock-Huessy, Harper & Row, 1946, pgs. 114-115

New world coming . . .

[Enki]

JN You need to work on the difference between description of the present and prediction of the future.

Science can cover human emotions and social organization. Applying big data to elections will fundamentally alter how we organize our society.

I think you're honestly not thinking about it very deeply. A railroad means that people interact with others that they wouldn't have access to at all without the railroad. If I convince the right people to repost something I write then the reach is several hundred thousand people. Arguing that these things are not meaningful and significant changes only calls into question your ability to comprehend day to day life and the factors of significance in the day to day. 500 years of science has fundamentally altered society and you just brush that away like it's meaningless.

[Simple Minded]

Thank You Very Much for your post, Simple Minded.

Is this the correct person ORZ am I wrong?

You're welcome MG!

Unfortunately you are devoting way tooooooo many brain cells towards understanding my Simple Minded Weltanschauung!

ORZ: Old Redneck Zen!

A title of admiration that Tinker benighted me with.

I can only hope to live up to such expectations...... Its a lot of pressure, but I'm gonna try to man up!

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I think you're honestly not thinking about it very deeply.

Yeah, I'm more of a 'broad and shallow' type.

Although, in this instance, I disagree. I think that I'm probably observing deeper currents while you're obsessed and dazzled by superficial changes.

[Enki]

I think you're honestly not thinking about it very deeply.

Yeah, I'm more of a 'broad and shallow' type.

Although, in this instance, I disagree. I think that I'm probably observing deeper currents while you're obsessed and dazzled by superficial changes.

If the Difference between being raised in a kinship clan group and being raised in an atomized factory school is superficial to you, then there is no common ground for us to speak on.

If spending your entire life surrounded by the same 150 people in a 50 mile radius and seeing strangers only twice a year on market weeks is the same as having a global business network that takes commodities from Africa to a factory in China to be sold in Europe by a company in New York is superficially different, then we have no common ground.

Culture is who you know, what you think, how you think, and what actions you perform. These are fundamentally altered. Yes we all eat and we all lavender. Yes people still kill, though less often in a first world city than a more primitive one.

[Enki]

Human beings operate based on need. Technology fundamentally changes the nature of need.

In the midst of the first obesity epidemic in history you are trying to syncretize the life behaviors of cultures that are alien to one another outside of the basic biological and social imperatives that the entire species has.

When was the last time you fought the neighbouring clan over sheep?

[Simple Minded]

SM,

I disagree with the very idea of social or human progress. Unlike the accumulation of scientific understanding, the lessons learned by one generation are very often - generally, even - forgotten by the next.............

Agreed, whether it is the K-wave, the long wave, or the four generation cycle, the period is roughly one human lifespan. We are much more likely to repeat the mistakes of or great-great grandparents than our older brothers.

It has been said that the only thing we learn from history is that man learns nothing from history. I suspect that even after we are surgically implanted with one billion terabyte flash drives, we will still learn nothing from history, unless they surgically destroy the amygdala at the same time.

I also find it a little silly when they cite as evidence the fact that, out of several thousand years of human history, their predictions have been correct for the last couple hundred. Like the pumpers of the housing bubble laughing at the cautious suckers missing out on the big money in 2006, those poor schmucks who just couldn't see that we were in a new era. And, once again, maybe we are. Maybe Cause X really did change everything and we are the ones we've been waiting for, to which the entire rest of history was but a prelude.........

strangely enough, every generation thinks that "we are the ones we have been waiting for....."

Remember the song....I believe that children are our future. ( and always will be! - SM) Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they posses inside. give them a sense of pride to make it easier (does pride really do that?-SM)......

I'm reminded of the old Indus river civilization of ancient India. Mohenjo Daro was periodically destroyed by floods, and as we unearthed the successive layers we found that each time it was destroyed, it was replaced by a settlement just a little shoddier, with just a bit less attention and craftsmanship. Some have speculated that the knowledge was simply lost, as it seems to have been in Egypt, where the early pyramids still stand strong and the later ones are cheap imitations reduced today to sand and rubble. But others, and I think this is more likely, see a civilization that gradually got tired of rebuilding something over and over, and devoting so many resources just to keeping its head above water.........

May very well be true, if we don't move on from the shiny new toys of the past to the shiny new toys of the future, where is the "progress?" Or it could be simply economics, look at how cheap manufacturing has replaced craftsmanship & durability in just the last 50 years. Often cheaper to replace than repair, and we get the added bonus of shopping as recreation and advertising as job creation.

Right now, the religion of progress is still a conceivable faith......... They Are Working On It and will bail us out before anyone has to really worry about making any really inconvenient changes.......... My feeling is that when this god dies, and people no longer believe the silliness that everyone on the planet can enjoy a comfortable American middle class standard of living, which itself improves each generation, that the disillusionment will be devastating and total.........

Man never creates a God superior to himself. The disappoint may be devastating and total, but like us, it will also be temporary!

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I think you're honestly not thinking about it very deeply...

...there is no common ground for us to speak on.

...we have no common ground.

...fundamentally altered...

Since the advent of (God's name)... (omitted by me to avoid blasphemy)

Looks self-evident to me...

Recent outtakes from a conversation I recently had with a religion zealot.

I think your idea of progress and mine are different. Your idea is a progression toward Utopia. Mine is that technology will continue to innovate causing disruptions every half century.

That is what I meant when I said, "My position is not that we will not continue to accumulate knowledge or technologies over time; my gripe is with the idea of progress... Um, it sounds like you are just saying that things will continue to change. And all change counts as progress. If so, I guess I agree with the first half?"

[Simple Minded]

It seems that we have established beyond a reasonable doubt that "progress," like "beauty," "fairness," "justice," and "offense," are all in the eye of the beholder!

Or perhaps more importantly, optimism, pessimism, belief in the Age of Aquarius, belief in Armageddon, or that any of us will see the next sunrise...... all are acts of faith.

Well....... that was easy!

So, where's the rub?

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

I just feel like the definition of progress being used so fuzzy as to be meaningless. Tinker has said that progress is simply continued disruption,and might include an event like an asteroid hitting the planet. Apparently, the word, used as a verb, had faded completely out of use in English in the 18th century, but was revived in America - land of the modern apocalypse, infinite economic growth, and Manifest Destiny - and was long regarded by the English as an Americanism. As a noun, a quick Google search tells me that it means "forward or onward movement toward a destination."

Suppose we move into a wild forested area and, upon settling, find that we are beset by a native insect that causes annoying bites and spreads malaria. We import a species of bird that eats the insect, but craps all over us at the beach. Also, the bird is eating all the other insects and has no natural predators here, so it is taking over. We bring in more cats to control the bird population, and seeing the fuzzy creatures running around reminds us that we also like having dogs around, so we bring in the noble wolf to roam the woods. Before long, the cats have eaten all the birds, and the wolves have eaten all the cats, and there are so many wolves devouring our children on our way to school that we burn down the forest and move to the beach.

Tinker looks around at the smoldering ruins and proclaims, "We no longer have to worry about malaria, being crapped on by birds, or having our children eaten by wolves. Also, the view is much better with no forest in the way. Behold the constant change and disruption, our vast power to control our environment, The March of Man, Progress!"

I don't really see it that way. As far as I can tell, we are in an eternal cycle where every step forward in one area is a step back in another, creating a new hydra-headed problem as it solves the last. Playing Whack-a-Mole does not represent progress, no matter how good at it you are. Plus, you're eventually going to lose, even if you run the game until your shoulder joints give out.

If what you mean is that things will keep changing, then say that. Most adherents of the cult don't really believe that, though, whether Tinker does or not. Most modern humanists believe that humanity and the human condition will be improved (or, at least, is improvable) through the application of human will and reason. This religious idea took a huge hit in Europe after the destruction wrought upon it by Reason's machines, but not in America where we never really felt anything but inevitable victory at best, and glorious sacrifice in the name of Progress at the worst. But even in Europe the idea came back. In the high period of a civil religion, truths are self-evident and rarely even discussed. We've entered the stage of anxiety, in which people begin to suspect that their faith may be misplaced, heretics are starting to pronounce alternative visions, and remaining true believers take them to task. Once again, whatever outer trappings may change, we've been here before a hundred times. And I suspect it will play out along similar lines.

[monster_gardener]

I just feel like the definition of progress being used so fuzzy as to be meaningless. Tinker has said that progress is simply continued disruption,and might include an event like an asteroid hitting the planet. Apparently, the word, used as a verb, had faded completely out of use in English in the 18th century, but was revived in America - land of the modern apocalypse, infinite economic growth, and Manifest Destiny - and was long regarded by the English as an Americanism. As a noun, a quick Google search tells me that it means "forward or onward movement toward a destination."

Suppose we move into a wild forested area and, upon settling, find that we are beset by a native insect that causes annoying bites and spreads malaria. We import a species of bird that eats the insect, but craps all over us at the beach. Also, the bird is eating all the other insects and has no natural predators here, so it is taking over. We bring in more cats to control the bird population, and seeing the fuzzy creatures running around reminds us that we also like having dogs around, so we bring in the noble wolf to roam the woods. Before long, the cats have eaten all the birds, and the wolves have eaten all the cats, and there are so many wolves devouring our children on our way to school that we burn down the forest and move to the beach.

Tinker looks around at the smoldering ruins and proclaims, "We no longer have to worry about malaria, being crapped on by birds, or having our children eaten by wolves. Also, the view is much better with no forest in the way. Behold the constant change and disruption, our vast power to control our environment, The March of Man, Progress!"

I don't really see it that way. As far as I can tell, we are in an eternal cycle where every step forward in one area is a step back in another, creating a new hydra-headed problem as it solves the last. Playing Whack-a-Mole does not represent progress, no matter how good at it you are. Plus, you're eventually going to lose, even if you run the game until your shoulder joints give out.

If what you mean is that things will keep changing, then say that. Most adherents of the cult don't really believe that, though, whether Tinker does or not. Most modern humanists believe that humanity and the human condition will be improved (or, at least, is improvable) through the application of human will and reason. This religious idea took a huge hit in Europe after the destruction wrought upon it by Reason's machines, but not in America where we never really felt anything but inevitable victory at best, and glorious sacrifice in the name of Progress at the worst. But even in Europe the idea came back. In the high period of a civil religion, truths are self-evident and rarely even discussed. We've entered the stage of anxiety, in which people begin to suspect that their faith may be misplaced, heretics are starting to pronounce alternative visions, and remaining true believers take them to task. Once again, whatever outer trappings may change, we've been here before a hundred times. And I suspect it will play out along similar lines.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Juggernaut.

Suppose we move into a wild forested area and, upon settling, find that we are beset by a native insect that causes annoying bites and spreads malaria. We import a species of bird that eats the insect, but craps all over us at the beach. Also, the bird is eating all the other insects and has no natural predators here, so it is taking over. We bring in more cats to control the bird population, and seeing the fuzzy creatures running around reminds us that we also like having dogs around, so we bring in the noble wolf to roam the woods. Before long, the cats have eaten all the birds, and the wolves have eaten all the cats, and there are so many wolves devouring our children on our way to school that we burn down the forest and move to the beach.

A book you might enjoy about a similar situation....... Though it is a bit pricey now...........

http://www.amazon.com/King-Mice-Cheese- ... 0394800397

With a happier ending..........

Though I think I would have stopped at the cat or dog stage......

And I ain't lion that I hope I would have stopped before the Republicans oops I mean elephants made me bring back the DemocRATs oops I mean mice.........

Cute illustrations in any case........

Fond memories.....

[Simple Minded]

I just feel like the definition of progress being used so fuzzy as to be meaningless. Tinker has said that progress is simply continued disruption,and might include an event like an asteroid hitting the planet. Apparently, the word, used as a verb, had faded completely out of use in English in the 18th century, but was revived in America - land of the modern apocalypse, infinite economic growth, and Manifest Destiny - and was long regarded by the English as an Americanism. As a noun, a quick Google search tells me that it means "forward or onward movement toward a destination."

Suppose we move into a wild forested area and, upon settling, find that we are beset by a native insect that causes annoying bites and spreads malaria. We import a species of bird that eats the insect, but craps all over us at the beach. Also, the bird is eating all the other insects and has no natural predators here, so it is taking over. We bring in more cats to control the bird population, and seeing the fuzzy creatures running around reminds us that we also like having dogs around, so we bring in the noble wolf to roam the woods. Before long, the cats have eaten all the birds, and the wolves have eaten all the cats, and there are so many wolves devouring our children on our way to school that we burn down the forest and move to the beach.

Tinker looks around at the smoldering ruins and proclaims, "We no longer have to worry about malaria, being crapped on by birds, or having our children eaten by wolves. Also, the view is much better with no forest in the way. Behold the constant change and disruption, our vast power to control our environment, The March of Man, Progress!"

I don't really see it that way. As far as I can tell, we are in an eternal cycle where every step forward in one area is a step back in another, creating a new hydra-headed problem as it solves the last. Playing Whack-a-Mole does not represent progress, no matter how good at it you are. Plus, you're eventually going to lose, even if you run the game until your shoulder joints give out.

If what you mean is that things will keep changing, then say that. Most adherents of the cult don't really believe that, though, whether Tinker does or not. Most modern humanists believe that humanity and the human condition will be improved (or, at least, is improvable) through the application of human will and reason. This religious idea took a huge hit in Europe after the destruction wrought upon it by Reason's machines, but not in America where we never really felt anything but inevitable victory at best, and glorious sacrifice in the name of Progress at the worst. But even in Europe the idea came back. In the high period of a civil religion, truths are self-evident and rarely even discussed. We've entered the stage of anxiety, in which people begin to suspect that their faith may be misplaced, heretics are starting to pronounce alternative visions, and remaining true believers take them to task. Once again, whatever outer trappings may change, we've been here before a hundred times. And I suspect it will play out along similar lines.

Change does seem to be a constant, and whether any individual is contented or discontented, for any length of time, is determined by no one other than themselves.....

IMSMO, the interesting thing is not that everyone seems pretty much in agreement about the 10% of the population at either extreme, rich/poor, oppressed/empowered. life is good/life sucks, I'm OK/you suck, etc..... but watching the middle 80% shift their opinions and standards, regarding labeling themselves and others, and either causing the zeitgeist shift or in response to the shift in zeitgeist..... depending upon one's preferred outlook.

Once upon a time, the poor in America were hungry and emaciated, now they are obese! Is that not progress? Not if Bill Gates has a more sophisticated smart phone than the destitute!!!

Fred has the right to live a self-destructive lifestyle, or lobby politicians for favor, and those who are not yet born, too young to vote, or not Fred will get stuck with the tab! Is that not progress? Depends on whether you are Fred, not Fred, or Fred III.

Of course all non-Americans know that America is a monolithic country with a population 50 people living on 50 acres......right? just like Europe and Asia.....right?
And of course two Americans who have not spent 20 hours within 300 miles of each other over the last 30 years should have similar opinions on almost everything, right?

I'm always kind of amazed that people agree as much as they do on so many things, especially in this era of communications technology. Who ever thought that increased ease of communication would lead to greater agreement?

[Enki]

Continuous technological innovation is fuzzy apparently.

Ahh well.

[Simple Minded]

"Innovation" has always been a fuzzy concept. Otherwise, it would be status quo.

Come to think of it, the definition of the word "fuzzy" itself, is a bit um.... fuzzy!

So, are we making ... progress or not?