Thank you for an interesting read, but I want to push back on one of your questions for 21st century progress.
Does progress benefit everyone? Does it do so in a fair and just way?
I think you have accurately described a thought pattern which makes some people sceptical of progress. (To be clear, I’m aware you probably don’t subscribe to this thought pattern yourself.) I also think that this question is deeply confused, and you can demonstrate that confusion just by replacing ‘progress’ with some specific good. It is better for progress theorists to dispel the confusion rather than politely agree with the importance of benefiting everyone.
We live in a world where a quarter of people don’t have access to toilets. If progress means that more people get toilets, this is good, even if it doesn’t benefit everyone. A world where 90% of people have toilets is just obviously better than a world where 75% of people have toilets.
Similarly a world where 90% of women had access to contraception would be obviously better than our world, where the proportion is again about 75%.
- I could go on: access to basic education, access to higher education, access to medicines, to electricity, to adequate housing…
I’m pretty sure that you agree with me about which world is better. I’m also pretty sure that the kind of people who ask ‘does progress benefit everyone?’ will agree with me if you use examples like the ones above. But if you replace [specific item] with ‘progress’, suddenly a certain type of commenter starts worrying that someone else might get rich. This isn’t a good argument, it’s a confusion. I suggest that progress theorists ought to try and dispel the confusion rather than pander to it.
I may be projecting here, but I suspect that the confusion comes from an implicit assumption of zero-sum behaviour: if someone is getting richer, someone else must be getting poorer. I would rather tackle that, or any other source of confusion, head on than quietly accept the question ‘does progress benefit everyone’ and then have to argue and make excuses for any kind of progress for which the answer is ‘it benefits some people’.
I was trying to write this list of “challenges” in a close to neutral way, and perhaps erring on the side of the progress skeptics.
For clarification, I’ll add:
not every specific advance has to benefit everyone
the sum total of progress does not have to benefit literally every last human before we judge it as good
the fact that many people are still in extreme poverty today is not an indictment of progress, considering the context that the number is decreasing
progress does not in my opinion have to benefit everyone equally (and I deliberately avoided phrasing the issue that way)
I do think that, if we lived in a world where progress had somehow accrued benefits to only a small elite, leaving most people as destitute as they were before 1800, even though everyone was participating in the system… well, at minimum that would raise a major eyebrow.
However, that’s not the world we live in—in my opinion, the benefits of progress have been shared broadly (if not evenly), and that’s a good thing.
I also think that this question is deeply confused
It is not. Whether or not it is well used, or applied where it is clearly important...
The critique also has a point.
Is everyone better off after understanding of nuclear physics advances? (And is that not progress?)
I bring this one up, because however ‘things have turned out today’, the concern that the world might come to an end...well, it’s not just an:
assumption of zero-sum behaviour
Aside from that:
If progress means that more people get toilets, this is good
all else being equal. If ‘progress’ mean less people get toilets, this is bad, all else being equal.
Sure, use specific standards.
Job loss and economic upheaval. As technology wrought its “creative destruction” in a capitalist economy, entire professions from blacksmiths to longshoremen became obsolete.
Putting aside issues this quote may have (a capitalist economy), maybe this did make it harder for people to buy toilets. ‘Progress’ (whether it should be called that) where some people are better off, and some people are worse off, can exist. If you decide the question of ‘are things better’ by examining that, and tallying up ‘are more people better of than worse off (ignoring magnitude for the moment)’ then it may no more be assumed that ‘progress is always good’, than that ‘progress is always bad’. And where ‘progress’ results in as many or more lose—say toilets—as gain, then this is, by your measure, not necessarily better, or is worse, respectively..
I think the concerns this article mentions may be worth addressing, not brushing aside.
Do I currently have to worry about nuclear apocalypse? Maybe not, or not a lot. That at some point, services I use will be disrupted by ransomware? A little bit. Hopefully that doesn’t get a lot of people in hospitals killed.
That being said, I haven’t responded to ransomware by saying “Progress has gone to far! The unification of software and cryptography has doomed us all!”
I’m using progress here as a stand-in for economic and scientific progress (which are not exactly the same thing but are closely linked so I’m going to continue conflating them). And the track record indicates that these things do almost always translate into more people get more nice things, be that toilets or education or anything else. (Digression: I highly recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling for a global perspective rather than the rich-country-centric one of most commenters here.) Yes, there are a small number of cases like nuclear physics where progress risks serious harm, but let’s deal with those on a case-by-case basis and not use it as a reason to slow down progress in general.
Re your concerns about job loss and structural upheaval, these are widely repeated in the press, but this is one of those cases where the press and elite narrative has detached from reality. The structure of jobs in the economy has been changing since the Industrial Revolution with workers moving from agriculture to manufacturing and later from manufacturing services. Jobs have been going obsolete for about as long as the modern concept of employment has existed. And the evidence is that the rate of structural change today is either normal vs history (the US) or slower than normal (the UK).
I only have the UK data to hand but try this research from the Resolution Foundation, especially the summary and the graph on page 25. Assuming you agree that historic jobs going obsolete was net beneficial (the alternative is freezing tech at some past state) then there is no reason to be more concerned about job loss today. There may be a future time where AI makes such progress that we do have to worry about mass job losses and how to handle that transition, but despite what the mainstream media thinks, we are not there yet.
I have a suspicion you and I would agree on most important points, we just have somewhat different preferred responses to a certain category of left-wing concerns.
I have a suspicion you and I would agree on most important points, we just have somewhat different preferred responses to a certain category of left-wing concerns.
Probably. I’m somewhat curious about what those concerns are.
I think rules around ‘intellectual property’ are an issue. How things are in the U.S. around say, insulin, and copyright (for instance around Disney)...overall, the U.S. government seems to be in the habit of creating monopolies. This seems bad for progress and, at least on the margin, it seems things could be improved if that was done less, and pushed back, rather than advanced. In other words, you could say I think more progress, full speed ahead, is the way to go.
The obvious ‘exception’ I see to this stuff like Global Warming (though clearly not an exception in that progress is also part of the obvious ways out here). In general, otherwise, tech/etc. seems to make everyone’s lives better. And the tech involved also does that, at the same time as causing other issues.
Yes, there are a small number of cases like nuclear physics where progress risks serious harm, but let’s deal with those on a case-by-case basis and not use it as a reason to slow down progress in general.
True. After thinking on it more, something like warfare in general seems more like the issue. (Although getting nukes, but not a lot of nuclear power seems like as loss.)
There are multiple meanings of “progress” afoot here. Tabooing the word, my reading of your point is “moving toward any specific imagined future state of the world we all agree is good is good, therefore moving forward is good”.
Thank you for an interesting read, but I want to push back on one of your questions for 21st century progress.
Does progress benefit everyone? Does it do so in a fair and just way?
I think you have accurately described a thought pattern which makes some people sceptical of progress. (To be clear, I’m aware you probably don’t subscribe to this thought pattern yourself.) I also think that this question is deeply confused, and you can demonstrate that confusion just by replacing ‘progress’ with some specific good. It is better for progress theorists to dispel the confusion rather than politely agree with the importance of benefiting everyone.
We live in a world where a quarter of people don’t have access to toilets. If progress means that more people get toilets, this is good, even if it doesn’t benefit everyone. A world where 90% of people have toilets is just obviously better than a world where 75% of people have toilets.
Similarly a world where 90% of women had access to contraception would be obviously better than our world, where the proportion is again about 75%.
- I could go on: access to basic education, access to higher education, access to medicines, to electricity, to adequate housing…
I’m pretty sure that you agree with me about which world is better. I’m also pretty sure that the kind of people who ask ‘does progress benefit everyone?’ will agree with me if you use examples like the ones above. But if you replace [specific item] with ‘progress’, suddenly a certain type of commenter starts worrying that someone else might get rich. This isn’t a good argument, it’s a confusion. I suggest that progress theorists ought to try and dispel the confusion rather than pander to it.
I may be projecting here, but I suspect that the confusion comes from an implicit assumption of zero-sum behaviour: if someone is getting richer, someone else must be getting poorer. I would rather tackle that, or any other source of confusion, head on than quietly accept the question ‘does progress benefit everyone’ and then have to argue and make excuses for any kind of progress for which the answer is ‘it benefits some people’.
Thanks. I basically agree with you.
I was trying to write this list of “challenges” in a close to neutral way, and perhaps erring on the side of the progress skeptics.
For clarification, I’ll add:
not every specific advance has to benefit everyone
the sum total of progress does not have to benefit literally every last human before we judge it as good
the fact that many people are still in extreme poverty today is not an indictment of progress, considering the context that the number is decreasing
progress does not in my opinion have to benefit everyone equally (and I deliberately avoided phrasing the issue that way)
I do think that, if we lived in a world where progress had somehow accrued benefits to only a small elite, leaving most people as destitute as they were before 1800, even though everyone was participating in the system… well, at minimum that would raise a major eyebrow.
However, that’s not the world we live in—in my opinion, the benefits of progress have been shared broadly (if not evenly), and that’s a good thing.
It is not. Whether or not it is well used, or applied where it is clearly important...
The critique also has a point.
Is everyone better off after understanding of nuclear physics advances? (And is that not progress?)
I bring this one up, because however ‘things have turned out today’, the concern that the world might come to an end...well, it’s not just an:
Aside from that:
all else being equal. If ‘progress’ mean less people get toilets, this is bad, all else being equal.
Sure, use specific standards.
Putting aside issues this quote may have (a capitalist economy), maybe this did make it harder for people to buy toilets. ‘Progress’ (whether it should be called that) where some people are better off, and some people are worse off, can exist. If you decide the question of ‘are things better’ by examining that, and tallying up ‘are more people better of than worse off (ignoring magnitude for the moment)’ then it may no more be assumed that ‘progress is always good’, than that ‘progress is always bad’. And where ‘progress’ results in as many or more lose—say toilets—as gain, then this is, by your measure, not necessarily better, or is worse, respectively..
I think the concerns this article mentions may be worth addressing, not brushing aside.
Do I currently have to worry about nuclear apocalypse? Maybe not, or not a lot. That at some point, services I use will be disrupted by ransomware? A little bit. Hopefully that doesn’t get a lot of people in hospitals killed.
That being said, I haven’t responded to ransomware by saying “Progress has gone to far! The unification of software and cryptography has doomed us all!”
I’m using progress here as a stand-in for economic and scientific progress (which are not exactly the same thing but are closely linked so I’m going to continue conflating them). And the track record indicates that these things do almost always translate into more people get more nice things, be that toilets or education or anything else. (Digression: I highly recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling for a global perspective rather than the rich-country-centric one of most commenters here.) Yes, there are a small number of cases like nuclear physics where progress risks serious harm, but let’s deal with those on a case-by-case basis and not use it as a reason to slow down progress in general.
Re your concerns about job loss and structural upheaval, these are widely repeated in the press, but this is one of those cases where the press and elite narrative has detached from reality. The structure of jobs in the economy has been changing since the Industrial Revolution with workers moving from agriculture to manufacturing and later from manufacturing services. Jobs have been going obsolete for about as long as the modern concept of employment has existed. And the evidence is that the rate of structural change today is either normal vs history (the US) or slower than normal (the UK).
I only have the UK data to hand but try this research from the Resolution Foundation, especially the summary and the graph on page 25. Assuming you agree that historic jobs going obsolete was net beneficial (the alternative is freezing tech at some past state) then there is no reason to be more concerned about job loss today. There may be a future time where AI makes such progress that we do have to worry about mass job losses and how to handle that transition, but despite what the mainstream media thinks, we are not there yet.
I have a suspicion you and I would agree on most important points, we just have somewhat different preferred responses to a certain category of left-wing concerns.
Probably. I’m somewhat curious about what those concerns are.
I think rules around ‘intellectual property’ are an issue. How things are in the U.S. around say, insulin, and copyright (for instance around Disney)...overall, the U.S. government seems to be in the habit of creating monopolies. This seems bad for progress and, at least on the margin, it seems things could be improved if that was done less, and pushed back, rather than advanced. In other words, you could say I think more progress, full speed ahead, is the way to go.
The obvious ‘exception’ I see to this stuff like Global Warming (though clearly not an exception in that progress is also part of the obvious ways out here). In general, otherwise, tech/etc. seems to make everyone’s lives better. And the tech involved also does that, at the same time as causing other issues.
True. After thinking on it more, something like warfare in general seems more like the issue. (Although getting nukes, but not a lot of nuclear power seems like as loss.)
There are multiple meanings of “progress” afoot here. Tabooing the word, my reading of your point is “moving toward any specific imagined future state of the world we all agree is good is good, therefore moving forward is good”.