What if the true source of progress is people becoming nicer? (OK, I am just trying to be a contrarian here, but in the opposite direction of the usual.) Catholics and Protestants getting tired of killing each other, agreeing on “live and let live”, and maybe let Jews live too, and heck… we might also let the nerds live.
And now people spend more time inventing and discussing their inventions (no one will report you to inquisition just because you said something about atoms), and who knows with some luck it might become a source of income (because people will not immediately steal your inventions, either to destroy them or to sell them as their own). -- Hey, I am not saying that people were super nice centuries ago; just more nice than even more centuries ago.
To put it more “mathematically”, when people get nicer, some of the energy they previously spent on hurting each other gets redirected to other purposes, and that includes progress.
If there is more stuff, there is less reason to fight over it.
There will be less fighting for material reasons, but other reasons exist too. Some people never have enough. But maybe those who have enough can sometimes coordinate to stop them.
What if the true source of progress is people becoming nicer? (OK, I am just trying to be a contrarian here, but in the opposite direction of the usual.) Catholics and Protestants getting tired of killing each other, agreeing on “live and let live”, and maybe let Jews live too, and heck… we might also let the nerds live.
And now people spend more time inventing and discussing their inventions (no one will report you to inquisition just because you said something about atoms), and who knows with some luck it might become a source of income (because people will not immediately steal your inventions, either to destroy them or to sell them as their own). -- Hey, I am not saying that people were super nice centuries ago; just more nice than even more centuries ago.
To put it more “mathematically”, when people get nicer, some of the energy they previously spent on hurting each other gets redirected to other purposes, and that includes progress.
What if the true cause of people becoming nicer is material progress? If there is more stuff, there is less reason to fight over it.
There will be less fighting for material reasons, but other reasons exist too. Some people never have enough. But maybe those who have enough can sometimes coordinate to stop them.
I suspect there is actually a reciprocal relationship, not simply one-way causation.