I think this is still not responsive to what I’ve been trying to say. Nowhere in this post or the one before have I claimed that today’s society is better morally, overall, compared to the past. I have simply reached out for reader intuitions that particular, specific changes really are best thought of as “progress”—largely to make the point that “progress” is a coherent concept, distinct from the passage of time.
I also haven’t said that I plan to defer to future Holden. I have instead asked: “What would a future Holden who has undertaken the sorts of activities I’d expect to lead to progress think?” (Not “What will future Holden think?”)
My question to you would be: do you think the changing norms about homosexuality, or any other change you can point to, represent something appropriately referred to as “progress,” with its positive connotation?
My claim is that some such changes (specifically including changing norms about homosexuality) do—not because today’s norms are today’s (today may be worse on other fronts, even worse overall), and not because there’s anything inevitable about progress, but simply because they seem to me like “progress,” by which I roughly (exclusively) mean that I endorse the change and am in the market for more changes like that to get ahead of.
Does that clarify at all? (And are there any changes in morality—historical or hypothetical—that you would consider “progress?”)
My apologies then; it’s likely I misinterpreted you. Perhaps we are on the same page.
My answer to your question depends on the definition of progress. I prefer to taboo the term and instead say the following:
When society or someone or whatever changes from A to B, and B is morally better than A, that’s a good change.
However, sometimes good changes are caused by processes that are not completely trustworthy/reliable. That is, sometimes it’s the case that a process causes a good change from situation A to B, but in some other situation C it will produce a bad change to D. The example on my mind most is the one I gave earlier—maybe the memetic evolution process is like this; selecting memes on the basis of how nice they sound produces some good changes A-->B (such as increased acceptance of homosexuality) but will also produce other bad changes C to D (I don’t have a particular example here but hopefully don’t need one; if you want I can try to come up with one.). Goodhart’s Curse weighs heavily on my mind; this pattern of optimization processes at first causing good changes and then later causing bad changes is so pervasive that we have a name for it!
I do believe in progress, in the following sense: There are processes which I trust / consider reliable / would defer to. If I learned that future-me or future-society had followed those processes and come to conclusion X, I would update heavily towards X. And I’m very excited to learn more about what the results of these processes will be so that I can update towards them.
I am skeptical of progress, in the following different sense: I consider it a wide-open question whether default memetic evolution among terrestrial humans (i.e. what’ll happen if we don’t build AGI and just let history continue as normal) is a process which I trust.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of clarity about what those trustworthy processes are exactly. Nor do I have a lot of clarity about what the actual causes of past moral changes were, such as acceptance of homosexuality. So I am pretty uncertain about which good changes in the past were caused by trustworthy processes and which weren’t. History is big; presumably both kinds exist.
I think this is still not responsive to what I’ve been trying to say. Nowhere in this post or the one before have I claimed that today’s society is better morally, overall, compared to the past. I have simply reached out for reader intuitions that particular, specific changes really are best thought of as “progress”—largely to make the point that “progress” is a coherent concept, distinct from the passage of time.
I also haven’t said that I plan to defer to future Holden. I have instead asked: “What would a future Holden who has undertaken the sorts of activities I’d expect to lead to progress think?” (Not “What will future Holden think?”)
My question to you would be: do you think the changing norms about homosexuality, or any other change you can point to, represent something appropriately referred to as “progress,” with its positive connotation?
My claim is that some such changes (specifically including changing norms about homosexuality) do—not because today’s norms are today’s (today may be worse on other fronts, even worse overall), and not because there’s anything inevitable about progress, but simply because they seem to me like “progress,” by which I roughly (exclusively) mean that I endorse the change and am in the market for more changes like that to get ahead of.
Does that clarify at all? (And are there any changes in morality—historical or hypothetical—that you would consider “progress?”)
My apologies then; it’s likely I misinterpreted you. Perhaps we are on the same page.
My answer to your question depends on the definition of progress. I prefer to taboo the term and instead say the following:
When society or someone or whatever changes from A to B, and B is morally better than A, that’s a good change.
However, sometimes good changes are caused by processes that are not completely trustworthy/reliable. That is, sometimes it’s the case that a process causes a good change from situation A to B, but in some other situation C it will produce a bad change to D. The example on my mind most is the one I gave earlier—maybe the memetic evolution process is like this; selecting memes on the basis of how nice they sound produces some good changes A-->B (such as increased acceptance of homosexuality) but will also produce other bad changes C to D (I don’t have a particular example here but hopefully don’t need one; if you want I can try to come up with one.). Goodhart’s Curse weighs heavily on my mind; this pattern of optimization processes at first causing good changes and then later causing bad changes is so pervasive that we have a name for it!
I do believe in progress, in the following sense: There are processes which I trust / consider reliable / would defer to. If I learned that future-me or future-society had followed those processes and come to conclusion X, I would update heavily towards X. And I’m very excited to learn more about what the results of these processes will be so that I can update towards them.
I am skeptical of progress, in the following different sense: I consider it a wide-open question whether default memetic evolution among terrestrial humans (i.e. what’ll happen if we don’t build AGI and just let history continue as normal) is a process which I trust.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of clarity about what those trustworthy processes are exactly. Nor do I have a lot of clarity about what the actual causes of past moral changes were, such as acceptance of homosexuality. So I am pretty uncertain about which good changes in the past were caused by trustworthy processes and which weren’t. History is big; presumably both kinds exist.