I realize that you did explicitly define “degeneration = moving away from ours” for the drifting values, but it feels weird to then also define “progress = moving away from ours in a good way”
If I decomposed a bit more, I’d say that we need to distinguish the values of others, and the state of the world, and whether things are moving towards our values, away from our values, or just drifting.
So “progress”, in the sense of my post, is composed of a) other people’s values moving towards our own, and b) the state of the world moving more towards our own preferences/values. “Moral degeneration”, on the other hand, is c) people’s values drift away from our own.
I see all three of these happening at once (along with, to some extent “the state of the world moving away from our values”, which is another category), so that’s why we see both progress and degeneration in the future.
If I decomposed a bit more, I’d say that we need to distinguish the values of others, and the state of the world, and whether things are moving towards our values, away from our values, or just drifting.
So “progress”, in the sense of my post, is composed of a) other people’s values moving towards our own, and b) the state of the world moving more towards our own preferences/values. “Moral degeneration”, on the other hand, is c) people’s values drift away from our own.
I see all three of these happening at once (along with, to some extent “the state of the world moving away from our values”, which is another category), so that’s why we see both progress and degeneration in the future.