I’m broadly supportive, but I also have a similar reaction to the other comments. I’m not really sure who would change their mind upon reading this book.
Or, to put it another way: I think the most important input into intellectual work is choosing the right opponents. If you want to push the intellectual frontier, you should choose the intellectually strongest opponents. (My own take on techno-humanism sets it up in contrast to a worthy opponent: classic techno-optimism. I’d be curious to hear what your sense of the distinction between them is.) Whereas if you want to win converts, you should choose the most popular opponents. But I don’t get the sense that this book really has any opponents. Yes, many people will disagree with it—but that’s different from the book actually taking them on directly. E.g. the degrowth people will hate this book, but this book is not a deconstruction of degrowthism. Probably woke people will also dislike this book, but neither is it a deconstruction of wokism.
I get the sense that you’re deliberately choosing to make the book a little on the anodyne side in order for it to serve as a foundational text for the progress movement. But I actually think that, if you’re aiming to be a foundational text, you should do the opposite. Movements are founded by books that go in all guns blazing. Think of Das Kapital—this is Marx setting up capitalism as his foe, then taking an axe to it. Or The Second Sex, or The Road to Serfdom, or Where’s My Flying Car?, or even the Sequences. Foundational texts are polemics; they have a fire in them. (Possible counterexamples: I haven’t read On Liberty or A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, maybe they’re a bit more chill?)
And there’s plenty of stuff to be fired up about! The FDA is killing millions; the NIMBYs are strangling the entire western world; the environmentalists are absolutely wrecking any project that has the faintest hope of helping the environment. If you want people to care about progress studies, first get them fired up about how crazy the situation is, and give them a diagnosis of what’s going wrong, and only then bring in the abstract philosophy, and the history. Anyone who used to be (or still is?) an objectivist is definitely disagreeable enough to do this; I’d be excited to see you give it a real shot.
I’m broadly supportive, but I also have a similar reaction to the other comments. I’m not really sure who would change their mind upon reading this book.
Or, to put it another way: I think the most important input into intellectual work is choosing the right opponents. If you want to push the intellectual frontier, you should choose the intellectually strongest opponents. (My own take on techno-humanism sets it up in contrast to a worthy opponent: classic techno-optimism. I’d be curious to hear what your sense of the distinction between them is.) Whereas if you want to win converts, you should choose the most popular opponents. But I don’t get the sense that this book really has any opponents. Yes, many people will disagree with it—but that’s different from the book actually taking them on directly. E.g. the degrowth people will hate this book, but this book is not a deconstruction of degrowthism. Probably woke people will also dislike this book, but neither is it a deconstruction of wokism.
I get the sense that you’re deliberately choosing to make the book a little on the anodyne side in order for it to serve as a foundational text for the progress movement. But I actually think that, if you’re aiming to be a foundational text, you should do the opposite. Movements are founded by books that go in all guns blazing. Think of Das Kapital—this is Marx setting up capitalism as his foe, then taking an axe to it. Or The Second Sex, or The Road to Serfdom, or Where’s My Flying Car?, or even the Sequences. Foundational texts are polemics; they have a fire in them. (Possible counterexamples: I haven’t read On Liberty or A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, maybe they’re a bit more chill?)
And there’s plenty of stuff to be fired up about! The FDA is killing millions; the NIMBYs are strangling the entire western world; the environmentalists are absolutely wrecking any project that has the faintest hope of helping the environment. If you want people to care about progress studies, first get them fired up about how crazy the situation is, and give them a diagnosis of what’s going wrong, and only then bring in the abstract philosophy, and the history. Anyone who used to be (or still is?) an objectivist is definitely disagreeable enough to do this; I’d be excited to see you give it a real shot.
I don’t intend to write something anodyne, and don’t think I am doing so. Let me know what you think once I’m at least a few chapters in.