I think for progress, the One Dial theory is not true. I think the One Dial theory sounds suspiciously like a story people tell themselves to justify feeling clever about doing the kind of dumb shouty things they accuse the unwashed masses of doing, which makes the One Dial theory a bit closer to being true—but it still isn’t true for something as broad as “progress”. It wasn’t even completely true for COVID either, but that’s a narrower topic already; and I’m convinced it went as it did not due to people being too stupid to appreciate more than one dial, but due to elites on both sides assuming they were and dumbing down their messages down to the point of wrongness. For example “MASKS DON’T WORK” instead of “we have a limited supply of masks and healthcare workers need them most so private citizens should make the sacrifices of only using homemade ones for now”, followed by “MASKS WORK” instead of “we don’t have full evidence but odds are that masks help based on pure mechanistic principles and right now really every infection prevented counts”, with contrarians now going “MASKS DON’T WORK” instead of “masks probably do something but no one has done studies meeting our ridiculously high standards in the middle of a pandemic and also even if you do tell people to wear masks at this point we’ve got them so confused they probably stopped giving a shit”.
For progress as a whole, though, we’ve absolutely turned the dial down on some things without affecting the others. These things weren’t always well chosen, but nevertheless, we didn’t stop all of technology when we slowed down nuclear power, or genetic engineering.
Also, as a whole, I’m going to say that if we’re really a species that is fundamentally unable to see progress on anything than a One Dial, then perhaps we really should turn that dial to Boo Progress. Because there’s no way we could handle it if it gets more and more powerful and dangerous; nuclear weapons are already headache enough. So that way lies us inevitably blowing ourselves up, sooner or later.
I think for progress, the One Dial theory is not true. I think the One Dial theory sounds suspiciously like a story people tell themselves to justify feeling clever about doing the kind of dumb shouty things they accuse the unwashed masses of doing, which makes the One Dial theory a bit closer to being true—but it still isn’t true for something as broad as “progress”. It wasn’t even completely true for COVID either, but that’s a narrower topic already; and I’m convinced it went as it did not due to people being too stupid to appreciate more than one dial, but due to elites on both sides assuming they were and dumbing down their messages down to the point of wrongness. For example “MASKS DON’T WORK” instead of “we have a limited supply of masks and healthcare workers need them most so private citizens should make the sacrifices of only using homemade ones for now”, followed by “MASKS WORK” instead of “we don’t have full evidence but odds are that masks help based on pure mechanistic principles and right now really every infection prevented counts”, with contrarians now going “MASKS DON’T WORK” instead of “masks probably do something but no one has done studies meeting our ridiculously high standards in the middle of a pandemic and also even if you do tell people to wear masks at this point we’ve got them so confused they probably stopped giving a shit”.
For progress as a whole, though, we’ve absolutely turned the dial down on some things without affecting the others. These things weren’t always well chosen, but nevertheless, we didn’t stop all of technology when we slowed down nuclear power, or genetic engineering.
Also, as a whole, I’m going to say that if we’re really a species that is fundamentally unable to see progress on anything than a One Dial, then perhaps we really should turn that dial to Boo Progress. Because there’s no way we could handle it if it gets more and more powerful and dangerous; nuclear weapons are already headache enough. So that way lies us inevitably blowing ourselves up, sooner or later.