So in the market for nice stuff that I’m most familiar with, newer is just straight-up better. I think that also holds true in other markets for products that a lot of people use regularly, such as computers and cars.
I agree. I don’t buy much cookware, and I was surprised to see Said Achmiz come up with so many good examples of cookware declining in quality.
I’d be interested in seeing how this compares to other markets. My guess is that cookware might fall on a rather extreme end of a spectrum, where on the other end we would see computer hardware and accessories, which has definitely not declined in quality.
… computer hardware and accessories, which has definitely not declined in quality
This is not my experience. I can easily provide examples from the computer hardware / accessory market where there’s been a decline in quality. (Three examples just off the top of my head: MacBook keyboards, buckling-spring desktop keyboards, and consumer-grade wireless routers.)
MacBook keyboards, buckling-spring desktop keyboards, and consumer-grade wireless routers.
These are strange things to cite. Keyboards are optimizing for something you clearly don’t want (cheapness for most keyboards, thinness for laptop keyboards, and fashion for anything from Apple), but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the “better” ones. Laptops with mechanical keyboards exist, they’re just not very popular: https://www.fifthgeek.com/laptops-with-mechanical-keyboards/
(I’m assuming you’re aware that mechanical desktop keyboards still exist)
I’m not sure what you’re talking about for consumer grade routers. According to this article, the WRT54G cost $199 in 2001 (~$300 today with inflation). For the same price today, I could buy a router that’s 20x faster, supports significantly more concurrent clients, has security that actually works, and is more stable (not to mention all the other bells and whistles new routers have, like how they almost all support printers and network storage).
These are strange things to cite. Keyboards are optimizing for something you clearly don’t want (cheapness for most keyboards, thinness for laptop keyboards, and fashion for anything from Apple), but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the “better” ones.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If this were the case, then either (a) MacBooks with significantly better keyboards than the current ones would never have existed (but in fact they very much did and I am typing on one right now), or, at the very least, (b) change in Apple laptop keyboards over time would’ve been monotonic in the direction of increasing thinness and cheapness and decreasing quality (but in fact nothing remotely like this is true).
Laptop keyboards need not be mechanical (in this sense) to be good, as demonstrated by the MacBook Pro on which I am typing this comment.
(I’m assuming you’re aware that mechanical desktop keyboards still exist)
I am aware. I do not particularly like modern mechanical keyboards, but I recognize that reasonable people can differ on this point.
But note that I did not say “mechanical desktop keyboards”. What I said was “buckling-spring desktop keyboards”—which also still exist, but they are of an inferior quality, because the plastic parts are molded using three-decade-old, worn-down tooling. No one is producing that manufacturing equipment anymore; no one is making new buckling-spring keyboards that match the build quality of the old ones (to say nothing of “better”).
I’m not sure what you’re talking about for consumer grade routers. …
I used a WRT54GL for a decade, and have owned three Archer C7/A7 boxes so far (as well as various other Linksys, TP-Link, and Netgear devices), so yes, I am familiar with the market. Merely citing the prices, speeds, and advertised features of the available router models is missing the point entirely—I am talking about quality, not modern-ness. However, I am not sure that this is a discussion I want to get into at this time.
I do not particularly like modern mechanical keyboards, but I recognize that reasonable people can differ on this point.
But note that I did not say “mechanical desktop keyboards”. What I said was “buckling-spring desktop keyboards”
To what extent do you think your argument is merely that “we don’t make the old stuff anymore” as opposed to “the new stuff is worse than the old stuff”?
Like, suppose instead of growing up with buckling-spring keyboards, you grew up with mechanical keyboards, which became obsolete with the release of buckling-spring keyboards. In that world, would we be having the same conversation about how they don’t make ’em like they used to, except in regards to the inferior buckling spring mechanism?
It’s well known that people are nostalgic about the past, and status-quo bias is well-documented. In what sense can you reasonably assert that the new stuff is worse rather than merely different? And what general measure would you propose to test this claim?
I didn’t grow up with buckling-spring keyboards. The first keyboard I owned was an AppleDesign Keyboard (beige, model M2980, non-mechanical, with the membrane-based design), which was of mediocre quality at best. I discovered mechanical keyboards (the older Apple Extended and Apple Extended II keyboards were the first I saw) later, and buckling-spring keyboards (the even older IBM Model M) even later. I didn’t get much of a chance to use a buckling-spring keyboard to type on until I had been using computers for many years. However, it was immediately obvious, at each stage of that discovery process, that mechanical keyboards were superior to non-mechanicals, and that buckling-spring keyboards even more so (for typing).
Similarly, the first laptop I owned was the original “Dual USB” white iBook. At around that time, I got a job in a small shop that sold and repaired Macs and other Apple products, and so, for about five years, I had the chance to test every Mac laptop, every Apple-made desktop keyboard, etc. I’ve also owned a succession of Apple laptops since then, culminating in the MacBook Pro whose specs I linked upthread. That first iBook’s keyboard was emphatically not the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used; actually, it was fairly bad. Apple’s laptop keyboards improved substantially over the years… and then, that trend reversed, quite dramatically.
So, you see, my view does not boil down to “nostalgia-tinted glasses”. And given my experience, I can confidently assert that the new stuff is worse than the old stuff.
(By the way… it is telling, I think, that you assumed that the older products whose quality I claimed to be superior were simply the things I’d grown up with, and had gotten used to—despite the fact that I have given no indication of this, no hint that this should be the case! Yet to you it seemed like an assumption so natural as to be made unconsciously. Does this not seem to you to be significant, to be indicative of something worth investigating further?)
Point taken. This is good evidence that you don’t have “nostalgia-tinted glasses” as you put it.
By the way… it is telling, I think, that you assumed that the older products whose quality I claimed to be superior were simply the things I’d grown up with, and had gotten used to—despite the fact that I have given no indication of this, no hint that this should be the case! [...]
Does this not seem to you to be significant, to be indicative of something worth investigating further?
I don’t know how old you are, but I referred to growing up in a more general sense, to mean that those things were around when you were a child. In context, it referred to a reversal of what had been the actual progression of technology. Of course, I’d agree it was an unwise choice of wording—more off-the-cuff than anything.
I don’t know what you mean by the last part. Perhaps you mean that I could have deep biases, blinding me from an objective analysis here. Can you clarify?
I don’t know what you mean by the last part. Perhaps you mean that I could have deep biases, blinding me from an objective analysis here. Can you clarify?
Sure. My meaning is perhaps essentially as you say, but with rather different emphasis. I do not think that it is terribly useful to look for personal biases here (and it seems unlikely that you should have any unique or unusual bias in this regard).
It seems more likely (or in any case it’s more fruitful to approach the matter thus) that the bias is “in the water”, so to speak. Neophilia (and its complement, which the internet informs me should be called ‘paliophobia’) is deeply ingrained in modern Western culture. The assumption of progress, too, is deeply ingrained (the OP is hardly making a novel or surprising argument, for instance). From this it follows that anyone who prefers the old to the new, in any context, cannot be doing so for any ‘rational’ reason. And thus when you hear that someone has this preference, you assume that it’s due to nostalgia, etc.
But the consequence of this is that it’s more difficult for you to notice cases where the old is better than the new. You see that someone prefers the old; you say “ah, mere nostalgia”; you therefore do not investigate the question of why they prefer the old to the new (and why would you, if you already have the answer?); and so you never get the chance to learn whether, in this case, the old is better, even if that is actually true.
Of course this is nothing but another of (as Eliezer once put it) the thousand faces of confirmation bias (and thus should not at all surprise us).
I apologize, by the way, for this blatant Bulverism. I don’t actually know, to any great degree of certainty, whether your views on this topic are informed largely (or even partially) by any bias of this kind! I am quite ready to accept a denial of any such fault in you, personally.
I only want to point out that it is a very common sort of distortion, easily discernible in many, many discussions like this. I’ve encountered it more times than I can count. I think that it’s very much worth being wary of it, and perhaps even worth making a special effort to counteract.
Neophilia (and its complement, which the internet informs me should be called ‘paliophobia’) is deeply ingrained in modern Western culture. The assumption of progress, too, is deeply ingrained (the OP is hardly making a novel or surprising argument, for instance).
Consider a few facts for a moment,
“In 1982, the second major study of [the hostile media effect] was undertaken; pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli students at Stanford University were shown the same news filmstrips pertaining to the then-recent Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese militia fighters abetted by the Israeli army in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. On a number of objective measures, both sides found that these identical news clips were slanted in favor of the other side.”
Economist Paul Krugman writes, “the obvious bias in things like acceptance of papers at major journals is towards, not against, a doctrinaire free-market view.” Whereas economist Bryan Caplan claims, “Even among economists, market-oriented policy prescriptions are often seen as too dogmatic.”
69 to 25 percent of Republicans and Democrats believe big tech is biased in favor of liberals, compared to 5 to 19 percent of Republicans and Democrats believing big tech is biased in favor of conservatives.
Now consider, regarding the assumption of progress,
In the United states, 41 percent believe that things are worse now than they were 50 years ago, compared to 37 percent who believe it is better. When you ask people about finances specifically, this goes to 45 percent compared to 32 percent compared to 20 years ago, with differences being larger in Greece, the UK, Italy, France and Spain—nations traditionally considered at the heart of Western culture.
“More than two-thirds (68%) of U.S. respondents said they think today’s children will be financially worse off as adults than their parents, up from 60% in 2019. Only 32% think children will be better off.” Source.
In 2017, “Four in ten Americans (39%) think the odds that global warming will cause humans to become extinct are 50% or higher.”
I’m sure you’re familiar with these types of facts. I could continue with them, but I don’t think it’s necessary to add much more for the point I’m trying to make.
The first set of facts, I believe, collectively implies that people are not consistently able to read whether a particular culture is actually biased in the way they claim. Often, an accusation of bias reveals the opposite: namely that the speaker is biased themselves.
The interpretation of bias comes from the fact that the world is not far enough in the direction of how the speaker wants it to be, even if it is indeed quite far. It’s easier to see the biases in other people than to see the biases in yourself. Hence how you can get Paul Krugman writing about how market fundamentalism rules his field, all the while his own Nobel Prize speaks to the opposite truth.
I’m not just accusing you of just the same thing. I do suspect that you are doing something like the equivalent of what Paul Krugman does, as your top comment is currently upvoted more highly than the post itself. But this is not the entirety of my objection.
Instead I’d just ask you to consider as a test of your thesis, to propose an actual general measure for progress in consumer goods.
Imagine a world in which, over time, we expect 15% of things to get worse and 85% of things to get better. In such a world, one could spend an inordinate amount of time finding example after example of things that have gotten worse, because there are a lot of consumer goods. But that would prove approximately nothing, as it would ignore the 85% of goods that got better.
I understand that such a measure would be difficult to construct. The inherent subjectivity of the subject is what makes it difficult. But, perhaps as Richard Feynman once said, “‘Oh you’re dealing with psychological matters. These things can’t be defined so precisely.’ Yes, but then you can’t claim to know anything about it.”
Hang on, though. Before I respond to the rest of your comment, I want to point out that the second set of bullet points you list do not have anything at all to do with what I am talking about. You see that, yes? (Or were those points not meant to be responsive to the quoted bit from my comment? But in that case, what is their significance…?)
Before I respond to the rest of your comment, I want to point out that the second set of bullet points you list do not have anything at all to do with what I am talking about. You see that, yes?
You stated,
The assumption of progress, too, is deeply ingrained (the OP is hardly making a novel or surprising argument, for instance).
I interpreted the assumption of progress as referring to one of these two possibilities,
The world has gotten better
The world will get better in the future
This makes a lot of sense considering Jason Crawford’s other posts.
My first bullet point addresses the first interpretation. It points out that the assumption of progress is not “deeply ingrained” as you claimed. It seems more that about half of people, or less, believe that the world has gotten better.
My other two bullet points address the second interpretation of the assumption of progress.
Neither of those interpretations are (a) what I meant, nor (b) entailed by the OP.
There are also several other serious problems with the points you made, having to do with their provenance, the possibility of sensibly interpreting them, etc.
However, I’m afraid I am becoming increasingly uncertain that it’s productive to continue this conversation…
I am interested in a direct way of testing this hypothesis. The part about the assumption of progress was a minor digression. I hope you will understand.
The specific aim I had was to dispel the objection that I was merely biased. I may be biased. In fact, I probably am. But these sorts of arguments don’t normally lead anywhere. People pick “sides” and accuse the other side of being biased. But, as you wrote yourself, what matters is what’s actually true.
There will of course be a few examples of declining progress in any domain. But it would take a ton of evidence to convince me that there’s been a general decline in the quality in computer hardware, given the mountains of evidence otherwise.
First—why, actually, should there be “a few examples of declining progress”? We accept this as normal, but why? It doesn’t seem to me to be what we’d expect, on the basis of the naive view of free-market capitalism and so on. At the least, such phenomena (especially if they’re so ubiquitous as to merit an “of course”!) seem like puzzles that we need to explain.
Second—I do have quite a lot of evidence for my view, of course. (I don’t think it’s worthwhile to present it here in this comment thread, though. But I’ll give some thought to the best way to organize my thoughts on this, and perhaps we might return to it.)
Third—I don’t, actually, think that we have “mountains of evidence” for the contrary (i.e., mainstream) view. I entirely understand why you say that we do, and I readily admit that it is indeed the mainstream consensus that we do, indeed, have these “mountains”, but I think that belief about how much evidence we have (for the “progress-affirming view”) is mistaken.
Clearly, that third point is entirely non-obvious, and demands justification. I am, at this time, not providing any such thing. I say this only to make known the general shape of my position—without, for the moment, defending it.
First—why, actually, should there be “a few examples of declining progress”?… It doesn’t seem to me to be what we’d expect, on the basis of the naive view of free-market capitalism and so on.
Well, the answer’s obvious, no? The naive view is wrong.
Economists have studied ways how markets don’t reflect consumer preferences for decades. There are reasonable people on both sides: some people say that these failures are exaggerated, and some say that they haven’t been emphasized enough. But I haven’t seen many respectable economists argue that the market always and uniformly reflects the needs of fully informed consumers.
Here’s one example of Tyler Cowen, a pro-market economist, talking about planned obsolescence. Or you can read his book in which he claims that progress in consumer goods has been unimpressive recently.
As you fully admitted, you are not providing the full evidence for your claim about computer hardware, and so I cannot meaningfully evaluate it.
However, I should note that such debate often draw people into intense, but rather fruitless disputes over definitions. What does progress mean? How can we judge the quality of a consumer good from an objective point of view?
I don’t mean to downplay the strength of the examples you pointed to. I think they’re actually rather fascinating. But, if we were to continue the debate further, I would wish to caution you about the following.
I have now been in many similar debates about “progress” with people before, and it seems that one or both sides will often merely assert an “obvious” benchmark for progress. Yet this obvious benchmark usually seems oddly ad-hoc and, uncharitably, appears to be chosen deliberately to make the speaker’s thesis look correct. Alternative benchmarks, which to others seem profoundly important, get handwaved away as “not ultimately meaningful” by the other side, and vice versa.
I think ultimately a lot of this comes down to simple differences in preferences. People often just disagree about what’s considered “good” and that’s OK; not unexpected at all. A diversity of opinion about whether something is “better” than another thing is pretty much exactly what I’d expect, given the diversity of human thoughts, feelings, and values.
I agree. I don’t buy much cookware, and I was surprised to see Said Achmiz come up with so many good examples of cookware declining in quality.
I’d be interested in seeing how this compares to other markets. My guess is that cookware might fall on a rather extreme end of a spectrum, where on the other end we would see computer hardware and accessories, which has definitely not declined in quality.
This is not my experience. I can easily provide examples from the computer hardware / accessory market where there’s been a decline in quality. (Three examples just off the top of my head: MacBook keyboards, buckling-spring desktop keyboards, and consumer-grade wireless routers.)
These are strange things to cite. Keyboards are optimizing for something you clearly don’t want (cheapness for most keyboards, thinness for laptop keyboards, and fashion for anything from Apple), but that doesn’t mean you can’t get the “better” ones. Laptops with mechanical keyboards exist, they’re just not very popular: https://www.fifthgeek.com/laptops-with-mechanical-keyboards/
(I’m assuming you’re aware that mechanical desktop keyboards still exist)
I’m not sure what you’re talking about for consumer grade routers. According to this article, the WRT54G cost $199 in 2001 (~$300 today with inflation). For the same price today, I could buy a router that’s 20x faster, supports significantly more concurrent clients, has security that actually works, and is more stable (not to mention all the other bells and whistles new routers have, like how they almost all support printers and network storage).
Or I could get a router that’s only 10x faster than the WRT54G (and has security that actually works, etc.) for $60.
Or I could get a low-end enterprise router for $300 if I care about enterprisey features more than raw speed.
I’m sorry, but this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. If this were the case, then either (a) MacBooks with significantly better keyboards than the current ones would never have existed (but in fact they very much did and I am typing on one right now), or, at the very least, (b) change in Apple laptop keyboards over time would’ve been monotonic in the direction of increasing thinness and cheapness and decreasing quality (but in fact nothing remotely like this is true).
Laptop keyboards need not be mechanical (in this sense) to be good, as demonstrated by the MacBook Pro on which I am typing this comment.
I am aware. I do not particularly like modern mechanical keyboards, but I recognize that reasonable people can differ on this point.
But note that I did not say “mechanical desktop keyboards”. What I said was “buckling-spring desktop keyboards”—which also still exist, but they are of an inferior quality, because the plastic parts are molded using three-decade-old, worn-down tooling. No one is producing that manufacturing equipment anymore; no one is making new buckling-spring keyboards that match the build quality of the old ones (to say nothing of “better”).
I used a WRT54GL for a decade, and have owned three Archer C7/A7 boxes so far (as well as various other Linksys, TP-Link, and Netgear devices), so yes, I am familiar with the market. Merely citing the prices, speeds, and advertised features of the available router models is missing the point entirely—I am talking about quality, not modern-ness. However, I am not sure that this is a discussion I want to get into at this time.
To what extent do you think your argument is merely that “we don’t make the old stuff anymore” as opposed to “the new stuff is worse than the old stuff”?
Like, suppose instead of growing up with buckling-spring keyboards, you grew up with mechanical keyboards, which became obsolete with the release of buckling-spring keyboards. In that world, would we be having the same conversation about how they don’t make ’em like they used to, except in regards to the inferior buckling spring mechanism?
It’s well known that people are nostalgic about the past, and status-quo bias is well-documented. In what sense can you reasonably assert that the new stuff is worse rather than merely different? And what general measure would you propose to test this claim?
I didn’t grow up with buckling-spring keyboards. The first keyboard I owned was an AppleDesign Keyboard (beige, model M2980, non-mechanical, with the membrane-based design), which was of mediocre quality at best. I discovered mechanical keyboards (the older Apple Extended and Apple Extended II keyboards were the first I saw) later, and buckling-spring keyboards (the even older IBM Model M) even later. I didn’t get much of a chance to use a buckling-spring keyboard to type on until I had been using computers for many years. However, it was immediately obvious, at each stage of that discovery process, that mechanical keyboards were superior to non-mechanicals, and that buckling-spring keyboards even more so (for typing).
Similarly, the first laptop I owned was the original “Dual USB” white iBook. At around that time, I got a job in a small shop that sold and repaired Macs and other Apple products, and so, for about five years, I had the chance to test every Mac laptop, every Apple-made desktop keyboard, etc. I’ve also owned a succession of Apple laptops since then, culminating in the MacBook Pro whose specs I linked upthread. That first iBook’s keyboard was emphatically not the best laptop keyboard I’ve ever used; actually, it was fairly bad. Apple’s laptop keyboards improved substantially over the years… and then, that trend reversed, quite dramatically.
So, you see, my view does not boil down to “nostalgia-tinted glasses”. And given my experience, I can confidently assert that the new stuff is worse than the old stuff.
(By the way… it is telling, I think, that you assumed that the older products whose quality I claimed to be superior were simply the things I’d grown up with, and had gotten used to—despite the fact that I have given no indication of this, no hint that this should be the case! Yet to you it seemed like an assumption so natural as to be made unconsciously. Does this not seem to you to be significant, to be indicative of something worth investigating further?)
Point taken. This is good evidence that you don’t have “nostalgia-tinted glasses” as you put it.
I don’t know how old you are, but I referred to growing up in a more general sense, to mean that those things were around when you were a child. In context, it referred to a reversal of what had been the actual progression of technology. Of course, I’d agree it was an unwise choice of wording—more off-the-cuff than anything.
I don’t know what you mean by the last part. Perhaps you mean that I could have deep biases, blinding me from an objective analysis here. Can you clarify?
Sure. My meaning is perhaps essentially as you say, but with rather different emphasis. I do not think that it is terribly useful to look for personal biases here (and it seems unlikely that you should have any unique or unusual bias in this regard).
It seems more likely (or in any case it’s more fruitful to approach the matter thus) that the bias is “in the water”, so to speak. Neophilia (and its complement, which the internet informs me should be called ‘paliophobia’) is deeply ingrained in modern Western culture. The assumption of progress, too, is deeply ingrained (the OP is hardly making a novel or surprising argument, for instance). From this it follows that anyone who prefers the old to the new, in any context, cannot be doing so for any ‘rational’ reason. And thus when you hear that someone has this preference, you assume that it’s due to nostalgia, etc.
But the consequence of this is that it’s more difficult for you to notice cases where the old is better than the new. You see that someone prefers the old; you say “ah, mere nostalgia”; you therefore do not investigate the question of why they prefer the old to the new (and why would you, if you already have the answer?); and so you never get the chance to learn whether, in this case, the old is better, even if that is actually true.
Of course this is nothing but another of (as Eliezer once put it) the thousand faces of confirmation bias (and thus should not at all surprise us).
I apologize, by the way, for this blatant Bulverism. I don’t actually know, to any great degree of certainty, whether your views on this topic are informed largely (or even partially) by any bias of this kind! I am quite ready to accept a denial of any such fault in you, personally.
I only want to point out that it is a very common sort of distortion, easily discernible in many, many discussions like this. I’ve encountered it more times than I can count. I think that it’s very much worth being wary of it, and perhaps even worth making a special effort to counteract.
Consider a few facts for a moment,
“In 1982, the second major study of [the hostile media effect] was undertaken; pro-Palestinian students and pro-Israeli students at Stanford University were shown the same news filmstrips pertaining to the then-recent Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese militia fighters abetted by the Israeli army in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. On a number of objective measures, both sides found that these identical news clips were slanted in favor of the other side.”
Economist Paul Krugman writes, “the obvious bias in things like acceptance of papers at major journals is towards, not against, a doctrinaire free-market view.” Whereas economist Bryan Caplan claims, “Even among economists, market-oriented policy prescriptions are often seen as too dogmatic.”
69 to 25 percent of Republicans and Democrats believe big tech is biased in favor of liberals, compared to 5 to 19 percent of Republicans and Democrats believing big tech is biased in favor of conservatives.
Now consider, regarding the assumption of progress,
In the United states, 41 percent believe that things are worse now than they were 50 years ago, compared to 37 percent who believe it is better. When you ask people about finances specifically, this goes to 45 percent compared to 32 percent compared to 20 years ago, with differences being larger in Greece, the UK, Italy, France and Spain—nations traditionally considered at the heart of Western culture.
“More than two-thirds (68%) of U.S. respondents said they think today’s children will be financially worse off as adults than their parents, up from 60% in 2019. Only 32% think children will be better off.” Source.
In 2017, “Four in ten Americans (39%) think the odds that global warming will cause humans to become extinct are 50% or higher.”
I’m sure you’re familiar with these types of facts. I could continue with them, but I don’t think it’s necessary to add much more for the point I’m trying to make.
The first set of facts, I believe, collectively implies that people are not consistently able to read whether a particular culture is actually biased in the way they claim. Often, an accusation of bias reveals the opposite: namely that the speaker is biased themselves.
The interpretation of bias comes from the fact that the world is not far enough in the direction of how the speaker wants it to be, even if it is indeed quite far. It’s easier to see the biases in other people than to see the biases in yourself. Hence how you can get Paul Krugman writing about how market fundamentalism rules his field, all the while his own Nobel Prize speaks to the opposite truth.
I’m not just accusing you of just the same thing. I do suspect that you are doing something like the equivalent of what Paul Krugman does, as your top comment is currently upvoted more highly than the post itself. But this is not the entirety of my objection.
Instead I’d just ask you to consider as a test of your thesis, to propose an actual general measure for progress in consumer goods.
Imagine a world in which, over time, we expect 15% of things to get worse and 85% of things to get better. In such a world, one could spend an inordinate amount of time finding example after example of things that have gotten worse, because there are a lot of consumer goods. But that would prove approximately nothing, as it would ignore the 85% of goods that got better.
I understand that such a measure would be difficult to construct. The inherent subjectivity of the subject is what makes it difficult. But, perhaps as Richard Feynman once said, “‘Oh you’re dealing with psychological matters. These things can’t be defined so precisely.’ Yes, but then you can’t claim to know anything about it.”
Hang on, though. Before I respond to the rest of your comment, I want to point out that the second set of bullet points you list do not have anything at all to do with what I am talking about. You see that, yes? (Or were those points not meant to be responsive to the quoted bit from my comment? But in that case, what is their significance…?)
You stated,
I interpreted the assumption of progress as referring to one of these two possibilities,
The world has gotten better
The world will get better in the future
This makes a lot of sense considering Jason Crawford’s other posts.
My first bullet point addresses the first interpretation. It points out that the assumption of progress is not “deeply ingrained” as you claimed. It seems more that about half of people, or less, believe that the world has gotten better.
My other two bullet points address the second interpretation of the assumption of progress.
Neither of those interpretations are (a) what I meant, nor (b) entailed by the OP.
There are also several other serious problems with the points you made, having to do with their provenance, the possibility of sensibly interpreting them, etc.
However, I’m afraid I am becoming increasingly uncertain that it’s productive to continue this conversation…
Look, forget the specific bullet points for now.
I am interested in a direct way of testing this hypothesis. The part about the assumption of progress was a minor digression. I hope you will understand.
The specific aim I had was to dispel the objection that I was merely biased. I may be biased. In fact, I probably am. But these sorts of arguments don’t normally lead anywhere. People pick “sides” and accuse the other side of being biased. But, as you wrote yourself, what matters is what’s actually true.
There will of course be a few examples of declining progress in any domain. But it would take a ton of evidence to convince me that there’s been a general decline in the quality in computer hardware, given the mountains of evidence otherwise.
Well, there’s a couple of things to say here.
First—why, actually, should there be “a few examples of declining progress”? We accept this as normal, but why? It doesn’t seem to me to be what we’d expect, on the basis of the naive view of free-market capitalism and so on. At the least, such phenomena (especially if they’re so ubiquitous as to merit an “of course”!) seem like puzzles that we need to explain.
Second—I do have quite a lot of evidence for my view, of course. (I don’t think it’s worthwhile to present it here in this comment thread, though. But I’ll give some thought to the best way to organize my thoughts on this, and perhaps we might return to it.)
Third—I don’t, actually, think that we have “mountains of evidence” for the contrary (i.e., mainstream) view. I entirely understand why you say that we do, and I readily admit that it is indeed the mainstream consensus that we do, indeed, have these “mountains”, but I think that belief about how much evidence we have (for the “progress-affirming view”) is mistaken.
Clearly, that third point is entirely non-obvious, and demands justification. I am, at this time, not providing any such thing. I say this only to make known the general shape of my position—without, for the moment, defending it.
Well, the answer’s obvious, no? The naive view is wrong.
Economists have studied ways how markets don’t reflect consumer preferences for decades. There are reasonable people on both sides: some people say that these failures are exaggerated, and some say that they haven’t been emphasized enough. But I haven’t seen many respectable economists argue that the market always and uniformly reflects the needs of fully informed consumers.
Here’s one example of Tyler Cowen, a pro-market economist, talking about planned obsolescence. Or you can read his book in which he claims that progress in consumer goods has been unimpressive recently.
As you fully admitted, you are not providing the full evidence for your claim about computer hardware, and so I cannot meaningfully evaluate it.
However, I should note that such debate often draw people into intense, but rather fruitless disputes over definitions. What does progress mean? How can we judge the quality of a consumer good from an objective point of view?
I don’t mean to downplay the strength of the examples you pointed to. I think they’re actually rather fascinating. But, if we were to continue the debate further, I would wish to caution you about the following.
I have now been in many similar debates about “progress” with people before, and it seems that one or both sides will often merely assert an “obvious” benchmark for progress. Yet this obvious benchmark usually seems oddly ad-hoc and, uncharitably, appears to be chosen deliberately to make the speaker’s thesis look correct. Alternative benchmarks, which to others seem profoundly important, get handwaved away as “not ultimately meaningful” by the other side, and vice versa.
I think ultimately a lot of this comes down to simple differences in preferences. People often just disagree about what’s considered “good” and that’s OK; not unexpected at all. A diversity of opinion about whether something is “better” than another thing is pretty much exactly what I’d expect, given the diversity of human thoughts, feelings, and values.