A few years ago I posted on Kevin Kelly on the Unabomber: The Unabomber’s manifesto … succinctly states … the view … that the greatest problems in the world are due not to individual inventions but to the entire self-supporting system of technology itself. … The technium also contains power to harm itself; because it is no longer regulated by either nature of humans, it could accelerate so fast as to extinguish itself. …
I agree. It offers the possibility rather than the inevitability. It is more likely if wealth is increasing, and less if decreasing even if the level is high.
"Could be said" in the sense of logically possible; not in the sense of empirically adequate. Technology is discrete; morality is diffuse. This isn't a logical truth; perhaps it's a biological truth. Technology is a near-mode product; morality a far-mode product.
I think the difference is that you are speaking of progress in the direction which you deem moral. I'm speaking of progression where the next step is determined by the human nature and the like; in so much as it is not completely random, there is progress along a path.
But note that this ambiguity doesn't pertain to technology, which distinction shows how it differs from morality.
Added Better knowledge can lead to better "morals." The official line on burning witches at the stake was that this could allow them to go to heaven, whereas otherwise they were condemned to hell. But knowledge doesn't have unidirectional effects on morality. Better knowledge also affords better methods of torture.
But same could be said about technology - the technologies are adopted by individuals, the progress of any note is very sporadic, and as for coincidence between socially and individually advantageous, the society is made of individuals who gain advantage over individuals from the other society.
I think the difference is that you are speaking of progress in the direction which you deem moral. I'm speaking of progression where the next step is determined by the human nature and the like; in so much as it is not completely random, there is progress along a path.
edit: also there's definitely some progress in how well moral principles can be processed. We look at witch burning, and we think, ohh, how immoral that was. Or even earlier, look at human sacrifices for the sake of good fortune. Burning someone alive for the sake of good luck. Look, these folks had some excuses to what they were doing, all the way back. Is it a stretch that as the languages and reasoning improves, the underlying moral principles, which stay largely the same, are followed through better ?
edit2:When we picture human sacrifices, maybe we picture evil contemporaries who in addition to doing very evil things, deliberately offend our sense of logic. But what if it was done largely by people who would genuinely not want to do something like that if it does not work or is otherwise not necessary? (Of course, chances are, someone did want to burn someone else, and came up with a way to get people to agree, but such 'leaders' are not representative of the society in general).
It is no different from any other progress, really. Progress in the stone tools for example - tools that are less preferred by humans end up replacing with the tools that are more preferred by humans...
I think I understand our difference. You see human societies as expressing a collective interest in developing their moralities. I see individuals adopting moralities that help them survive at a given level of technological development. These moralities have nothing to do with societal optimality: the sum of the most advantageous moralities for individuals will as often be a societally disadvantageous morality as an advantageous morality. There is no mechanism providing for automatic harmony between the moral requirements for individual survival and those for societal flourishing.
Put another way, in morality the externalities completely dominate. Whereas, the same tool developments are individually and socially advantageous (to a very rough first approximation).
Technological progress is constant; moral progress--so far in history--has been sporadic, historically accidental, and as likely to be reversed as to continue (Western civilization being a tiny slice of the human picture.) Societies built on slavery are a recent human development.
"Why? It seems like the contrary will happen; a few bright individuals will be capable of creating an enormous amount of value"
Will they, or will this line of thinking be unmasked as a series of fallacies? When even Forbes Magazine admits tournament theory plays a role in executive compensation and mathematicians write papers claiming management successes are usually down to luck, you know something is wrong. Anyway, what's our idea of labor value based on anyway? If it takes three times as much work to attach a lead component to a machine as it does to attach a gold component, does that mean that the guy who attaches the gold components is more valuable? The guy attaching the lead components works just as hard and smart and you need both to make the machine work.
"People have been predicting more leisure time since the industrial revolution. It hasn't panned out yet."
It has in many countries, but it took government regulations and unions to get there. The point is that the sentiments that gave rise to those regulations and unions will not go away in the future: when people notice their share of the wealth goes down faster than their share of the work they will get angry.
"One of the nice things about the modern age is that income seems at least a little more associated with ability. The rise of venture capital, IPOs, etc. has meant that one didn't need an aristocratic background to leverage a large business to success."
All aristocracies started out with commoner "entrepeneurs". Trust fund kids are just aristocracy under a different name. Even soicalized education can't stop aristocracies from forming, only a limit to the amount of wealth families can own and inherit could do that.
"I could see religion changing radically since much religion was crafted in response to extreme political repression. But psychologists have predicted the extinction of religion for nearly a century, based on the atheism of their colleagues. So far, if it's happened it's happened very slowly."
It seems you do not live in Europe (or China). Organized religion is almost gone over here, the United States are actually the exception.
I believe that's a fallacy: what historians mean by "better" is usually higher AVERAGE wealth, but in a society with a legal underclass that usually means greater economic inequality. You don't revolt if the king is just as poor as you are, because if even the king is poor then that means there's simply very little to go around (this is far more likely than the entire elite abstaining from wealth voluntarily), which means even poor people are getting their fair share in return for their contribution to society. Only when the elites start becoming richer do the poor revolt because then they can make the case that they are not getting their fair share and only then there is something to be gained from a revolt. Rome as awhole became fabulously wealthy through plunder, but that wealth didn't trickle down to the slaves.
The point is that there's a certain sequence of changes. Non moral societies have no qualms about false claims or pretences, inclusive of hypocrisy, and so they naturally get replaced by hypocritical societies - its totally free to invent morals and not follow them and thumb your nose at everyone else, people love doing that. Hypocritical societies, among other things, end up valuing consistency and valuing non-hypocrisy, and small decreases in hypocrisy win over - a little non hypocrisy ends up having very small cost but big signalling advantage in the sea of complete hypocrites. And so on.
It is no different from any other progress, really. Progress in the stone tools for example - tools that are less preferred by humans end up replacing with the tools that are more preferred by humans, in a gradual fashion of course (because nobody's going to be replacing their stone axe with an iphone, but an iphone 1 with iphone 2 they would).
Picture a ball rolling downhill. The ball doesn't know where it's rolling, it acts strictly based on the local conditions. We can look at it from the god's eye view, and say, ohh, this ball is rolling downhill (except occasionally it bounces uphill and so on). When we are that ball, we can't do this, we only know local conditions, we don't know where downhill is, but there's still a metric you can build out of state transitions, where we are rolling in some direction, we just don't know it.
"But then again technology is almost certainly objective, whereas you'd have a hard time convincing me that morality is."
If morality is in any way related to truth and we've demonstrated some ideas to be false which weren't previously known to be false have we become more moral?
I don't think it was 'blind' causality which produced a better outcome than conscious planning. It was adherence to fairly simple rules which allowed individuals to act autonomously, to be 'responsible' for their actions, to see that exchanges benefited both individuals, etc. This may not create an optimal situation, but it does create a situation which is remarkably dynamic, resilient, robust and capable of generating wealth rather than being incented to spend all advantages immediately.
At the end of the day, this is the root of the power of good religion; It encourages people to abide by such rules.
It also showed us that oppression wasn't what caused revolts. They didn't happen when things were worst for the oppressed, but when things started to get better.
"In the third age poverty and large economic differences won't exist anymore"
Why? It seems like the contrary will happen; a few bright individuals will be capable of creating an enormous amount of value while the value of manual labor will continue to decrease in value and perhaps fade entirely in the face of automation. Likely starvation, disease and material deprivation will disappear. But that can still happen in the face of increasing economic inequality. That's not automatically a dystopia.
People have been predicting more leisure time since the industrial revolution. It hasn't panned out yet.
One of the nice things about the modern age is that income seems at least a little more associated with ability. The rise of venture capital, IPOs, etc. has meant that one didn't need an aristocratic background to leverage a large business to success.
I could see religion changing radically since much religion was crafted in response to extreme political repression. But psychologists have predicted the extinction of religion for nearly a century, based on the atheism of their colleagues. So far, if it's happened it's happened very slowly. It's precarious to assume that everyone needs what our circle of friends need to be psychologically healthy.
That's a good question. I realize that there are parts of this question that I can't answer because I'm too close to the issue. But I think some portion of the response include things like power, survival and those things which are associated with these traits. We may not care if the future likes our music or honors us, but some might care if our family tree died out. This is not the ONLY thing that is important. I do think it's part of the equation. Many people are willing to defer gratification for the sake of their offspring (or maybe even strangers) having these things.
I'm pretty sure multiple dimensions don't make random walks any less random.
Well sure, there has to be some underlying cause - I was responding specifically to Doug.
I agree. It offers the possibility rather than the inevitability. It is more likely if wealth is increasing, and less if decreasing even if the level is high.
The "moral decay" of the Roman Empire occurred when it was prosperous, and it occurred among the rich.
Higher morality, it is true, is possible only with wealth. But wealth doesn't necessarily produce morality, and it hasn't so far in history.
But same could be said about technology...
"Could be said" in the sense of logically possible; not in the sense of empirically adequate. Technology is discrete; morality is diffuse. This isn't a logical truth; perhaps it's a biological truth. Technology is a near-mode product; morality a far-mode product.
I think the difference is that you are speaking of progress in the direction which you deem moral. I'm speaking of progression where the next step is determined by the human nature and the like; in so much as it is not completely random, there is progress along a path.
But note that this ambiguity doesn't pertain to technology, which distinction shows how it differs from morality.
Added Better knowledge can lead to better "morals." The official line on burning witches at the stake was that this could allow them to go to heaven, whereas otherwise they were condemned to hell. But knowledge doesn't have unidirectional effects on morality. Better knowledge also affords better methods of torture.
Case largely made, not to the point of my being confident in it, but to the point of my ceding the point.
But same could be said about technology - the technologies are adopted by individuals, the progress of any note is very sporadic, and as for coincidence between socially and individually advantageous, the society is made of individuals who gain advantage over individuals from the other society.
I think the difference is that you are speaking of progress in the direction which you deem moral. I'm speaking of progression where the next step is determined by the human nature and the like; in so much as it is not completely random, there is progress along a path.
edit: also there's definitely some progress in how well moral principles can be processed. We look at witch burning, and we think, ohh, how immoral that was. Or even earlier, look at human sacrifices for the sake of good fortune. Burning someone alive for the sake of good luck. Look, these folks had some excuses to what they were doing, all the way back. Is it a stretch that as the languages and reasoning improves, the underlying moral principles, which stay largely the same, are followed through better ?
edit2:When we picture human sacrifices, maybe we picture evil contemporaries who in addition to doing very evil things, deliberately offend our sense of logic. But what if it was done largely by people who would genuinely not want to do something like that if it does not work or is otherwise not necessary? (Of course, chances are, someone did want to burn someone else, and came up with a way to get people to agree, but such 'leaders' are not representative of the society in general).
It is no different from any other progress, really. Progress in the stone tools for example - tools that are less preferred by humans end up replacing with the tools that are more preferred by humans...
I think I understand our difference. You see human societies as expressing a collective interest in developing their moralities. I see individuals adopting moralities that help them survive at a given level of technological development. These moralities have nothing to do with societal optimality: the sum of the most advantageous moralities for individuals will as often be a societally disadvantageous morality as an advantageous morality. There is no mechanism providing for automatic harmony between the moral requirements for individual survival and those for societal flourishing.
Put another way, in morality the externalities completely dominate. Whereas, the same tool developments are individually and socially advantageous (to a very rough first approximation).
Technological progress is constant; moral progress--so far in history--has been sporadic, historically accidental, and as likely to be reversed as to continue (Western civilization being a tiny slice of the human picture.) Societies built on slavery are a recent human development.
"Why? It seems like the contrary will happen; a few bright individuals will be capable of creating an enormous amount of value"
Will they, or will this line of thinking be unmasked as a series of fallacies? When even Forbes Magazine admits tournament theory plays a role in executive compensation and mathematicians write papers claiming management successes are usually down to luck, you know something is wrong. Anyway, what's our idea of labor value based on anyway? If it takes three times as much work to attach a lead component to a machine as it does to attach a gold component, does that mean that the guy who attaches the gold components is more valuable? The guy attaching the lead components works just as hard and smart and you need both to make the machine work.
"People have been predicting more leisure time since the industrial revolution. It hasn't panned out yet."
It has in many countries, but it took government regulations and unions to get there. The point is that the sentiments that gave rise to those regulations and unions will not go away in the future: when people notice their share of the wealth goes down faster than their share of the work they will get angry.
"One of the nice things about the modern age is that income seems at least a little more associated with ability. The rise of venture capital, IPOs, etc. has meant that one didn't need an aristocratic background to leverage a large business to success."
All aristocracies started out with commoner "entrepeneurs". Trust fund kids are just aristocracy under a different name. Even soicalized education can't stop aristocracies from forming, only a limit to the amount of wealth families can own and inherit could do that.
"I could see religion changing radically since much religion was crafted in response to extreme political repression. But psychologists have predicted the extinction of religion for nearly a century, based on the atheism of their colleagues. So far, if it's happened it's happened very slowly."
It seems you do not live in Europe (or China). Organized religion is almost gone over here, the United States are actually the exception.
I believe that's a fallacy: what historians mean by "better" is usually higher AVERAGE wealth, but in a society with a legal underclass that usually means greater economic inequality. You don't revolt if the king is just as poor as you are, because if even the king is poor then that means there's simply very little to go around (this is far more likely than the entire elite abstaining from wealth voluntarily), which means even poor people are getting their fair share in return for their contribution to society. Only when the elites start becoming richer do the poor revolt because then they can make the case that they are not getting their fair share and only then there is something to be gained from a revolt. Rome as awhole became fabulously wealthy through plunder, but that wealth didn't trickle down to the slaves.
The point is that there's a certain sequence of changes. Non moral societies have no qualms about false claims or pretences, inclusive of hypocrisy, and so they naturally get replaced by hypocritical societies - its totally free to invent morals and not follow them and thumb your nose at everyone else, people love doing that. Hypocritical societies, among other things, end up valuing consistency and valuing non-hypocrisy, and small decreases in hypocrisy win over - a little non hypocrisy ends up having very small cost but big signalling advantage in the sea of complete hypocrites. And so on.
It is no different from any other progress, really. Progress in the stone tools for example - tools that are less preferred by humans end up replacing with the tools that are more preferred by humans, in a gradual fashion of course (because nobody's going to be replacing their stone axe with an iphone, but an iphone 1 with iphone 2 they would).
Picture a ball rolling downhill. The ball doesn't know where it's rolling, it acts strictly based on the local conditions. We can look at it from the god's eye view, and say, ohh, this ball is rolling downhill (except occasionally it bounces uphill and so on). When we are that ball, we can't do this, we only know local conditions, we don't know where downhill is, but there's still a metric you can build out of state transitions, where we are rolling in some direction, we just don't know it.
"But then again technology is almost certainly objective, whereas you'd have a hard time convincing me that morality is."
If morality is in any way related to truth and we've demonstrated some ideas to be false which weren't previously known to be false have we become more moral?
I don't think it was 'blind' causality which produced a better outcome than conscious planning. It was adherence to fairly simple rules which allowed individuals to act autonomously, to be 'responsible' for their actions, to see that exchanges benefited both individuals, etc. This may not create an optimal situation, but it does create a situation which is remarkably dynamic, resilient, robust and capable of generating wealth rather than being incented to spend all advantages immediately.
At the end of the day, this is the root of the power of good religion; It encourages people to abide by such rules.
It also showed us that oppression wasn't what caused revolts. They didn't happen when things were worst for the oppressed, but when things started to get better.
"In the third age poverty and large economic differences won't exist anymore"
Why? It seems like the contrary will happen; a few bright individuals will be capable of creating an enormous amount of value while the value of manual labor will continue to decrease in value and perhaps fade entirely in the face of automation. Likely starvation, disease and material deprivation will disappear. But that can still happen in the face of increasing economic inequality. That's not automatically a dystopia.
People have been predicting more leisure time since the industrial revolution. It hasn't panned out yet.
One of the nice things about the modern age is that income seems at least a little more associated with ability. The rise of venture capital, IPOs, etc. has meant that one didn't need an aristocratic background to leverage a large business to success.
I could see religion changing radically since much religion was crafted in response to extreme political repression. But psychologists have predicted the extinction of religion for nearly a century, based on the atheism of their colleagues. So far, if it's happened it's happened very slowly. It's precarious to assume that everyone needs what our circle of friends need to be psychologically healthy.
That's a good question. I realize that there are parts of this question that I can't answer because I'm too close to the issue. But I think some portion of the response include things like power, survival and those things which are associated with these traits. We may not care if the future likes our music or honors us, but some might care if our family tree died out. This is not the ONLY thing that is important. I do think it's part of the equation. Many people are willing to defer gratification for the sake of their offspring (or maybe even strangers) having these things.