There's a difference between tech changing, and the key tech tradeoffs changing. It might be that tech gets far more capable, and yet the key tradeoffs remain the same.
I see why you interpret the response to your final trade offs-values question as contra the canonical science fiction narrative, but I wonder if respondents agree. I imagine that if you asked whether values or technology change more in the long run, most would confirm science fiction; the connection between the two questions is the difficult-to-recognize logical step.
I'd say we mostly face the same sort of tradeoffs that we faced in computer design in 1990. I didn't mean to put much emphasis on the word "utopian"; if you don't like it substitute the word "simple" instead.
I wonder how illuminating these distinctions are. For instance, woukd you say we face fewer tradeoffs today in computer design than we did in 1990? Sure, we unambiguously are strictly more capable now than we were then but tradeoffs reflect tension between varioud kinds of optimization not how utopian/non-utopian the situation may happen to be.
Indeed, my sense is that the more utopian a scenario we consider the more tradeoffs since the worse things are the more narrow our concerns tend to be so we have less need to balance multiple values.
Ok, my bad I misinterpreted your use of utopian. Thanks for the correction.
There's a difference between tech changing, and the key tech tradeoffs changing. It might be that tech gets far more capable, and yet the key tradeoffs remain the same.
I see why you interpret the response to your final trade offs-values question as contra the canonical science fiction narrative, but I wonder if respondents agree. I imagine that if you asked whether values or technology change more in the long run, most would confirm science fiction; the connection between the two questions is the difficult-to-recognize logical step.
I'd say we mostly face the same sort of tradeoffs that we faced in computer design in 1990. I didn't mean to put much emphasis on the word "utopian"; if you don't like it substitute the word "simple" instead.
I wonder how illuminating these distinctions are. For instance, woukd you say we face fewer tradeoffs today in computer design than we did in 1990? Sure, we unambiguously are strictly more capable now than we were then but tradeoffs reflect tension between varioud kinds of optimization not how utopian/non-utopian the situation may happen to be.
Indeed, my sense is that the more utopian a scenario we consider the more tradeoffs since the worse things are the more narrow our concerns tend to be so we have less need to balance multiple values.