Thread by @IntuitMachine

It is a common belief that human civilization evolution is predominantly influenced by the religious and philosophical ideas of the past. I don't think this is true, civilization is influenced by technology. Let me explain.

Technology influences the direction of civilization because we are 'forced' to adopt it. We adopt technology because it is useful. We adopt it regardless of our religious or philosophical biases.

The Amish, as part of their religion. deliberately avoid modern technologies. With the exception, however, if it is used for work. So it is not uncommon to see them with smartphones and credit card readers to facilitate their commerce.

At the end of World War 2, the centralized control economy of communist USSR was at par with the USA. But as technology advanced and became more complex, their economies could not keep up technologically. It all collapsed in the 1990s.

That's because people will vote with their feet. Politics or religion be damned. Humans will use whatever tool they will find useful for their own wellbeing. So if masks and vaccines keep you alive then the hell with politics. Let the zealots die clinging to their beliefs.

Humans frame their explanations based on the models they've learned. We gravitate towards Adam Smith or Karl Marx as models of societies. We imagine the world being driven around the decisions in the political sphere. But is this not all just a cognitive facade?

What actually changes the world are the multitude of technologies that have come into ubiquitous use. Human minds are influenced more by technology than any philosophy or religion. That is because technology is undeniably useful and what is useful is an objective truth.

I will be in error if I don't recognize religion and philosophy as a kind of technology. However, there is a difference between technology that you can replicate and technology that places the burden of interpretation on the user.

It is often the case that religions attempt to solve this 'replication crisis' by demanding a literal interpretation of their religious text. That goes downhill very quickly when inconsistencies with reality become conspicuous (see: Noah's Ark).

Humans are pragmatic beings. Humans can still thrive despite keeping in their heads logical inconsistent ideas. We now see this every day with senseless arguments in the political space.

The problem with relying on lies is that it's very difficult to keep everything logically consistent. The best way to catch a liar is to have them discuss their narrative in length. Inconsistencies are an indication of the presence of dogma.

The beauty of technology is that they more than often are consistently useful. The dark side though is that technology is exponentially growing and as a consequence humans are driven to a loss of understanding of their own constructed reality.

There is always a human appeal is always to simplify their world models into a closed system where no new inputs are entertained. Closed systems can't avoid inconsistency (see: Godel) and tend toward entropy (see: Boltzmann).

Humans need a sense of permanency to derive meaning in their lives. Adult humans are not beings that are comfortable being endlessly transformed. Too many of us would prefer that time froze.

As technology makes its inexorable progress, our social coordination mechanisms will look more and more like technologies. We see the first salvo of this with money being transformed into a technology solution (see: cryptocurrencies). This is just the beginning.

Applications like Noom highlight how effective digital therapeutics can be. People's health habits are changing at scale because this replicable application nudges them effectively to develop beneficial habits.

Technology has become not only useful tools but instead useful psycho-technologies. David Bowie got it right about the internet. "It's just a tool isn't it? No, it's an alien life form"

@threadreaderapp unroll

The destiny of the human species isn't dictated by our politics or our philosophies. It's dictated by something that we have very weak control over. It is dictated by our inventiveness.

Unfortunately, our inventiveness is accelerating!