Thread by @Gurdur

Human progress! What does it *really* mean? And the human condition, why do so many leave that out? @salonium starts off in fine fettle, with a good defence of @sapinker's ideas:
quillette.com/2018/03/11/ste…

But @sullydish lays his thumb on the crux of one vital problem with @sapinker's ideas, and almost gets to the root of why Steven Pinker makes such errors:
nymag.com/daily/intellig…
(via @CathyYoung63)

So @sullydish cites @PatrickDeneen's "Why Liberalism Failed" in counterpoint to Pinker's "Enlightenment Now"; and Deneen's own answer to his question is, paraphrased, "because liberalism won. And generated its own failure". So let's go there too.
amazon.com/Why-Liberalism…

Let's back up a bit & divide criticisms of Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" into 4 strands:
a/ Criticism from that black swans can occur; progress is not guaranteed; everything is contingent.
The kind of criticism that NN Taleb makes; that John Wyndham or John Christopher would make

Taking a/ seriously, because it's worth it. Let's go back to a similar period of life when everything seemed on the up and up, life was getting better all the time! Techno ruled and was in fashion! A glorious future was assured! And huge wars were no longer possible! In 1908.

In & just before 1908, treatises were written on how huge wars were no longer possible, because advanced countries were so economically intertwined, so mutually economically dependent, & the spirit of science appealed to all! In 1908, action by trade-unions stopped a world war.

In 1908, people were earnestly writing & talking about how progress was inevitable, techno would give us salvation. Right up to the 1860's, the average age at death of a male in the region of Germany where I live was .... 36; and by 1908 that had improved dramatically.

The thing was, *these people weren't wrong all that much*. Even in WW1, an arms manufacturer successfully got the Allies not to fire upon an arms-manufactory in German-occupied Belgium, because, well, because he owned it. Economically intertwined indeed.

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The next thing is, *these people weren't wrong at all*. Technological progress, along with economic progress, has indeed trundled along very successfully indeed from 1908 till now. Vastly diminished real poverty. Vastly better standard of life.
Except....

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Except, whoops, from 1908 till now means losing an entire generation of young men in WW1. It means a Holocaust, mass-murder on gigantic new scale, all industrialized w/the latest techno, it means Rwanda, Sarajevo, & nuclear weapons along w/ MAD doctrine as safe-space for humanity

Now, no doubt Steven Pinker would reply to criticism a/, ups and downs, ups and downs, but in an arc inclining to the upwards. And so far he would be right, except.... there's a hell of a lot of room in there for lots of really nasty things happening.

Think bioweapons manufactured to target specfic ethnic groups. Not all that hard; target certain biochemical or genetic markers, sure, you would cause a fair whack of unfortunate collateral killing, but statistically you pretty much wipe out the group you want to. Awkward futures

The progress from 1908 till now is definitely there. Just.... it's a little bit difficult to explain to some German Jew in 1943 (the most assimilated Jews in the world, pre-1933) that, um, progress is happening. Or to a Rwandan Tutsi, or a Bosnian Muslim. Awkwardnesses.

The next bit, apart from those salutary awkwardnesses, is that techno progress brings with it the possiblities of its own MAD-gone-wrong complete destruction. Welcome, & we can have a techno-revivalist meeting On The Beach! Just before we take our pills.

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Now a sophisticated Steven Pinker could retort, 1/ you can't stop techno progress anyway (well, you can, if you wipe everyone out), and 2/ human behavior is changing for the better (see his "The Better Angels of Our Nature"), so future is rosy.
Yes, well, maybe, only maybe.

So much for criticism strand a/ of Pinker. It has points, some of which are only potential ones. And Pinker has counterpoints. No doubt time will tell, time and twelve monkeys. New thread! under:

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