Progress is an agnostic vector. You can apply a vector attribute to ANY change. So I totally disagree with this, based on the observable, historical and millenia of facts:
"One error was the idea that progress is inevitable" - Progress IS inevitable.
This is so proven, I find the comment inconsistent with Pinker's data showing progress in …
Progress is an agnostic vector. You can apply a vector attribute to ANY change. So I totally disagree with this, based on the observable, historical and millenia of facts:
"One error was the idea that progress is inevitable" - Progress IS inevitable.
This is so proven, I find the comment inconsistent with Pinker's data showing progress in many areas.
Now as to "Values" - these are absolutetly, totatally arbitrary, fickle, transient, biased, wrong as much a right, and broadly useless. Especially "moral, ethical and religious" so called values. Even our US Rule of Law's "values, are totally subjective. Look at the nonsense of conservatives using so called "orginalism" as value of Judicial Philosophy. So many attorneys were completed duped. This originalism idea has been completed defenestrated, defrocked and relagated to nothing more than vacous bs.
For America, there is ONE enduring and sustaining set of values. "We hold these TRUTHS" - to be "SELF-EVIDENT" - (which means invariant - agreed by all observers (not always obviously), that ALL PEOPLE everywhere, at all times are CREATED EQUAL, endowed by THERI OWN idea of theri owne relationship to their OWN CREATER, with LIFE, LIBERTY and Pursuit of Happiness - intrinsic to every human.
Progress, for me - is the integral summation of everything that, over time - IMPROVES towards these SELF_EVIDENT truths.
I am surprised that you think that PInker's data shows that progress is inevitable, because Pinker himself did not think so and denied this. As he said in *Enlightenment Now*: “In introducing the concept of progress I warned against confusing hard-won headway with a process that magically takes place by itself. The point of calling attention to progress is not self-congratulation but identifying the causes so we can do more of what works.”
No human in science really ever predicted progress. Newton created the foundation for progress for the last 300 years. The entire mechanical world of today comes from his work. Newton was totally clueless about how his fundamental work built our future.
Einstein was also clueless. He absolutely could not believe the Atomic bomb came from his special theory of relativity. Bohr and Quanta and Einstein photoelectric work equally were clueless as to electronics, computers, Semiconductors, the web and internet.
It is a fact that no new fundamental science of consequence has been achieved in over a century. A lotnof derivative science and tons of technology and engineering.
The point is, progress has and will always occur in many and greatly, in unexpected ways.
If Plinker doesn't see that progress for thousands of years leads to the conclusion that progress is inevitable, then he's a pretty poor reader of data.
As regards progress, two things are true.
A. Progress is inevitable
B. When it comes in great leaps is just a When question. Not if.
If Plinker thinks progress is NOT inevitable, then he means literally he expects no more progress. That is fully not supported.
For many thousands of years progress has been made on every axial dimension.
It's never smooth. It's usually accelerated by crisis, like wars. But progress by Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Gershwin, Newton, Bohr, Einstein happened within normal times. Technology has been mostly spiked forward by crisis.
Two future crisis are present and others today. Climate Change will drive massive social and some technological progess with wildfires and rising oceans changing the livable lands.
CRISPER will change all kinds of cutltural, religious and political things.
Both are inevitable progress. Fits and starts. Benefits and consequences like always are attached with progress
So progress is not only possible but exhaustingly proven. That is the only guarantee. When is never guaranteed.
For progress to stop, would require a human stasis of something like a thermodynamic stall. But we have dozens of major life altering competitive systems at work against each other today. Climate change vs do nothing dramatic. Democracy vs Autocracy. Religion vs Secular plurality. And on.
These drive change. All change ends up as a delta vector to today. That is progress.
Progress is an agnostic vector. You can apply a vector attribute to ANY change. So I totally disagree with this, based on the observable, historical and millenia of facts:
"One error was the idea that progress is inevitable" - Progress IS inevitable.
This is so proven, I find the comment inconsistent with Pinker's data showing progress in many areas.
Now as to "Values" - these are absolutetly, totatally arbitrary, fickle, transient, biased, wrong as much a right, and broadly useless. Especially "moral, ethical and religious" so called values. Even our US Rule of Law's "values, are totally subjective. Look at the nonsense of conservatives using so called "orginalism" as value of Judicial Philosophy. So many attorneys were completed duped. This originalism idea has been completed defenestrated, defrocked and relagated to nothing more than vacous bs.
For America, there is ONE enduring and sustaining set of values. "We hold these TRUTHS" - to be "SELF-EVIDENT" - (which means invariant - agreed by all observers (not always obviously), that ALL PEOPLE everywhere, at all times are CREATED EQUAL, endowed by THERI OWN idea of theri owne relationship to their OWN CREATER, with LIFE, LIBERTY and Pursuit of Happiness - intrinsic to every human.
Progress, for me - is the integral summation of everything that, over time - IMPROVES towards these SELF_EVIDENT truths.
I am surprised that you think that PInker's data shows that progress is inevitable, because Pinker himself did not think so and denied this. As he said in *Enlightenment Now*: “In introducing the concept of progress I warned against confusing hard-won headway with a process that magically takes place by itself. The point of calling attention to progress is not self-congratulation but identifying the causes so we can do more of what works.”
No human in science really ever predicted progress. Newton created the foundation for progress for the last 300 years. The entire mechanical world of today comes from his work. Newton was totally clueless about how his fundamental work built our future.
Einstein was also clueless. He absolutely could not believe the Atomic bomb came from his special theory of relativity. Bohr and Quanta and Einstein photoelectric work equally were clueless as to electronics, computers, Semiconductors, the web and internet.
It is a fact that no new fundamental science of consequence has been achieved in over a century. A lotnof derivative science and tons of technology and engineering.
The point is, progress has and will always occur in many and greatly, in unexpected ways.
If Plinker doesn't see that progress for thousands of years leads to the conclusion that progress is inevitable, then he's a pretty poor reader of data.
As regards progress, two things are true.
A. Progress is inevitable
B. When it comes in great leaps is just a When question. Not if.
If Plinker thinks progress is NOT inevitable, then he means literally he expects no more progress. That is fully not supported.
Um, isn't there something in between inevitable and impossible? Like, maybe progress is possible but not guaranteed?
For many thousands of years progress has been made on every axial dimension.
It's never smooth. It's usually accelerated by crisis, like wars. But progress by Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Mozart, Gershwin, Newton, Bohr, Einstein happened within normal times. Technology has been mostly spiked forward by crisis.
Two future crisis are present and others today. Climate Change will drive massive social and some technological progess with wildfires and rising oceans changing the livable lands.
CRISPER will change all kinds of cutltural, religious and political things.
Both are inevitable progress. Fits and starts. Benefits and consequences like always are attached with progress
So progress is not only possible but exhaustingly proven. That is the only guarantee. When is never guaranteed.
For progress to stop, would require a human stasis of something like a thermodynamic stall. But we have dozens of major life altering competitive systems at work against each other today. Climate change vs do nothing dramatic. Democracy vs Autocracy. Religion vs Secular plurality. And on.
These drive change. All change ends up as a delta vector to today. That is progress.
Not without hills and valleys of course