The article is great and made me reflecting a lot: we are billions in the world and anyone of us can have a different prospective about what "good progress" is. In any case, as cofounder of VISIONARI, a not for profit that promotes technology for the sake of society, I can strongly support that, in the last 150 years, "technological progress" matched "good progress" and this is easily supported by looking at numbers that demonstrates that impact of technology had benefits that outweighted the harm. But this doesn't mean that in the future will be the same: technology is not good or bad, but basically an amplifier of human power... for instance 70.000 years a simple scratched stone could be used to hunt an animal to procure food or to kill another sapiens, as well as today a car can be used to reach a destination faster or to hit a pedestrian. So we cannot say that technological progress will always have systematically a good impact. However I'm very optimistic about humans and please consider that optimistic doesn't mean be calm and fear nothing...but believing that mankind has the capacity to evaluate itself and identify what is "tech good use" and "tech bad use" even if there will be always some isolated cases where people will use tech for their own interests alone.
I appreciate the optimisim, it's very easy to get sucked into cynicism.
The only caveat that I would add to your analogy is scale. One person can inflinct a lot of harm either physically or digitally. This was never true before.
Excellent article. It cautions against all absolutist attitudes and historically ignorant beliefs about progress. The "100 People" chart graphically demonstrates that backward-looking views modern progress as negative are unfounded. You also argue well that belief in the inevitability of progress is not based in reality. And you make the case that material progress is not the same thing as moral and society progress - though the two could go hand in hand. I find myself thinking of the "Two steps forward, one step back" principle. For each forward advance, we usually encounter some down side that makes us go back a bit and reconsider.
I am not an expert, so I will ask the question. Does history show us that technological and scientific progress is an effect of moral and societal progress? That is, the progression of rights respecting political institutions and productive cultures based on ownership of labor and free trade is a necessary condition for technological and scientific progress. By and large, it seems that technological progress by totalitarian societies typically is not progress as such. Rather, is the presence of technological advancement in such societies the result of coercion, espionage, theft, and trade with societies who naively believe that providing totalitarian regimes the knowledge and means that have resulted in their material wealth will lead totalitarians to be more like them? Would it be better for rights respecting societies to export their moral and societal advancements before their technological ones?
Right-respecting political institutions definitely accelerate scientific/technological progress, although you will find isolated examples of technical advances even under totalitarianism. I mean, the Soviets did launch the first satellite, for instance.
“Would it be better for rights respecting societies to export their moral and societal advancements before their technological ones?” Good question. I tend to think yes, although where exactly to draw the line is tricky to define. Reminds me of this line from Ben Thompson about China: “The big mistake was thinking that economic freedom would lead to political freedom… it turned out that political freedom should have been the precondition to take advantage of economic freedom.” https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1186296346120032257
The industrialization of the Soviet Union and technological advancements made during the Cold War are interesting and an area of history I would like to explore further. As a proponent of capitalism, I think it is important to understand these phenomena to explain why the Western model of progress is so beneficial to humanity as compared to other models. I wonder though whether the effects of advancements made in the Soviet style are short lived. I suppose any society can advance in the short term because we all have access to the same scientific knowledge and discoveries regardless of where and by whom a discovery is made. However, because the advancement is driven by government coercion and a lack of ownership over the fruits of one’s own labor, I wonder how long such progress can be maintained. The same country that produced the first satellite is relying on Iranian military technology to fight its war in Ukraine today, which I think shows a relative regression in its technological status. Does progress studies have a view on the field of development economics? It seems like the field is superfluous if it is focused on an influx of capital projects into developing nations without first focusing on the institutions and culture.
I like Lant Pritchett on this point: «I am all for the funding of cost-effective targeted anti-poverty programs. But while it is optimal to do both, we development economists should keep in mind that sustained economic growth is empirically necessary and empirically sufficient for reducing poverty (at any poverty line) whereas targeted anti-poverty programs, while desirable, are neither necessary nor sufficient. Advocates of poverty programs say things like “growth is not enough” or that poverty programs are “equally important” as economic growth but these claims are just obviously false.»
> The most important question in the philosophy of progress, then, is whether the idea of progress is valid—whether “progress” is real.
What does real/valid mean in this context? What is the practical difference between a world where progress is valid/real, and a world where it isn't?
Is it about showing that we've made the world "nicer" over time, and that we ought to continue?
To me, progress seems like a load-bearing & important narrative that allow adherents to "pull together" towards a shared goal. Arguments about the validity of progress seems like proxy-warfare between people linking that goal, and people who don't.
> “Progress” in this sense is the concept of material progress, social progress, and human progress as a unified whole. It is based on the premise that progress in capabilities really does on the whole lead to progress in outcomes.
> “Progress” is also an interpretation of history according to which all these forms of progress have, by and large, been happening.
"No one is against progress, they are only against “progress”: that is, they either believe in it, or deny it."
Great essay, but the above quote is not quite right. A lot of people, possibly most, are selfish and would rather gain themselves even at the expense of others. Thus, they are against progress to the extent that it interferes with their own goals. I guess if we stretch, we could relabel this as "ambivalence," but many can both believe in it as a possibility and be open to opposing it for their own gain.
Good point, I meant “against” in the sense of being explicitly, intellectually against the idea. It is certainly common for people to oppose progress with their actions.
I think what you've illustrated is that it's a meaningless term. Like the vapid saying, "change is good" or accusations that opponents are "afraid of change."
Certain people or movements can hijack the term, e.g. Elizabeth Warren is a "progressive," but that has meaning only insofar as they've force-coupled it to their particular political goals. Similarly, there are parties in the Middle East who call themselves "the party of God."
As for Steven Pinker: I've never been too sure why Nessim Nicholas Taleb hates him so much, but I'm inclined to give Taleb the benefit of the doubt.
Your first sentence gives it away: material progress, social progress, and human progress.
Those are all completely different, and I don't see the benefit of an overarching term. What would we do with that term? You might as well just say,"Good." Or "Peace and prosperity." Or "General happiness."
Thanks, I'm happy to have a reasoned debate. No Twitter shouting here! I read over your article again.
I think you illustrated perfectly well why it's not a useful concept that we can build on. Essentially, it reduces to "what is the good society?" Or more simply, "what is the good?" (Hello there, Socrates!) These are perfectly good questions to ask.
As a matter of fact, what you've convinced me is that anyone touting something as "progress" is someone to not listen to. Rather, tout it as improving this or that aspect of our lives.
I’m delighted (and interested) to come across your effort to revitalize “progress” and its many meanings. Whichever definition you settle on, I shall hope that you:
• Define “progress” such that it also identifies what “regress” is. While I occasionally see “declinism” viewed as the opposite of progressivism, the opposite of progress is actually regress.
• Avoid if not discard today’s over-identification of “progressives” and “progressivism” with liberals and others on the Left. There can be (and indeed are) conservative progressives as well as liberal progressives. And conservatives need as much guidance as liberals in understanding what it means to be progressive in the decades ahead.
• If so, then work on identifying, and on how to identify, political regressives on both the Left and the Right. Today’s political dialogues, not to mention culture clashes, are mostly about Right vs. Left, liberals vs. conservatives — a horizontal axis. It might help (and be more accurate and productive) if these dialogues were re-focused more around progressives vs. regressives — a vertical axis. Not easy to do, but I sense possibilities.
• In evolutionary theories, progress usually implies increases in complexity (regress, a loss of complexity). But be careful about over-identifying progress with increases in complexity. Complexity may mean structural-functional differentiation (division of labor, specialization) has occurred; but that can also mean something vital gets done more simply too — increases in complexity may work best if they reduce complicatedness, say by adding a market system in a society where economic decisions were made previously by government.
• Notice that progress is about more than the future, a time orientation, a hopeful one. But time is just one of people’s most basic cognitions. The other two are people’s cognitions of space and action (agency, efficacy). A full-fledged concept of progress should be based on all three; it should be a space+time+action cognition (and I see you already view agency as a crucial component).
There isn't a single definitive progress metric and I doubt there ever will be. GDP and TFP are the best overall economic metrics, but they aren't perfect.
I remember when I was 6 or 7, or 12, the world was supposed to be getting better.
And it, has, in MANY ways, gotten better. But at what cost? Somewhere along the way we forgot to account for externalities.
Kids that are now 6 or 7, or 12, grow up thinking the world is going to melt, their data is for sale, and higher education is pointless because it cannot keep up with technology anyway.
Given, well, Godel - we all have to start with an assumption -- and we have to be careful because many assumptions lead to logics which just curl back and prove themselves and don't go anywhere. I start with the assumption that science has been onto something the last 100 years or so. That we can test things and see the result. And then I notice that nature may have been doing science all along in a process we have come to call evolution.
Then I realize this guy named Kauffman does an excellent job of explaining how weird it is, but that it is, that the self reinforcing chemical reactions are a natural thing and that there is a defined process by which they increase in complexity. A lot of people in Santa Fe study complexity and complex systems and how weird the rules of physics and how chemicals interact and scale into biological systems. Then I realize that we are all - all life - is weirdly just different branches of a set of self reinforcing chemical reactions which began billions of years ago. For a moment the idea of progress seems meaningless, I think its more of a ratchet or a ladder. One could momentarily go Graeber and think that we are a virus -- and that would be right -- but more that we and viruses are branches of the same thing, but then what does that mean? What would it mean for that to be good or bad? Because all this meaning is just something constructed for use in social domains we occupy... and well that's about how we work together. So then looking for meaning I drift from Kauffman to Henrich and cultural anthropology -- because what makes us truly unique is the way we flexibly collaborate in groups. The way we build languages and artifacts and cultures in order to collaborate at scale win at group competition.
Seems like the old myths were right about Prometheus, and it really was when our ancestors got control of fire around 1.5 to 2.0 million years ago, and then soon after that started using fire to cook things and make the nutrients more available -- that was when our evolutionary path branched from our modern cousins. Wrangham describes this in Catching Fire. For a moment I confuse progress with evolution. I am stuck there for a while but then I come back to Henrich and remind myself that there are layers to this, always layers. Biology has a chemistry and our complex biology enabled something we call consciousness which we use to engage in a shared imagination and set of practices called culture and culture itself evolves. I believe Henrich suggest that the neocortex may have its flexibility to enable culture -- but I have to be careful because evolution builds on darwinian pre-adaptations so how a thing comes into being and how it gets used or what it is useful for are not actually linked. Weird -- but that is what science is if you understand it. All very weird. Not moral or comforting or caring -- we are the ones who construct all that.
So what is progress? It depends on how you frame it. I would argue the frame and basis which can be built on into the future doesn't come from any of the history of progress. Because if progress is a quality of cultural evolution through group competition (Henrich) which can also be thought of in terms of Kauffman adjacent possible or the way the fundamental rules of our physical universe seem to be set to run a funny sort of ratchet such that as Kauffman states we are creative beings in a creative universe -- the laws of the universe are set up in a way that new things are constantly created. Well without Henrich and modern anthropology and Kauffman and complexity I don't have the tools to think about progress - so what were those other guys doing? They meant well, but, well.
So I think progress is a specific sort of path of cultural evolution or a set of preferences for what we are looking for in the adjacent possible. Both of those ways of articulating it actually give me analytical frameworks with some teeth to work from and proceed. Logically if I build off Henrich or Kauffman I am looking to (1) maximize a search function - or have a way of organizing my group that maximizes the number of combinations of new things we try if we are going to maximize progress - search is swarming or chaos when it happens; (2) maximize a sorting function - the sort is the complex one and it is actually pretty meta because evolution will ultimately sort everything but one wants a faster way to sort than what the physical universe naturally does - which is part of what's cool about a lot of simulation and virtualization but that's a separate discussion.
Within this we all seem to like agency as a "value" - but maximizing individual agency is an evolutionary advantage to every group and the groups which will win will maximize agency because it maximizes the efforts of the people doing search and sort. Anyway -- all sorts of layers to this, but they are different layers.
Within this framework, to say that progress has stalled would be to say that we have been unhappy with the recent results of cultural evolution or the recent expansion of the possible into the adjacent possible. Progress is a description of the path of an ongoing process through time. Within it is a preference for a certain path and the challenge is really to be able to articulate what a better path would be.
Within a cultural evolutionary context, a useful philosophy of progress would accelerate the sorting of things found in the search function by pushing out an awareness of what we are looking for -- what would be "good" new things.
A market based system implicitly signals what to keep with a pricing mechanism. But the pricing mechanism only works well in very specific circumstances - hence the amazingly weird assumptions in economic models. But it isn't clear there's anything better yet.
The emergence of global telecom networks and compute capacity which we've pushed a lot of information into is really interesting though. It's like we've put all our things from searching into the "cloud".... and now AI is a way to "cook" that "data" and make the nutrients more available... to allow us to digest the knowledge and wisdom contained in the information more easily. So the groups that will win the competitive battle which drives cultural evolution will figure out how to use these new tools to search and sort through the adjacent possible more quickly and effectively. The process will happen but it's path isn't clear or set.
And I end up thinking of Godel again and how I'm not sure I get anywhere when I'm thinking. Because I think that all I've shown is that if we have a notion of progress and we believe in it and we build it into our criteria for what we are looking for either in algorithmic design or through a higher willingness to pay -- then we will get what we think of as progress. In other words, but defining the thing and believing it, it will come to be... that is if it offers an evolutionary advantage. So I started trying to use anthropology and complexity to cast some light on progress but end up only seeing progress as a finite game/process within the infinite game/process of evolution. And I think Carse was onto something teaching us to pay attention to the finite games but also never lose sight of the infinite games.
Progress is important and it's definition is useful to those who place value on it in evaluating the path of cultural evolution and in seeking to influence the path of cultural evolution -- but it is just one of many finite games within another infinite game.
But then I finally get to the interesting question -- since we are trapped in evolution web because we are actually bound by the laws of physics as unappealing as that may be philosophically. But that's why Kauffman is really important -- and the understanding that we can only experience creativity and create because of the structure of the universe. This Kauffman logical leap which sounds poetic but is really just logic - we exist in a creative universe. So the really interesting question is if a belief in "progress" in the way we "define" it as an advance of "WEIRD Culture" (Henrich) in some way yields an evolutionary advantage? And why?
And if I think about how my belief in progress motivates me, if my n=1 is anything to build on -- then the "effect" of "my belief in progress" is to increase my motivation. So the belief in progress is an element of agency.... but since it is also a preference it has the effect of maximizing agency and then also influencing preferences or modality of search and sort. So I think that almost gets us to a coherent hypothesis of what progress is as a set of cultural preferences which increase agency and inform engagement in cultural innovation.
Anyway -- here's some Kauffman on the world bubbling forth:
And then you get progress as a specific of evaluation or selection function for changes in cultural or the path of cultural evolution..... not complicated but complex and has a few layers.
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.
The article is great and made me reflecting a lot: we are billions in the world and anyone of us can have a different prospective about what "good progress" is. In any case, as cofounder of VISIONARI, a not for profit that promotes technology for the sake of society, I can strongly support that, in the last 150 years, "technological progress" matched "good progress" and this is easily supported by looking at numbers that demonstrates that impact of technology had benefits that outweighted the harm. But this doesn't mean that in the future will be the same: technology is not good or bad, but basically an amplifier of human power... for instance 70.000 years a simple scratched stone could be used to hunt an animal to procure food or to kill another sapiens, as well as today a car can be used to reach a destination faster or to hit a pedestrian. So we cannot say that technological progress will always have systematically a good impact. However I'm very optimistic about humans and please consider that optimistic doesn't mean be calm and fear nothing...but believing that mankind has the capacity to evaluate itself and identify what is "tech good use" and "tech bad use" even if there will be always some isolated cases where people will use tech for their own interests alone.
I appreciate the optimisim, it's very easy to get sucked into cynicism.
The only caveat that I would add to your analogy is scale. One person can inflinct a lot of harm either physically or digitally. This was never true before.
Great post, thank you
Excellent article. It cautions against all absolutist attitudes and historically ignorant beliefs about progress. The "100 People" chart graphically demonstrates that backward-looking views modern progress as negative are unfounded. You also argue well that belief in the inevitability of progress is not based in reality. And you make the case that material progress is not the same thing as moral and society progress - though the two could go hand in hand. I find myself thinking of the "Two steps forward, one step back" principle. For each forward advance, we usually encounter some down side that makes us go back a bit and reconsider.
True, but I feel it's more like ten or twenty steps forward for every step back!
Great post. I may borrow your definitions when I talk to people about progress!
I think you are missing an "is" here "... on the premise that progress a unified whole..."
Typo fixed, thanks!
I am not an expert, so I will ask the question. Does history show us that technological and scientific progress is an effect of moral and societal progress? That is, the progression of rights respecting political institutions and productive cultures based on ownership of labor and free trade is a necessary condition for technological and scientific progress. By and large, it seems that technological progress by totalitarian societies typically is not progress as such. Rather, is the presence of technological advancement in such societies the result of coercion, espionage, theft, and trade with societies who naively believe that providing totalitarian regimes the knowledge and means that have resulted in their material wealth will lead totalitarians to be more like them? Would it be better for rights respecting societies to export their moral and societal advancements before their technological ones?
Right-respecting political institutions definitely accelerate scientific/technological progress, although you will find isolated examples of technical advances even under totalitarianism. I mean, the Soviets did launch the first satellite, for instance.
“Would it be better for rights respecting societies to export their moral and societal advancements before their technological ones?” Good question. I tend to think yes, although where exactly to draw the line is tricky to define. Reminds me of this line from Ben Thompson about China: “The big mistake was thinking that economic freedom would lead to political freedom… it turned out that political freedom should have been the precondition to take advantage of economic freedom.” https://twitter.com/jasoncrawford/status/1186296346120032257
The industrialization of the Soviet Union and technological advancements made during the Cold War are interesting and an area of history I would like to explore further. As a proponent of capitalism, I think it is important to understand these phenomena to explain why the Western model of progress is so beneficial to humanity as compared to other models. I wonder though whether the effects of advancements made in the Soviet style are short lived. I suppose any society can advance in the short term because we all have access to the same scientific knowledge and discoveries regardless of where and by whom a discovery is made. However, because the advancement is driven by government coercion and a lack of ownership over the fruits of one’s own labor, I wonder how long such progress can be maintained. The same country that produced the first satellite is relying on Iranian military technology to fight its war in Ukraine today, which I think shows a relative regression in its technological status. Does progress studies have a view on the field of development economics? It seems like the field is superfluous if it is focused on an influx of capital projects into developing nations without first focusing on the institutions and culture.
I like Lant Pritchett on this point: «I am all for the funding of cost-effective targeted anti-poverty programs. But while it is optimal to do both, we development economists should keep in mind that sustained economic growth is empirically necessary and empirically sufficient for reducing poverty (at any poverty line) whereas targeted anti-poverty programs, while desirable, are neither necessary nor sufficient. Advocates of poverty programs say things like “growth is not enough” or that poverty programs are “equally important” as economic growth but these claims are just obviously false.»
https://lantpritchett.org/development-work-versus-charity-work/
Great article. Thank you for the post and sharing Jason.
> The most important question in the philosophy of progress, then, is whether the idea of progress is valid—whether “progress” is real.
What does real/valid mean in this context? What is the practical difference between a world where progress is valid/real, and a world where it isn't?
Is it about showing that we've made the world "nicer" over time, and that we ought to continue?
To me, progress seems like a load-bearing & important narrative that allow adherents to "pull together" towards a shared goal. Arguments about the validity of progress seems like proxy-warfare between people linking that goal, and people who don't.
> “Progress” in this sense is the concept of material progress, social progress, and human progress as a unified whole. It is based on the premise that progress in capabilities really does on the whole lead to progress in outcomes.
> “Progress” is also an interpretation of history according to which all these forms of progress have, by and large, been happening.
If those ideas are true, then progress is real.
"No one is against progress, they are only against “progress”: that is, they either believe in it, or deny it."
Great essay, but the above quote is not quite right. A lot of people, possibly most, are selfish and would rather gain themselves even at the expense of others. Thus, they are against progress to the extent that it interferes with their own goals. I guess if we stretch, we could relabel this as "ambivalence," but many can both believe in it as a possibility and be open to opposing it for their own gain.
Good point, I meant “against” in the sense of being explicitly, intellectually against the idea. It is certainly common for people to oppose progress with their actions.
I think what you've illustrated is that it's a meaningless term. Like the vapid saying, "change is good" or accusations that opponents are "afraid of change."
Certain people or movements can hijack the term, e.g. Elizabeth Warren is a "progressive," but that has meaning only insofar as they've force-coupled it to their particular political goals. Similarly, there are parties in the Middle East who call themselves "the party of God."
As for Steven Pinker: I've never been too sure why Nessim Nicholas Taleb hates him so much, but I'm inclined to give Taleb the benefit of the doubt.
Taleb? You mean this guy? https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Anntaleb%20%22fucking%20idiot%22&src=typed_query&f=live
that's the one.
I hosted him at Google. He's actually a nice guy in person.
> Progress ... is the concept of material progress, social progress, and human progress as a unified whole.
I think Jason has defined it well (with material progress, social progress and human progress being explained in the previous paragraphs).
With this definition, why do you still consider it a meaningless term?
Your first sentence gives it away: material progress, social progress, and human progress.
Those are all completely different, and I don't see the benefit of an overarching term. What would we do with that term? You might as well just say,"Good." Or "Peace and prosperity." Or "General happiness."
Do you see any connection between different forms of progress? Any way in which one form of progress might promote another form?
Thanks, I'm happy to have a reasoned debate. No Twitter shouting here! I read over your article again.
I think you illustrated perfectly well why it's not a useful concept that we can build on. Essentially, it reduces to "what is the good society?" Or more simply, "what is the good?" (Hello there, Socrates!) These are perfectly good questions to ask.
As a matter of fact, what you've convinced me is that anyone touting something as "progress" is someone to not listen to. Rather, tout it as improving this or that aspect of our lives.
I’m delighted (and interested) to come across your effort to revitalize “progress” and its many meanings. Whichever definition you settle on, I shall hope that you:
• Define “progress” such that it also identifies what “regress” is. While I occasionally see “declinism” viewed as the opposite of progressivism, the opposite of progress is actually regress.
• Avoid if not discard today’s over-identification of “progressives” and “progressivism” with liberals and others on the Left. There can be (and indeed are) conservative progressives as well as liberal progressives. And conservatives need as much guidance as liberals in understanding what it means to be progressive in the decades ahead.
• If so, then work on identifying, and on how to identify, political regressives on both the Left and the Right. Today’s political dialogues, not to mention culture clashes, are mostly about Right vs. Left, liberals vs. conservatives — a horizontal axis. It might help (and be more accurate and productive) if these dialogues were re-focused more around progressives vs. regressives — a vertical axis. Not easy to do, but I sense possibilities.
• In evolutionary theories, progress usually implies increases in complexity (regress, a loss of complexity). But be careful about over-identifying progress with increases in complexity. Complexity may mean structural-functional differentiation (division of labor, specialization) has occurred; but that can also mean something vital gets done more simply too — increases in complexity may work best if they reduce complicatedness, say by adding a market system in a society where economic decisions were made previously by government.
• Notice that progress is about more than the future, a time orientation, a hopeful one. But time is just one of people’s most basic cognitions. The other two are people’s cognitions of space and action (agency, efficacy). A full-fledged concept of progress should be based on all three; it should be a space+time+action cognition (and I see you already view agency as a crucial component).
Onward.
Seems like a good overview. Wondering if anyone has been able to identify any definitive metrics?
There isn't a single definitive progress metric and I doubt there ever will be. GDP and TFP are the best overall economic metrics, but they aren't perfect.
Here's something I wrote about this a while ago, although probably what I would write on this topic today would be different: https://rootsofprogress.org/metrics-for-progress
I remember when I was 6 or 7, or 12, the world was supposed to be getting better.
And it, has, in MANY ways, gotten better. But at what cost? Somewhere along the way we forgot to account for externalities.
Kids that are now 6 or 7, or 12, grow up thinking the world is going to melt, their data is for sale, and higher education is pointless because it cannot keep up with technology anyway.
Yes, we teach kids that they have no future—but it's not true, and their loss of hope is a tragedy: https://www.wired.com/story/stop-telling-kids-theyll-die-from-climate-change/
Let me add one more definition to the arena... I've defined human development (aka progress) as:
“our ability to create and maintain high levels of future uncertainty” :)
https://gl-10190.medium.com/debunking-degrowth-part-ii-aded18d44652
Given, well, Godel - we all have to start with an assumption -- and we have to be careful because many assumptions lead to logics which just curl back and prove themselves and don't go anywhere. I start with the assumption that science has been onto something the last 100 years or so. That we can test things and see the result. And then I notice that nature may have been doing science all along in a process we have come to call evolution.
Then I realize this guy named Kauffman does an excellent job of explaining how weird it is, but that it is, that the self reinforcing chemical reactions are a natural thing and that there is a defined process by which they increase in complexity. A lot of people in Santa Fe study complexity and complex systems and how weird the rules of physics and how chemicals interact and scale into biological systems. Then I realize that we are all - all life - is weirdly just different branches of a set of self reinforcing chemical reactions which began billions of years ago. For a moment the idea of progress seems meaningless, I think its more of a ratchet or a ladder. One could momentarily go Graeber and think that we are a virus -- and that would be right -- but more that we and viruses are branches of the same thing, but then what does that mean? What would it mean for that to be good or bad? Because all this meaning is just something constructed for use in social domains we occupy... and well that's about how we work together. So then looking for meaning I drift from Kauffman to Henrich and cultural anthropology -- because what makes us truly unique is the way we flexibly collaborate in groups. The way we build languages and artifacts and cultures in order to collaborate at scale win at group competition.
Seems like the old myths were right about Prometheus, and it really was when our ancestors got control of fire around 1.5 to 2.0 million years ago, and then soon after that started using fire to cook things and make the nutrients more available -- that was when our evolutionary path branched from our modern cousins. Wrangham describes this in Catching Fire. For a moment I confuse progress with evolution. I am stuck there for a while but then I come back to Henrich and remind myself that there are layers to this, always layers. Biology has a chemistry and our complex biology enabled something we call consciousness which we use to engage in a shared imagination and set of practices called culture and culture itself evolves. I believe Henrich suggest that the neocortex may have its flexibility to enable culture -- but I have to be careful because evolution builds on darwinian pre-adaptations so how a thing comes into being and how it gets used or what it is useful for are not actually linked. Weird -- but that is what science is if you understand it. All very weird. Not moral or comforting or caring -- we are the ones who construct all that.
So what is progress? It depends on how you frame it. I would argue the frame and basis which can be built on into the future doesn't come from any of the history of progress. Because if progress is a quality of cultural evolution through group competition (Henrich) which can also be thought of in terms of Kauffman adjacent possible or the way the fundamental rules of our physical universe seem to be set to run a funny sort of ratchet such that as Kauffman states we are creative beings in a creative universe -- the laws of the universe are set up in a way that new things are constantly created. Well without Henrich and modern anthropology and Kauffman and complexity I don't have the tools to think about progress - so what were those other guys doing? They meant well, but, well.
So I think progress is a specific sort of path of cultural evolution or a set of preferences for what we are looking for in the adjacent possible. Both of those ways of articulating it actually give me analytical frameworks with some teeth to work from and proceed. Logically if I build off Henrich or Kauffman I am looking to (1) maximize a search function - or have a way of organizing my group that maximizes the number of combinations of new things we try if we are going to maximize progress - search is swarming or chaos when it happens; (2) maximize a sorting function - the sort is the complex one and it is actually pretty meta because evolution will ultimately sort everything but one wants a faster way to sort than what the physical universe naturally does - which is part of what's cool about a lot of simulation and virtualization but that's a separate discussion.
Within this we all seem to like agency as a "value" - but maximizing individual agency is an evolutionary advantage to every group and the groups which will win will maximize agency because it maximizes the efforts of the people doing search and sort. Anyway -- all sorts of layers to this, but they are different layers.
Within this framework, to say that progress has stalled would be to say that we have been unhappy with the recent results of cultural evolution or the recent expansion of the possible into the adjacent possible. Progress is a description of the path of an ongoing process through time. Within it is a preference for a certain path and the challenge is really to be able to articulate what a better path would be.
Within a cultural evolutionary context, a useful philosophy of progress would accelerate the sorting of things found in the search function by pushing out an awareness of what we are looking for -- what would be "good" new things.
A market based system implicitly signals what to keep with a pricing mechanism. But the pricing mechanism only works well in very specific circumstances - hence the amazingly weird assumptions in economic models. But it isn't clear there's anything better yet.
The emergence of global telecom networks and compute capacity which we've pushed a lot of information into is really interesting though. It's like we've put all our things from searching into the "cloud".... and now AI is a way to "cook" that "data" and make the nutrients more available... to allow us to digest the knowledge and wisdom contained in the information more easily. So the groups that will win the competitive battle which drives cultural evolution will figure out how to use these new tools to search and sort through the adjacent possible more quickly and effectively. The process will happen but it's path isn't clear or set.
And I end up thinking of Godel again and how I'm not sure I get anywhere when I'm thinking. Because I think that all I've shown is that if we have a notion of progress and we believe in it and we build it into our criteria for what we are looking for either in algorithmic design or through a higher willingness to pay -- then we will get what we think of as progress. In other words, but defining the thing and believing it, it will come to be... that is if it offers an evolutionary advantage. So I started trying to use anthropology and complexity to cast some light on progress but end up only seeing progress as a finite game/process within the infinite game/process of evolution. And I think Carse was onto something teaching us to pay attention to the finite games but also never lose sight of the infinite games.
Progress is important and it's definition is useful to those who place value on it in evaluating the path of cultural evolution and in seeking to influence the path of cultural evolution -- but it is just one of many finite games within another infinite game.
But then I finally get to the interesting question -- since we are trapped in evolution web because we are actually bound by the laws of physics as unappealing as that may be philosophically. But that's why Kauffman is really important -- and the understanding that we can only experience creativity and create because of the structure of the universe. This Kauffman logical leap which sounds poetic but is really just logic - we exist in a creative universe. So the really interesting question is if a belief in "progress" in the way we "define" it as an advance of "WEIRD Culture" (Henrich) in some way yields an evolutionary advantage? And why?
And if I think about how my belief in progress motivates me, if my n=1 is anything to build on -- then the "effect" of "my belief in progress" is to increase my motivation. So the belief in progress is an element of agency.... but since it is also a preference it has the effect of maximizing agency and then also influencing preferences or modality of search and sort. So I think that almost gets us to a coherent hypothesis of what progress is as a set of cultural preferences which increase agency and inform engagement in cultural innovation.
Anyway -- here's some Kauffman on the world bubbling forth:
https://app.reduct.video/e/the-adjacent-possible-f306c1698371-8e51115442920ba5b67d/
And a little Henrich on cultural evolution:
https://app.reduct.video/e/henrich-on-innovation-ce8b0fb54c6c-722e5ef730165f62d94e/
And then you get progress as a specific of evaluation or selection function for changes in cultural or the path of cultural evolution..... not complicated but complex and has a few layers.
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