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Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

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Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#81

Post by Towaway69 »

andrekandre wrote: post #65
Towaway69 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me there are two parts at play: consumerism and capitalism, without one, neither the other. If consumers don't purchase the products produced by the capitalist factories then the system would come to a standstill. (I am thinking of the companies running/ordering from the factories not necessarily the factories themselves, i.e. Chinese factory.) This means that as a consumer, I can influence the system by not purc…

> If consumers don't purchase the products produced by the capitalist factories then the system would come to a standstill. thats interesting... so you are saying that it is capitalism itself presupposes that consumers exist, and without it you can't have capitalism...? it kind of makes one ask which came first...

I would argue capitalism arose with the invention of money, before that humans bartered. Consumption was the aim of the barter system also, so I would say consumerism came first ;)

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#82

Post by RandomLensman »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #77
RandomLensman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would find it hard to draw a line from classical Epicureanism towards social decline or simply map some hedonistic periods of the 20th century onto it.

The line would be overly broad and blurry, to be sure. But I think Voltaire's maxim has some sense to it- "History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below." The rise and fall of great societies frequently parallel this general difference in temperament- The prosperous fruits of stoic labor create a lavish environment for their successor…

The problem is, that it is so much in the interest of those in power and with means to promote "stoic labor".

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#83

Post by RandomLensman »

rayiner wrote: post #79
RandomLensman wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you define as hedonism and its philosophical roots/components?

I think if you’re talking about social change that happens at scale, people are not necessarily following a specific coherent philosophy. But hedonistic values were widely adopted in various contexts in the mid-20th century. For example the sexual revolution and free love movement of the 1960s: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19053382 . These attitudes are also prevalent in terms of messages given to young people rega…

What is the net social negative then? How do we know, given that counterfactuals are not readily available. What philosophy (in a broader sense) should people follow? Do we want forever a society where people need to do "shitty jobs", for example, to satisfy some philosophical need for "suffering"?

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#84

Post by safety1st »

SanderNL wrote: post #53
safety1st wrote: post #7

His philosophy doesn't resonate with me. Broadly speaking, since the industrial revolution scientific and technological progress has been about increasing productivity and available energy. This has had profoundly positive effects on our lives but in a developed country it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives. In the advanced…

We don’t become more productive because we are striving towards it like some shared goal, we do it because if we don’t, we lose (our jobs, among other things). There is no element of choice. There is no stopping this.

That my be true, but what I was referring to when I used the word productivity, and what for example an economist would usually be referring to, isn't personal productivity per se. Like yes you can work more hours a day, or potentially work more efficiently, and yes a shitty boss may force you to do too much of this. But that is a very small part of what happened in the Industrial Revolution.

Better to think of increased productivity in this context as "all inputs generate greater outputs," or as a function of available energy a society can produce. Like the increase in what society can produce when you go from horsepower to burning fossil fuels to splitting the atom is many orders of magnitude because you get more energy for cheaper at every step up. Or the way that agricultural technology has enabled us to obtain a harvest that is 100-1,000x more productive in terms of calories than it was in antiquity. That's productivity in this context.

Calories (as in food) is a really good example of what I'm talking about with relation to the problems of modernity. For much of human history famine and starvation were basically an agricultural problem, there were situations where a geography couldn't produce enough calories to feed all the people there. Technology has solved this problem, we now produce an insane surplus of calories and can ship them all over the globe with ease, if people starve today it is not an agricultural problem, it is a political problem, it is systems of people choosing not to allocate food to the starving. It's not clear that better agricultural tech will further reduce starvation - quite possibly it won't without some kind of societal evolution.

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#85

Post by rayiner »

RandomLensman wrote: post #82
cheeseomlit wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line would be overly broad and blurry, to be sure. But I think Voltaire's maxim has some sense to it- "History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below." The rise and fall of great societies frequently parallel this general difference in temperament- The prosperous fruits of stoic labor create a lavish environment for their successor…

The problem is, that it is so much in the interest of those in power and with means to promote "stoic labor".

Maybe, but it’s also in the interest of ordinary people. Look what that attitude did for countries like Singapore, Korea, and Japan. It’s easy to rile people up for redistribution. It’s much harder to create a culture oriented towards building.

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#86

Post by rayiner »

RandomLensman wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you’re talking about social change that happens at scale, people are not necessarily following a specific coherent philosophy. But hedonistic values were widely adopted in various contexts in the mid-20th century. For example the sexual revolution and free love movement of the 1960s: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19053382 . These attitudes are also prevalent in terms of messages given to young people rega…

What is the net social negative then? How do we know, given that counterfactuals are not readily available. What philosophy (in a broader sense) should people follow? Do we want forever a society where people need to do "shitty jobs", for example, to satisfy some philosophical need for "suffering"?

You’re right, we don’t have any easy counterfactual. But we can draw inferences from observations and conduct thought experiments. If we dropped some people from San Francisco off in the hostile desert of Utah, would they be able to create thriving cities like the Mormons did? If we dropped them off in the frigid plains of Illinois, would they be able to create Chicago? If you dropped them off in the mudflats of Singapore, would they be able to turn it into the modern and wealthy city it is today?

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#87

Post by RandomLensman »

rayiner wrote: post #85
RandomLensman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, that it is so much in the interest of those in power and with means to promote "stoic labor".

Maybe, but it’s also in the interest of ordinary people. Look what that attitude did for countries like Singapore, Korea, and Japan. It’s easy to rile people up for redistribution. It’s much harder to create a culture oriented towards building.

I am not talking about redistribution or riling people up, but I don't see building and some forms of hedonism as fundamentally incompatible.

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#88

Post by RandomLensman »

rayiner wrote: post #86
RandomLensman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the net social negative then? How do we know, given that counterfactuals are not readily available. What philosophy (in a broader sense) should people follow? Do we want forever a society where people need to do "shitty jobs", for example, to satisfy some philosophical need for "suffering"?

You’re right, we don’t have any easy counterfactual. But we can draw inferences from observations and conduct thought experiments. If we dropped some people from San Francisco off in the hostile desert of Utah, would they be able to create thriving cities like the Mormons did? If we dropped them off in the frigid plains of Illinois, would they be able to create Chicago? If you dropped them off in the mudflats of Sing…

Not sure why building cities in the Utah desert matters today. The question is much broader, I think: without some of the 1960s hedonism, would we have had some of effects of counterculture that manifested in tech? Would we have had more wars like Vietnam? How would society look like?

You can, of course, say you want a different society - but that is a different take, really.

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#89

Post by SanderNL »

safety1st wrote: post #84
SanderNL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t become more productive because we are striving towards it like some shared goal, we do it because if we don’t, we lose (our jobs, among other things). There is no element of choice. There is no stopping this.

That my be true, but what I was referring to when I used the word productivity, and what for example an economist would usually be referring to, isn't personal productivity per se. Like yes you can work more hours a day, or potentially work more efficiently, and yes a shitty boss may force you to do too much of this. But that is a very small part of what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Better to think of incre…

I understand and thank you for the clarification.

My point was that societal productivity progress is ultimately not driven by factors such as “better lives” (satisfying primary needs). It is IMO not going matter if increasing productivity leads to “better lives” or not because that was never the primary driver in the first place.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if this march continues even if it in fact decreases our quality of life as is already happening.

What is a primary driver? Good question. I can think of multiple candidates, but power comes to mind. Given a choice we would all rather be financially independent rather than tied to a job. Why? Some of us like the status, others like the freedom, but we all enjoy the power to just say “nope, not going to do that”.

I think “nope” may be the most powerful driver of human progress.

Edit: I forgot to quote.

> it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives.

This was my point: no better lives, but an order of magnitude productivity will increase the power we (or a small group) will experience and ultimately that is a stronger drive.

Re: Make the future bright again: On building a new philosophy of progress

#90

Post by aylmao »

donatj wrote: post #10
safety1st wrote: post #7

His philosophy doesn't resonate with me. Broadly speaking, since the industrial revolution scientific and technological progress has been about increasing productivity and available energy. This has had profoundly positive effects on our lives but in a developed country it's not obvious that becoming another order of magnitude more productive will automatically lead to people having even better lives. In the advanced…

This list of problems really just sounds a lot like the goals of humanity at large for the last couple hundred thousand years. To have plenty, more than your neighbors, and enough that you don’t need to deal with other people (what hell is, to wit).

To quote from Martin Luther King Jr., during his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech:

"We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers"

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