
The Fallacy of Human Freedom - imb
http://nationalinterest.org/bookreview/the-fallacy-human-freedom-8652?page=show
======
hedgew
The main argument seems fundamentally flawed. It is argued that the idea of
progress as a goal for humanity is pointless, because we are ultimately
restricted by our nature, and instead of idealizing the concept of progress we
should be satisfied with what we are.

However, it is painfully obvious that we are not imprisoned by our nature. We
were not born to fly, yet we do fly. We fly gigantic metal heaps, around the
world and even farther. We carry oxygen with us to outer space to circumvent
our biological limitations. We can already bypass certain built-in elements of
our "nature", such as anger, via medicine or surgery. In fact, we have been
capable of changing our nature for a long time already, as advances in science
have taught us that it is possible to cause physical changes in our brains
through conscious effort, such as meditation. In the future, our capabilities
for changing our nature will only increase.

Yes, we are still commonly quite foolish, and history has shown that we easily
reduce ourselves to beasts in times of crisis, but we can, and have changed
our beliefs into ones that represent the world around us more accurately.
Using labels like secular humanism, our progress may be painted to look like
misdirected religion, but these ideologies do not just represent the idea of
progress, they have proven it - we truly have developed a more accurate image
of our existence. We have progressed, and we will continue doing so.

~~~
henrikschroder
Another obvious counterpoint is this TED talk, Steven Pinker on "The
surprising decline of violence":

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk)

~~~
Zigurd
The irony here is that Pinker then embraces the American prison-industrial
complex in The Blank Slate as being a necessary part of this trend, when the
US is probably an outlier.

There is a similarity between Pinker (at least in The Blank Slate) and Gray in
that they both paint their targets with one big flaw before bashing them.
Gray's template straw man is a humanist who didn't read The Selfish Gene.

------
Svip
As Rob Pike would say; mais oui.

I believe in the EU; or rather, I want to believe in the EU, because I want to
believe that the European countries can work together and close at that.
Politically, economically and so on.

But neither am I naïve to believe that the current implementation of the EU is
the _best_ solution, nor do I believe that it will ever form into some sort of
'United States of Europe'. Nation states will never disappear in my view
(that's the cynic in me), regardless of how ridiculous the idea may be to keep
them.

~~~
Svip
Amusing. Whoever voted my comment down fails to realise that the EU is based
on an ideal of humanism. The article in question specifically mentions that
Gary has become a Eurosceptic, which falls perfectly in line with his opinion
on humanism and progress.

One might think that the ideal of humanism and progress is merely to elevate
_all_ countries to Western democracies (if we limit humanism and progress to
politics), but in fact, even Western democracies needs step up; such as the
European Union.

Edit: When I wrote this blob my parent comment had 0 points.

~~~
digitalengineer
Well, it _was_ based on an ideal of humanism. Now? It's been taken over by
people with other beliefs. Have a listen what Vladimir Bukovsky (who spent
many years in Russian labour camps and psychiatric prisons for defending human
rights) feels about this 'new' EU:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM2Ql3wOGcU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM2Ql3wOGcU)

He draws some frightning comparisons.

------
bjhoops1
A couple of thoughts:

1) A hard upper limit on the intellectual capacity of an individual human
being does not directly necessitate a corresponding limit to the capacity of
humanity as a whole. There are now reliable means of preserving past knowledge
and experience, and population growth means more minds are available to ponder
difficult problems.

Interestingly, this is somewhat analogous to where we are today in computer
hardware - an individual processor's power is limited, but large gains are yet
to be made by adding more processors, and storage of information is
increasingly exponentially.

These kinds of gains are not linear as you would expect from an increase in
processors' speed, but they are gains nonetheless.

2) Even if you do assume that the individual human's finite capacity does
imply an upper limit on human progress, it is still possible for progress to
increase indefinitely; the gains will merely be increasingly marginal.

I agree that the idea that progress is an inevitable force of nature is
completely false. It is a goal, not a natural force. I personally don't know
anyone who actually believes this though, so I feel like this is something of
a strawman.

~~~
Joeri
The capacity to aggregate the capabilities of individual humans is greatly
improved, but the way we vote has not been adapted accordingly.

All voting systems currently assume the capability of a voter to aggregate all
the knowledge in the world into asingle rational decision. This is impossible,
one person can never know enough to rationally vote on anyone or anything.

We need a whole different kind of democracy, one which aggregates individual
knowledge instead of reducing it to insignificance. I don't know what it
should look like, but i do know i've not seen it yet.

~~~
bjhoops1
Interesting observation. I completely agree that as the amount of information
needed to be synthesized to understand any issue multiplies exponentially, the
capacity of an individual voter to grasp all of the necessary information is
quickly exceeded. So people resort to shortcuts, voting based off of quick
proxies for true discernment such as party affiliation or ideology.

I would even say that ideology can be considered as little more than a
shortcut, a cache if you will of information and answers to tricky problems.
Unfortunately, most people's "cache" never actually expires and they go to
their grave still holding to hopelessly outdated data.

------
davidhollander
Whatever one's thoughts on the article _in its entirety_ , the initial
implication that the thinkers listed could not account for Herzen's fish is
disingenuous.

Helvetius (one of the listed):

 _" The free man is the man who is not in irons, nor imprisoned in a gaol, nor
terrorized like a slave by the fear of punishment ... it is not lack of
freedom, not to fly like an eagle or swim like a whale."_

If freedom refers not to the biological limitations and fundamental nature of
man, as the author repeatedly asserts during the construction of their straw
opponent, but refers to whether man is in chains, then it becomes possible to
generate empirical measures demonstrating "progress" in terms of freedom:

At the beginning of the 19th century, serfs and slaves made up 3/4s of the
world's population.

~~~
speeder
And now beside having more slaves than any other time.in history in absolute
numbers without counting prisoners in countries that allow prisoner slavery,
like the US, we have people.that would happily.volunteer to.be slave if.they
had a guarantee of food, we have sweatshops, we have young people desperately
working in jobs they hate to pay student debts Oh, I am not slave, I am free,
I am free to work in whatever job I find, or die starved and in debt.

~~~
davidhollander
There are an estimated 12-27 million people currently in slavery[1]. With a
current world population of 7 billion, this proportion is between .0017 and
.0038, a dramatic decline, and probably the lowest in history.

Regarding incarceration in the United States, despite a 10X increase in
population from 31.4M to 311.8M and mandatory sentencing policies associated
with the War on Drugs, the absolute number of Americans incarcerated in 2011
(2.2 million) was still less than the absolute number of Americans in slavery
alone in 1860 (3.9 million).[2][3]

If you wish to move on to economic issues and contend there has been no
progress in living conditions, a point the author of this article does not
argue, I would challenge you to produce some actual metric and numbers for a
similar period of time (after the dawn of philosophical liberalism) showing
the average worker to be no better off, keeping in mind the enormous increase
in life expectancy and GDP per capita which has occurred.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1860_United_States_Census)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States)

------
unimpressive
A great blog on this theme is Mencius Moldbugs "Unqualified Reservations".
Which he describes as an 'anti-democracy blog'. (Where 'democracy' includes
supposed populist ideologies like fascism and communism.)

Writing from the view that monarchism is a good idea, Moldbug has a strange
perspective on just about every topic imaginable. While I'm not sure how much
of it I agree with, it's definitely interesting.

[http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/](http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/)

~~~
4891
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. If you found this article interesting,
you'll likely find Moldbug's perspective very interesting too.

------
anigbrowl
A fantastic find. If you read the _Federalist Papers_ , it quickly becomes
clear that the founders were not so much wide-eyed idealists as many
Constitution-thumpers would have it, but a fairly cynical bunch who were as
worried about the inability of people to rule themselves as they were about
being ruled poorly from afar. Reading the FP made me quite a fan of Alexander
Hamilton, hence my sometimes-grumpy statist position.

------
api
What if this were written in the 1850s? Of course slavery is normal. All
cultures have had slavery. So all those loony abolitionists with their
progress notions are beating their heads against the fixity of human nature.

Take your is-ought fallacy and... well... this is a family web site.

------
DanielBMarkham
I liked this. A lot. I don't necessarily agree with it, but it brings up some
great "deep thinking" conversations. Excellent HN fodder.

It's ironic that this would be on the front page as the same time as "HTML 5
genetic cars" because the two are so related. I think an extended analogy is
in order.

Gray's first mistake is to do exactly what he accuses others of doing --
making a value statement about whether one society later in history is better
than another, or whether there is some "direction of progress". Gray thinks
there is not. Others think there is.

What I've learned from political and systems theory is that small, self-
optimizing systems always outperform other systems, because they are able to
adapt better.

Does evolution produce "better", "smarter", or "more perfect" creatures? No.
It produces creatures better adapted to current conditions.

So when you look at civilizations, you should think about those little cars.
Sometimes early adaptations lead to performance problems later on. Many times
there is no universal car. Different adaptations work at different times. The
best we can hope for is a system where the _cars adapt as they move along_.

Likewise, human systems will not get "better" \-- that's a value judgment,
akin to "I like chocolate ice cream". Such statements are impossible to argue
one way or another. Human systems will always adapt. The key, critical
question here is this: are we encouraging systems of humans in which small
units adapt and self-optimize? Or are we trying to create universal rules for
all humans, thereby decreasing our ability to adapt to what lies ahead of us?

Moving farther to the right on the HTML5 cars app is not necessarily better or
worse than spinning in place. But it does take us to places we haven't seen
before. And that's pretty cool.

------
neilk
The article opens with an example of someone seeing how life broke down in
postwar Italy. But there is an alternate view of how humans behave in crisis,
well-articulated by Rebecca Solnit in "A Paradise Built in Hell". She notes
that, in actual crises, the expected apocalypse of savagery never arises.
Instead there is often an unusual sense of solidarity.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/21book.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/books/21book.html)

Now, this has no bearing on the claim that humans have a limited capacity for
rationality, which is obviously true at some level. But I want to draw your
attention to the rhetorical strategy. In order to get you to submit to the
idea that domination is normal, they first have to depress your hope in
humanity. It then follows that one's choices are between slavery and chaos.

------
rayiner
What a neat article.

My wife and I have been recently binge-watching the TV show "Jericho." It's
not deeply philosophical, but its a nice expression of this quote in the
article: "The most basic trait is the instinct for survival, which is placed
on hold when humans are able to live under a veneer of civilization. But it is
never far from the surface."

------
6d0debc071
> Gray rejects it utterly. In doing so, he rejects all of modern liberal
> humanism. “The evidence of science and history,” he writes, “is that humans
> are only ever partly and intermittently rational, but for modern humanists
> the solution is simple: human beings must in future be more reasonable.
> These enthusiasts for reason have not noticed that the idea that humans may
> one day be more rational requires a greater leap of faith than anything in
> religion.”

This just seems like empty rhetoric.

Some people are more rational than those in the past - and we've learnt a lot
about cognitive biases, and about how to have productive conversations. I
don't think it requires a particularly great leap of faith to believe that
people _may_ one day be more rational.

It's not a sure thing mind. But to go from a prescriptive must, to a may, to
then saying that oh it's never going to happen. The evidence of science and
history here may as well read 'It's common knowledge that...' a phrase that
doesn't really support anything.

> “Technical progress,” writes Gray, again in Straw Dogs, “leaves only one
> problem unsolved: the frailty of human nature. Unfortunately that problem is
> insoluble.”

Because, hey, I say it is.

> Humanists believe that humanity improves along with the growth of knowledge,
> but the belief that the increase of knowledge goes with advances in
> civilization is an act of faith. They see the realization of human potential
> as the goal of history, when rational inquiry shows history to have no goal.
> They exalt nature, while insisting that humankind—an accident of nature—can
> overcome the natural limits that shape the lives of other animals.

Straw man.

#

 _sigh_

I mean, look, I appreciate this is meant to be a book review, but in that role
it's really bad. It's just a list of the book's claims along with some talking
about what Grey believes. It might be an excellent book, it might be total
tosh, but you're never going to know from that review which rapidly dissolves
into nothing more than a political rant that takes it as granted that you
already agree with Gray.

------
ef4
The author is really arguing two things. (1) There is no such thing as moral
progress, because human nature is fixed.(2) People are not naturally inclined
to be free.

His first claim is demonstrably false. If you look at historical, statistical
evidence you can rapidly demolish his position. Start with Stephen Pinker's
Ted talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violen...](http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html)

His second claim is probably true, but irrelevant. Humans do seem to naturally
love hierarchies. And in the grand sweep of time and place, freedom is still a
tiny blip.

But So. Fucking. What. Humans are naturally inclines to die of infectious
diseases, too.

The author admits that science _does_ progress. And more importantly, the
capital structure of society progresses along with it, symbiotically. That
puts the lie to the rest of his argument, because ideas from science have
_demonstrably_ altered human behavior, and science is already on the cusp of
altering human nature _directly at the molecular level_.

~~~
Mikeb85
The more you study archaeology and ancient history, the more you realize that
humans really aren't apt to change. The outward appearance of human behaviour
is different (we work different jobs, eat different food, have different
institutions), but we have the same social tendencies we did 7000 years ago.

As for our supposed decline in violence, it's mostly due to technological
advancements which have allowed us to have more resources at our disposal, and
an efficient international market to trade them. Our nature is no less
violent, our circumstances are merely better.

~~~
ef4
> Our nature is no less violent, our circumstances are merely better.

Even if that's true, it has the same effect in the end.

"Put people in a better environment, and they will behave better" is a
radical, pro-progress statement that would have been unrecognizable to most
societies.

We're so infected with the progress meme that even people here arguing against
it keep implicitly granting some of its premises.

~~~
Mikeb85
How about this: take people out of a 'good' environment, and put them in a bad
one, and they'll revert to primitive behaviour. This is something that has
been observable even in recent times. In recent conflicts people have
committed incredibly base behaviour, including cannibalism...
[http://documentarystorm.com/the-cannibal-warlords-
liberia/](http://documentarystorm.com/the-cannibal-warlords-liberia/)

Technological 'progress' is not really progress, it's just an accumulation of
information, just like a snowball is simply an accumulation of snowflakes.

If our technology, accumulated information and institutions were wiped out
tomorrow, we'd be back in the stone age, and it would take us another 5000
years to 'progress' back to where we are now.

We've been able to observe it in the past too, many civilizations were
destroyed and the result was their descendants were much less sophisticated
technologically. 'Progress' does not change people, and people will easily
revert to base behaviour.

~~~
ef4
But if all our institutions and capital were wiped out, it would be
_appropriate_ for our behaviors to revert. That just proves that humans are
extremely adaptable to changes in environment.

Which state shows our "true nature"? I would argue the concept is meaningless.
Our current state is _just as natural_ as any other.

To argue otherwise, you need to make theological assertions about humans being
supernatural. A city is no less natural than a beehive, which is no less
natural than a mountain.

------
Uchikoma
Reading the article, France today is more cruel and unfree than under the
kings? What argument ist that, comparing France to post-invasion Iraq.

------
tootie
Pointing out that neither Russia nor Iraq have evolved into liberal
democracies the instant they escaped despotism, is hardly conclusive. The
number of democracies in the world is always on the slow rise. When Russia
overthrew the tsar, they thought they had a better idea and decided to give it
a try. Not every experiment is a success. When South Korea escaped war with
half a country, they traded occupation for an authoritarian Democracy that
devolved into despotism and eventually evolved into a true liberal democracy.
The process took a good 30+ years. Progress isn't linear, but it is steady.

------
spiritplumber
What is this, some Ayn Rand fanfic in reverse?

Seriously, it's the kind of book that she had one of her strawmen write within
Atlas Shrugged.

Please let's not encourage the randroids.

------
kijin
> _their core belief in progress is a superstition, further from the truth
> about the human animal than any of the world’s religions._

If some someone thinks that the history of humanity has always been one of
progress, that's an empirical claim that can be shown to be false. But most of
the people who I think promote the idea of progress are actually not like
that. The idea of progress is an ideal, not an empirical claim. An ideal is
something you aspire to, despite the fact that it does not match reality at
this time, nor at any time in the past, and perhaps never even in the future.

Progress is something that you want to spend a lot of time producing, not
something you just find in nature. It's something that you want to produce
_despite_ the fact that billions of people before you have failed miserably,
not _because_ of previous successes. If you want to help the kids in Africa
who die of easily preventable diseases, you're a believer in progress. Just
because you don't think it has a high chance of success doesn't mean that you
don't want it to happen.

Now, people do disagree about what constitutes progress. But only a sophomore
philosopher throws away an idea just because people disagree about it. If you
throw the baby out with the bathwater every time you find a contamination in
the bathwater, there will be hardly any babies left. And guess what, a life
without ideals is like a world without babies. Without babies, our species
will die out. Without ideals, our intellects will have nothing better to do
than contemplate the grim reality. If that's all we're going to use our brains
for, why have an advanced brain in the first place?

> _We simply need to accept our fate, as they did in the classical age, before
> the Socratic faith in knowledge and the Christian concept of redemption
> combined to form the modern idea of progress and the belief in the infinite
> malleability of human nature._

It is not true that people simply accepted their fates prior to the invention
of Greek philosophy and Christianity. Animals with highly developed brains
never simply accept their fates. After all, they understand that if they
manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts of their fate can be
averted! Fruit on a branch that's too high? Get a stick to reach it. Too much
weed and not enough grain? Burn the weed and plant some barley. River too deep
to wade across? Build a bridge or a boat. Boat is too slow? Add some sails. No
wind? Add an internal combustion engine. Anything else too inconvenient for
your lazy ass? Find a way to make it easier. It's in our nature.

The paleo-conservative movement, which The National Interest seems to be a
part of, is getting ridiculously out of hand. No ideal of progress? That's not
even paleolithic. Cavemen lived in caves because they found it warmer and
safer than sleeping in an open field or on a tree. They used stone tools
because they found them more convenient than ripping things apart with bare
hands.

~~~
spitx

      Animals with highly developed brains never simply accept 
      their fates. After all, they understand   that if they 
      manipulate nature in certain ways, at least some parts 
      of their fate can be averted!
    

Your argument has the appearance of something that's badly contrived (or
derived).

You may have not chanced on arguments surrounding your premise on "highly
developed brains" and natural limits imposed on such brains owing to a
multitude of things including encephalization quotient (if not exclusively
that).

It's verging on the conceited to make such claims without at the very least
mooting the points and counterpoints surrounding such assumptions.

The following is a decent one:

Argument for a finite upper limit to human knowledge

    
    
      1. The human brain consists of a finite number of particles
         and energy states.
      2. This matrix of particles and energy states is less than 
         what exists in the cosmos.
    
      Ergo: The human brain has insufficient capacity to contain 
      a matrix containing the total map of all the particles and 
      energy states that exist in the cosmos.
    
      Ergo: A human's knowledge is limited.
    
      Further: All of the humans that exist, or will ever exist, 
      will always comprise a subset of the cosmos; Ergo, the 
      collective knowledge of humanity is also limited.
    

Argument dismantling the aforementioned

    
    
      That isn't convincing. All you have shown is there is not 
      a one to one ratio of particles in a  human brain and the
      sum of the universe. This isn't an indication of epistemic
      limitation. Although, I agree we have epistemic  limitations.
    

If a natural upper limit does exist - that also stunts our ability to rise
above certain petty disputes arising out of a set of very human instincts such
as ego, vanity and self-preservation - then progress could indeed be an
illusory concept.

Source(s):

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalization_quotient)

[http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?s=8e29f5dcbb9c8b27...](http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?s=8e29f5dcbb9c8b27008495d5e4078636&p=234525&postcount=18)

[http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?s=8e29f5dcbb9c8b27...](http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?s=8e29f5dcbb9c8b27008495d5e4078636&p=234543&postcount=19)

Edit: Additions

~~~
kijin
I completely agree with you that human knowledge, whether individual or
collective, is severely limited compared to all there is to know in the
Universe. Part of this has to do with the fact that we as a species has only
been observing the Universe scientifically for ~500 years. But it probably
also has to do with the physiological limitations of _homo sapiens_. I don't
disagree with any of that.

But what does that have to do with the sentences you quoted from me? Is it
even relevant? Human knowledge is limited, so what?

    
    
        1. Human knowledge is limited.
        2. ???
        3. Ergo, progress is an illusory concept.
    

You haven't supplied a single proposition that could fill the space of #2.

Meanwhile, the fact that our mental capacities are limited has not prevented
us from "rising above certain petty disputes arising out of ... ego, vanity,
and self-preservation" at least from time to time, even if it's only .0001% of
the time. The idea that progress always happens is a ridiculous proposition,
but the idea that progress is always stunted by other factors is just as
laughable. Also, even if we did agree that progress never happens in reality,
there is still a very large logical gap between that and the (even more
preposterous) proposition that the concept of progress itself is an illusion.

If you say "True progress rarely if ever happens", fine, we can talk about
that.

If you say "Your definition of progress is wrong", fine, we can talk about
that.

If you say "Progress is not one thing but many different things depending on
the context", fine, we can talk about that. Cultural relativism is nothing
new, there's plenty of good philosophy on that topic, and you're at least a
century late to the game if you think waving the flag of cultural relativism
will change anything.

But if you say "The concept of progress is an illusion" (or some variation of
it), that's just one of those strings of profound-looking words that college
freshmen put down in their PHIL 101 essays. If there is any useful content in
such catchphrases, I have yet to see any. So I suppose it's just a figure of
speech.

> _Your argument has the appearance of something that 's badly contrived (or
> derived)._

Arguments don't have the "appearance" of being badly contrived, and even if
they do in some sense, it doesn't matter. Either they are badly contrived, or
they are not. If they are indeed badly contrived, it should be possible to say
why without committing the fallacy of _ignoratio elenchi_.

~~~
spitx
Agreed.

It should have read:

    
    
      "The arc of human progress is an illusory one" 
    

or

    
    
      "The arc of human progress - as defined by the narrow parameters of decreasing
       number of recorded human conflicts and genocides, declining number of
       incurable devastating medical conditions, improving/degenerating overall
       environmental health of the planet etc - is an illusory one." 
    

or

as you put it

    
    
      "true human progress is illusory" (whatever the parameters that determine it)
    

However what cannot be denied is that "liberal humanism", as Gray puts it, has
come to wield the "pervasive power" it has now, in large part due to the
advancements made by the West in the fields of science, technology and
medicine and not despite of those advancements.

It's hard to make a case for universal "liberal humanism" when your own people
are succumbing to famines in the millions.

Eg: The Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1852).

So simply put

    
    
      1. Knowledge is an absolute necessary element for the overcoming of 
         "cultural backwardness, blindness and folly" and to advance 
         "to ever more elevated stages of enlightenment and 
         civilization" and thereby the progress of humans.
      2. Human knowledge is said to be limited.
      3. Ergo, human progress will always be stunted by the said natural 
         limit of knowledge.    
      4. Further: There is no necessary condition that prevents humans from 
         reverting to the ways of the past once that limit has been reached.

~~~
kijin
> _It 's hard to make a case for universal "liberal humanism" when your own
> people are succumbing to famines in the millions._

I already said that I'm no fan of "universal liberal humanism". If someone
thinks the Irish famine was progress because everything progresses all the
time, they're wrong. But just because liberal humanism has problems doesn't
mean that one must run to the other extreme. "If you hate my enemy, join my
side" might be a useful tactic in war, but in philosophy people will just
shrug and say "No way, you're both my enemies." My opinion is that humanity
sometimes progress, sometimes stagnates, and sometimes regresses.

Anyway, here's my objection:

    
    
        1. Agreed.
        2. Agreed.
        3. Nope. Human progress will be limited by the aforementioned
           limit of human knowledge, but this is a very large limit,
           so there's plenty of room for progress before we hit the limit.
           We might have already hit the limit in some areas, but that
           doesn't mean we won't keep making progress in other areas.
        4. Agreed, but there is no necessary condition that says that
           humans MUST revert to an inferior state, either.
           Maybe they'll just stagnate until evolution produces
           a superior species with higher limits of knowledge. Why not?
           Just because X isn't necessary doesn't mean that
           not-X is necessary. Usually, they're both unnecessary.

------
eli_gottlieb
A lack of inevitable success is no argument against a moral or cultural ideal.
If it was, then the only available ideal would be Entropy.

------
hoggle
As the Joseph Conrad story implies, there doesn't seem to be a viable
alternative and as with all beliefs, all things really - fundamentalism and
extremes can become harmful pretty quickly. So my fellow believers in
progress, don't give up but be wary.

------
mcguire
And yet, slavery is now frowned upon in much of the world.

