I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative.
I agree, we could happen run across one in the future, but so far history is on our side. Also, don't forget that our species's default fate is dire. Statistically speaking our civilisation is highly likely to end where is began: on this planet.
Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us.
> I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative.
To start, I think it's extremely difficult (if even possible) to assign "scores" to the outcomes of all technologies ever developed in human history. IMPO to be able to accurately/productively say "oh this has been a net positive or negative for humanity" you have to have all of history written down to begin with, which is a tall order. Anything else requires you to impute some data, so already the assessment has error bars.
Second, this is a massive survivor bias fallacy. Technologies with net negatives don't get promulgated precisely because we have a culture of safety and caution around technological development. If someone invents the InfantShredder 9000 it winds up sitting on the lab bench, because it would never in a million years get developed for serious release because it is unsafe.
> but so far history is on our side.
It is not, history is full of both blood and joy. That we haven't wiped out our species yet is an extremely low bar IMO.
> Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us.
My personal cosmology is that death is natural, normal, and good. "Dreading" it is as silly as dreading rain. Biological systems die and their components are reused by the ecosystem: this is reality. I recognize that not everyone is on board with this, and that it's kind of a religious/spiritual take, so I don't want to belabor a useless point too much, but I do think it's worth bringing up at least once. We should aggressively pursue every quality of life improvement we can find, absolutely I support this. But should we pretend like we can somehow escape the ultimate confines of being a biological organism? I think that's delusional and distracting, personally. Much like my views on the Christian Heaven, this glorious techno-future promised by Sandhill Road strikes me as bait to get rubes in-line, rather than an actual ethical north-star. My preference is to find joy in impermanence, and focus on maximizing the human experience now, rather than play utilitarian games about possible futures; "a bird in the hand" and all that.
> it's extremely difficult (if even possible) to assign "scores" to the outcomes of all technologies
On the contrary, it's quite easy to judge the outcome of technological development for our species: it's about 4 billion years after first microorganisms emerged on our planet and we are having this conversation while thousands of miles apart, in the comfort of our homes, with our bellies full, well clothed, sheltered and without anybody trying to eat us. Nature left us naked in the freezing rain in a eat-or-be-eaten world. Everything else comes from technology. In a word: amazing.
> we haven't wiped out our species
We also understood the laws of the Universe and used them build rockets and supercomputers.
> My personal cosmology is that death is natural, normal, and good.
It's every individual's right to embrace a death cult. But as a civilization we can't. We have to evolve and grow beyond the tiny pocket of the Universe where we emerged, before some cosmic cataclysm (or ourselves) wipes us out. We owe it to our ancestors and our children.
> we are having this conversation while thousands of miles apart, in the comfort of our homes, with our bellies full, well clothed, sheltered and without anybody trying to eat us.
> We also understood the laws of the Universe and used them build rockets and supercomputers.
Elsewhere millions starve and freeze. Elsewhen uncountable numbers of humans have suffered and died. You're free to look at your circumstances and say "worth it", but it's not clear to me why your satisfaction should be elevated to the level of universal truth, particularly when the book of humanity is far, far from concluded. I'm glad we have vaccines and the food-growing capabilities that we do, and I am emphatically in support of continuing to develop our capabilities. But making myths about the mystical capabilities of some vaguely defined "Technology" such that we are unable to even stop and ask "should we?" is religion masquerading as rationality.
> We have to evolve and grow beyond the tiny pocket of the Universe where we emerged, before some cosmic cataclysm (or ourselves) wipes us out.
We have to do nothing, we choose what we do. I choose to focus on reducing immiseration today, e/acc chooses to pursue what exactly? All I can find at the end of all this high-minded language about progress are aspersions on the motivations and purity of people who criticize the wealthy and powerful and who dare to ask that we stop dumping poison into the air and water. If we can't even resolve the (comparatively) simple issues around our climate and environment today I don't have a ton of hope for our future in the stars. But keep praying! Maybe you'll be lucky and get to be one of the Raptured.
> Elsewhere millions starve and freeze. Elsewhen uncountable numbers of humans have suffered and died.
Only millions out of 8 billions? But that is incredible progress! It used to be that not many millenia ago every single human on earth was starving and freezing. And everybody's fate was to suffer and die.
Today we have the lowest percent of humanity living in poverty ever. No, not everybody is saved, and technology has not create a paradise, but it is so much better than where we started from, we can't even compare.
> is religion, not science
And so is doomerism. I guess having fate in anything (even science and progress) can be seen like a religion. But my "religion" has delivered and is promissing to deliver more. What have other "religions" done for us?
> we can't even resolve the simple issues around our climate today
Actually we had the tech to avoid global warming since the 60's. It's called nuclear energy. It was fear and doomerism that prevented us from using it in the first place and brought us to our current situation. And now the same people who pushed us into this corner are trying their best to prevent us from finding solutions.
The manichaean straw-manning is not helpful (and is in fact one of my main points of contention here). There are clear positions between "doomerism" and "people who own tech firms should never be questioned". I'm occupying one of them, despite how you'd prefer to characterize what I'm trying to say. Please feel free to act as a religious zealot, but you have to understand that other people choose to approach science and tech policy in a more grounded fashion (ie. actually considering the material particulars around a given problem, instead of immediately kicking it up to some abstract ideology for a gut-check).
> It was fear and doomerism that prevented us from using it in the first place and brought us to our current situation.
Setting aside what I already have said about converting complex engineering questions into quasi-religious "us vs. the enemy" type statements, I would argue that it is in fact our policy choices around fossil fuel usage, as well as the wealthy oil execs who continue to insist on its harmlessness, that are actually the most "at fault" for bringing us here. Moreover, there are many non-nuclear options on the table. Some of these may (horror of horrors) require us to adjust the style of life we have grown used to in the last 5 or 6 decades. Rather than casting this as some kind of sinful violation of the historical march to progress, I think a more grounded historiography is that sometimes progress is a "two steps forward, one step back" kind of thing and that we might need to try a few options before finding the winning formula. Nuclear was a missed opportunity, for sure, and I support efforts to re-establish it as a long-term power source, but to chalk up and dismiss the entire movement for sustainability or nuclear alternatives as "doomerism" is just mind-killing, culture war nonsense. There are no "good guys" and "bad guys" in technology: there's just the tool, it's capabilities, and its costs. Sometimes the cost-benefit analysis is done poorly, sometimes it's not. Sometimes people agree on the costs and benefits, sometimes they do not. In any of these cases nobody is served by adding all this manifest destiny stuff on top of it, it only muddies the waters for people who actually have do the work of achieving technological progress.
> Today we have the lowest percent of humanity living in poverty ever
I'm excessively familiar with this point, it's the only actual empirical thing I seem to be able to find in all this e/acc discussion. Nevermind that this outcome is a product of the balanced and cautious tech development that has predominated throughout human history, what is the actual, concrete, actionable point here? That allowing VC money to do whatever it wants is going to accelerate this trend of progress? That worries about GHG emissions or concern that monocropping will lead to fragile foodsystems are somehow part of a "death cult"? Yes, humanity has made progress in history. Yes, much of this comes from technological and scientific development (as well as managerial, political, artistic, ethical, et.), but trying to extrapolate this one (very broad) observation into specific and practical recommendations for how to run a nationstate and economy I see lots of gaps that are filled in by speculation and (yes) political biases.
Here's what I believe: let's fund the sciences, let's make higher education accessible, let's share the bounty of our technological progress widely, let's make it easy for people to use their time contributing to genuine inquiry, rather than the bottom-line of a stock portfolio. If this is what you have in mind when you say "promote technological progress" then I'm 100% on-board, and we can move on to discussing how best to achieve these. But if you want to take the observation that we are no longer hunter-gatherers, and extrapolate it into the ideology that any novel invention anywhere ever is a "net good" and should under no circumstances be questioned or restrained then I'm not really sure what to say. It seems obvious to me that tools should be dealt with as they are, in the context that they operate it, but if you prefer to instead live in the world of myth and narrative that is your prerogative.
In what direction? Most of the world is only now slowly achieving the lifestyle of a middle-class Westerner in the 50s. If you think that these people are going to accept a downgrade from that, from their "dream", you are deluding yourself. One painful lessons communists learn was that human nature doesn't change and people are competitive and selfish.
> Nuclear was a missed opportunity
It wasn't the only one: GMOs and stem cells also come to mind.
> let's fund the sciences, let's make higher education accessible, let's share the bounty
I believe pretty much the same things, but we disagree on the means. I believe the way to get them is the only proven value-creation mechanism, the one that pulled mankind out of dirt: free-market capitalism.
> what is the [...] point here? That allowing VC money to do whatever it wants is going to accelerate this trend of progress?
The opposite, actually: that putting any brake on technological development (even if for completely great intentions) will delay that trend of progress to the point of endangering our survival as a species - simply because history shows us that technology is a net positive and we need every single bit of that progress to solve certain urgent civilization-ending dangers.
I personally don't know any technology that overall was a net negative.
I agree, we could happen run across one in the future, but so far history is on our side. Also, don't forget that our species's default fate is dire. Statistically speaking our civilisation is highly likely to end where is began: on this planet.
Technology is the only change we got to change this dreadful default fate awaiting us.