"Progress Studies”!, &

PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY:

FIRST: Progress Studies!

I should so something with this, but I do not know what. Interviews that I have not initiated always make me feel as though I said smart things but in the wrong way, and it will take a lot of work to figure out what they really are.

And “Progress Studies”: I do not know what they will become. After all, they say the owl was a baker’s daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be. Indeed, with “Progress Studies” I do not know what they now are.

In short: This is not yet ready for prime time at all:

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Me, from the EXPERT ROUNDTABLE: WHAT DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE? <https://bigthink.com/progress/progress-agenda/>:

1/ How do you define progress?

Three elements:

First, getting out from under the hammer of necessity, which for most of human history has been the Harrow of Malthus: A world in which you see half your babies die, your life expectancy is 25, you go to bed hungry lots of the time, and much of your planning has to be simply, "How do I keep this biological machine going for one day?" Progress is getting away from that: acquiring power to manipulate nature, and power to successfully, and politely, and peacefully organize humans to actually get things done. Progress is power to escape from the kingdom of necessity, and enter the kingdom of freedom.

Second, progress has to be relatively egalitarian. An élite of thugs with spears assisted by tame accountants, propagandists, and bureaucrats running a force-and-fraud exploitation-extraction-and-domination grift régime does not become “progress” when you add laser weapons to it. Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo, is not what we are looking for.

And third, there's the question of actually using your power to manipulate nature and figure out how to organize ourselves, so we can actually have a sophisticated functioning, hence highly productive division of the labor, figuring out what we then want to do, in order that we live lives is worth living.

2/ What are the essential elements required for progress to happen?