the only progress we need

I think the world is getting better. I think believing that is actually necessary for bringing it about. We have this weird ability to invite what we ask for

It is debatable humans make progress. What is our best idea of what has already happened?

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

“Ask and it shall be given to you.”

A garden needs tending. Even the Garden of Eden was a place in need of tending. A place of progress.

We have different and new languages.

Different and new species. Some went extinct.

We think homo sapiens emerged from neanderthals, homo erectus.

Number of humans on the planet (estimated at any time)

number of transistors per sq meter (should we instead measure operations per second?)

Now, these are CHANGES we have evidence for happening. But are they progress?

What was good and bad about the Enlightenment?

Good changes

material abundance : GDP, number of humans, data created and preserved (more than"solid", technically- order over entropy), end of slavery, medicine: almost all after 1911 and spanish flu, speed of travel

better questions/problems: Newtonian mechanics, predicting the stars and macro physics, quantum theory.

Bad change

too left-brained? lost the authority of the master over his emissary?

In the word, enlightenment shines into the darkness. But there is a sense of darkness which is warm and close to God. The womb is dark and creative. The cycle of gifts requires a “blindness” to knowing exactly how gifts are transacted

  • Climate apocalypse
  • Nucelar Apocalypse
  • technology ruining society (culimantes in AI Apocalypse)
  • Do nothing apocalypse

what will not change

we will die. we are mortals (until we are all resurrected… should we work to help this come about?)

High agency people. Agency isn’t something you “have”. It’s something you “do”. “have fat”: you store energy in excess of expenditure. “have muscles”: you practice applying force, getting better at it. We don’t really “have” anything do we? “have” a discussion: we discuss. have a nice day: live well today.

Is it better in Japanese? I’m getting fat. I’m becoming fat. 太っている。

Writing is magic and maybe even down to the words/language we use.

best arguments against growth as progress

tom murphy

https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/

but he too concedes that knowledge growth can be economic growth!