Where a crystal may have ‘defects’ that’s meaningless for a pile of sand. Further, defects can be more useful than a perfect crystalline structure.

So, to say perfection is unobtainable requires a strict definition of perfection and absolute proof it’s impossible. Both, are very high hurdles.

The fact that, flawed as we might seem, we are living in a reality that may not be possible to be more perfect.

The substantive value of the idea that humans are imperfect or “fallen” is to caution against these kinds of expectations in the first place.

And there are real examples of this. It is humanly impossible—not necessarily mathematically or logically impossible, but humanly impossible—to achieve 100% success at any metric in the long run. I can’t design a 100% available distributed system at meaningful scale. An airline can’t have 100% of their planes arrive on time. A basketball player can’t make 100% of his free throws over a meaningful career. People miss, people fall short, people make mistakes, and it doesn’t require religion or Utopianism to imagine even attainable improvements.

So my problem with doing away with the notion of perfection at all is that it goes too far. Will there ever be a world where no part of AWS ever has an outage? Probably not. When the next AWS outage happens, will we be able to imagine, in great detail, a world where that particular outage wouldn’t have happened? That’s the job. And so rather than resigning ourselves to the notion that perfection is meaningless, let’s instead accept that perfection is an unattainable goal. That way we can dismiss the fanatics who demand actually attaining perfection while still admitting to the possibility of improvement.

"A Utopia (/juːˈtoʊpiə/ yoo-TOH-pee-ə) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia

Suggesting all metrics must be at 100% is thus clearly a straw man. The end to starvation is very much a realistic and Utopian goal out of reach for our ancestors.

That is also an "arbitrary metric": you've set the rate of "people not starving" to 100%. That's what it means when you say "the end of starvation", rather than "reducing starvation" or "minimizing starvation". If you want to end starvation, that means 0 starvation and 100% non-starvation. Not a single person anywhere on earth is starving.

Let's think realistically about what this means. You can probably get a few nines pretty easily, but to get all the way to 100%, you also have to make sure nobody is willing or able to go on a hunger strike, or suffering from anorexia, or in need of a competent caregiver (in cases of severe disability). You have to make sure that there isn't a parent anywhere on earth who neglects their child to the point of starvation. You have to make sure that someone is checking in on every elderly shut-in in the world, in case they've fallen and broken their leg and can't reach the kitchen. Sometimes people starve to death when they're lost at sea or in the wilderness, so now you have to achieve 100% success at search and rescue across the entire world.

And this is exactly my point. I'm sure you didn't mean all of these implications by "the end of starvation". I'm sure you meant something more realistic and attainable. But that's not really what anybody means by utopia, because by that standard, much of the world is arguably already living in it compared to the ancients. But that's not because anyone had an a priori utopian vision that they put into practice; it was through a process of gradual and incremental change that will continue as long as humanity exists. And part of that process is that there will always be perceptible imperfections.

PS: Bringing up straw man arguments is not part of meaningful dialogue.

And once you’ve done that—would you agree that, by the “reasonable” standard that you are touting, that most developed countries including the United States are “utopian” in the sense of solving the problem of hunger? If not, why?

I'm sure you meant something more realistic and attainable. But that's not really what anybody means by utopia, because by that standard, much of the world is arguably already living in it compared to the ancients.

We don’t have a vast surplus of food by accident. A vast number of people devoted their lives to improving the global food supply. You can read many peoples accounts of trying to build a better world and pretend they where not aiming for utopia, but only if you also ignore what people mean by the term.

Clearly, we think of utopia as more than just sufficient food, the rule of law etc etc, but just because you are used to a better world does not mean those people achieved nothing.

PS: Consider what the world would be if everyone in history said utopia is unobtainable, so let’s burn the world.

Historically they have been. At least they're not up to our own standards.

We can kill, lie, cheat, brutalize, exploit, each other, and we do so daily in the billions.

We might not be total bastards, but we're no perfectly fine people either.

All of those can be very useful traits. Evolution, promotes using miliple strategies.

Now, you can talk about spherical humans in a vacuum, but reality is more complex than that.

Though, that gets into some very odd arguments. History would be rather boring in a static or cycling universe.

Logically you can argue either way. Logically one can say the universe doesn't give a fuck, so can't be flawed any more than a rock is.

Humans however both crave unity and love and compassion and so on (and know those things for good), and also do the cheating, lying, killing, bullying, racism, and so on. So, one can justifyably call them broken.

Heck, tons of our books, movies, and songs call us just that.

Path finding algorithms optimize for the least cost path. That does not mean such a path is good, nor a zero weight path from start to finish is perfection.

In that context just because humans seek something does not inherently make it good. Religions for example often prohibit some gratifying behavior.

Is an eternal state of pure bliss perfection, or little more than a drugged out meaningless existence? Individuals may prefer one state to another, but it's not clear that the state of maximized preference is thus perfection.

Perhaps we can always improve and be better then we were. Which is a bit more of an optimistic statement.

Into any system of sufficient complexity, a little suckage must come!

“Heaven: the Coney Island of the Christian imagination.” Elbert Hubbard.

EDIT: To be clear, I also know plenty of Christians who do not try and impose their values on society.

> I also know plenty of Christians who do not try and impose their values on society.

Yeah, like the article for example, which raises the question why all this is floating at the top.

In fact, for most of history, and with very great many minds throughout history agreeing to that, it would be your objection that would be considered bizarre.

You don't have to believe in a specific creator or any specific religious mythology to agree with such a statement as "this world is fallen". Even as atheist like e.g. Emil Cioran could agree with such a statement. But even if someone actually believes e.g. in the Christian god, it's almost irrelevant as to the validity of their belief that "this world is fallen".

It's just a way of seeing the world -- as permanently imperfect and with fatal flaws in its construction. In fact most of our history and even personal lives agrees with this observation as well: we are ignorant of most things, we age, we get ill, we suffer, we kill each other, we are petty, and so on. And in the end, we just die, along with everybody we knew and loved. All that in an indifferent universe, that could e.g. wipe thousands of us out tomorrow with an earthquake, a tsunami, and so on. Or something of our own making, like a nuclear war.

These things can be summed up in "this world is fallen", and there's nothing bizarre or unconnected about it.

One might disagree and see progress etc, and even be optimistic that everything will prevail, or even see no issue with death and illness and the ills of old age, and so on. But in the main there's nothing much bizarre in saying that "this world is fallen" -- e.g. that things are incomplete, broken, and more often than not disappointing.

If you mean "The world sucks" then say that instead of saying "the world is fallen". Fallen has a very specific meaning, and using it as a poetic slush word is enough to make me not take the OP seriously.

Welcome to the magic world of metaphors and symbolism...

If you mean that you don't like the author's choice of words, then that that instead of saying "the entire article [is] essentially meaningless".

> Fallen has a very specific meaning

Which of the four definitions in WordNet, or dozens of other possible dictionary meanings, is that very specific meaning?

> and using it as a poetic slush word is enough to make me not take the OP seriously.

"Slush" has a very specific meaning, involving partially frozen materials. I feel that your use of it here has rendered your entire comment essentially meaningless.

It's the religious implication in the article that invalidates it. Christian belief is that humanity's fall from grace can only be redeemed through the intercession of christ, and the author links the impossibility of any utopian state with that fall from grace, so obviously the only way to resolve it is theological.

The author's implied statement that any attempt to create a utopia must either come from god, or be religious in nature, is the problem. If, like me, you don't believe in god, and believe organised religions are inherently bad, then at that point the author's credibility is destroyed and the article is just another religious rant.

I’d like to know what secular state of grace supposedly existed that we fell from?

Now, imagine you haven't read the article, somebody comments, "This guy said the earth is flat!" and you ctrl+f into the article and they did, in fact, write that. Should you be encouraged to read the article? They have some secular studies and ideas.

"That person freaked out just because someone said the Earth is flat, so that their brain completely glazed over and they couldn't understand or care about anything else they said", why is that not a thing, too?

To me this kind of discussion is not intellectually honest, it's not an earnest attempt -- there's plenty brilliant people of faith so I see no reason to dismiss anything out of hand like that. Don't judge a book by its cover, yet this discussion about the cover is the one that the most energy is spent on.

More pointedly - we are all in the same position as the flat-earther you posit. None of us have 100% accurate knowledge - meaning some percentage of what we believe is either false or one day will be proven false. We all have blind spots. Flat earthers have a particularly egregious blind spot. So we can be skeptical of other claims they make. But we should still engage with the stuff that makes sense and coheres. The answer to bad science is more science; the answer to bad speech is more speech.

Or for a slightly different approach, GK Chesterton's Orthodoxy: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/130/pg130.html, even if you disagree with his arguments, I suspect if you give a read you'll enjoy his delightful prose.

> But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. [...]

> This startling swiftness with which popular systems turn oppressive is the third fact for which we shall ask our perfect theory of progress to allow. It must always be on the look out for every privilege being abused, for every working right becoming a wrong. In this matter I am entirely on the side of the revolutionists. They are really right to be always suspecting human institutions; they are right not to put their trust in princes nor in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to be the friend of the people becomes the enemy of the people; the newspaper started to tell the truth now exists to prevent the truth being told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at last on the side of the revolutionary. And then I caught my breath again: for I remembered that I was once again on the side of the orthodox.

> Christianity spoke again and said: "I have always maintained that men were naturally backsliders; that human virtue tended of its own nature to rust or to rot; I have always said that human beings as such go wrong, especially happy human beings, especially proud and prosperous human beings. This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is—the Fall."