We better start really defining what that means, because it has become quite clear that all this “progress” is not leading to better lives. We’re literally going to kill ourselves with climate change.
> AI and nukes
Those two things aren’t remotely comparable.
How do you think the average person under 50 would poll on being teleported to the 1950s? No phones, no internet, jet travel is only for the elite, oh nuclear war and MAD are new cultural concepts, yippee, and fuck you if you're black because the civil rights acts are still a decade out.
> two things aren’t remotely comparable
I'm assuming no AGI, just massive economic efficiencies. In that sense, nuclear weapons give strategic autonomy through military coercion and the ability to grant a security umbrella, which fosters e.g. trade ties. In the same way, the wealth from an AI-boosted economy fosters similar trade ties (and creates similar costs for disengaging). America doesn't influence Europe by threatening to nuke it, but by threatening not to nuke its enemies.
That’s not the argument. At all. I argued we should rethink our attitude of unfettered consumption so we don’t continue on an path which is provably leading to destruction and death, and your take is going back in time to nuclear war and overt racism. That is frankly insane. I’m not fetishising “the old days”, I’m saying this attitude of “more more more” does not automatically translate to “better”.
If you say Room A is not better than Room B, then you should be, at the very least, indifferent to swapping between them. If you're against it, then Room A is better than Room B. Our lives are better--civically, militarily and materially--than they were before. Complaining about unfettered consumerism by falsely claiming our lives are worse today than they were before doesn't support your argument. (It's further undercut by the falling material and energy intensity of GDP in the rich world. We're able to produce more value for less input resource-wise.)
No. There is a reason I put the word in quotes. We are on a thread, the conversation follows from what came before. My original post was explicit about words used to bullshit us. I was specifically referring to what the “unscrupulous people at the top” call “progress”, which doesn’t truly progress humanity or enhances the lives of most people, only theirs.
To give a tech example, not many people were listening to Stallman and Linus and they still managed to change a lot for the better.
If a society is okay accepting a lower standard of living and sovereign subservience, then sure, competition doesn't matter. But if America and China have AI and nukes and Europe doesn't, one side gets to call the shots and the other has to listen.