The myth of inevitable technological progress | Hacker News Reader

The myth of inevitable technological progress

vox.com

129 pointslaurex154 comments

It's funny because I think exactly the opposite: that evolution is self-similar with technology.

I think adaptations are best understood as a kind of technology, learned with our genes rather than our minds. The nerve cell is a technology, enabling rapid communication across communities of trillions of other cells. Hemoglobin is a technology. Multicellularity is a technology.

The mistake is maybe in assuming technological advance is monotonic. In the Polynesian diaspora, the bow and arrow was lost (probably due to island bottleneck effects). To appropriate a quote: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice".

In both evolution and human technology, the arc is long and winding but it empirically bends towards greater complexity & capacity. You basically have to cover your eyes to claim otherwise.

> In both evolution and human technology, the arc is long and winding but it empirically bends towards greater complexity & capacity. You basically have to cover your eyes to claim otherwise.

Does it? The cockroach is more highly evolved than the human (many more iterations) and is quite well adapted, but does it exhibit "greater complexity & capacity"?

The human hair louse can only live on humans and is a different species from the human pubic louse (which can also only live on humans): do you consider this increased complexity and capacity?

That arc bends towards increased fitness in a given ecological/economic niche, but no more than that.

> That arc bends towards increased fitness in a given ecological/economic niche, but no more than that.

We went from single-cell -> multi-cell. Has the reverse ever happened? Maybe "fitness in a given ecological niche" is linked to complexity in some deep way.

I'm not sure how to define complexity. It isn't obvious that humans are "more complex" than cockroaches but it does seem obvious that humans and cockroaches are more complex than viruses and that life has become more complex over the last few billion years.

Actually yes, the reverse does occur in nature. There are viruses that scientists believe originated from more complex life forms into "simpler" ones. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_virus

Thanks, that's fascinating. Relevant part from wikipedia:

> Their discovery and subsequent characterization has triggered some debate concerning the evolutionary origins of giant viruses. The two main hypotheses for their origin are that either they evolved from small viruses, picking up DNA from host organisms, or that they evolved from very complicated organisms into the current form which is not self-sufficient for reproduction. What sort of complicated organism giant viruses might have diverged from is also a topic of debate. One proposal is that the origin point actually represents a fourth domain of life, but this is not universally accepted

Some parasites - although highly evolved for specific hosts - have simplified aspects of their own biology, such as ability to find food, by outsourcing it to their hosts.

Whales lost their legs when they adopted the ocean life. Do you consider them more or less complex? I’m not sure such a framing might even make sense.

Not complexity, but cockroaches are some of the most adaptable animals on Earth. They are very likely more so than their ancestors.

Evolution does clearly bend on the direction of inter-generational adaptability and evolution speed. Technology clearly bends on the direction of capacity. Both do those because there is a very simple selection rule applied to them.

Does it necessarily bend toward justice?

Or does it just bend towards the survivability and spreadability of ideas and organisms?

What if a resilient society is also one which is really good at making its members feel alienated and desperate so that they'll join the legions? That society would be able to use that army to dominate the bodies of the Thracians and use Thracian slaves to build resilient physical structures which moved water and wheat to feed the desperate members of the society.

For a deeper exploration of this, I recommend the essay https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

A post I made a while back that seems relevant:

> The proteins in a cell form complex organelles, each with a specific role to play in the functioning of the cell. The cells in your body each specialize to constitute a complex, conscious organism. Likewise, you are part of a complicated social and technological network.[1] And just as the cell doesn’t ask the proteins what they think of their functions, our human ecosystem doesn’t care much what we think about it’s operation. As technology creates more and more refined models of the human body and mind we will find ourselves slotted more and more tightly into roles so the whole machine can operate more efficiently.

[1] https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/USAconscious.ht...

> Those who run small businesses find it nearly impossible to walk away from Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Etsy, even Amazon. Employers often mandate that their workers use certain apps or systems like Zoom, Slack, and Google Docs. “It is only the hyper-privileged who are now saying, ‘I’m not going to give my kids this,’ or, ‘I’m not on social media,’” says Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist at Accenture. “You actually have to be so comfortable in your privilege that you can opt out of things.”

What an absolutely absurd thing to say.

In the context of small business owners, your Facebook/Instagram/Yelp presence is no different than that of a "hyper-privileged" company, sans the advertising budget and amount of staffers who work on it.

In the context of your employer, enterprise software like Google Docs and Slack are (ostensibly) different than their consumer counterparts, in terms of analytics, data collection, and advertising. Further, the "hyper-privileged" middle- and upper-managers at tech companies are far more likely to use these forms of enterprise software than the under-privileged classes in America.

In the context of personal life, you are under absolutely no obligation, regardless of social caste, to join Instagram or Facebook and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

There is a certain class of media, of which I count Vox as a preeminent example, which constantly use hyperbole and socially-charged arguments in contexts where it doesn't fit or make sense.

I agree that this probably could have been phrased in a slightly less charged way, but the truth of the matter is that these companies have such a large market share that a small business can't really afford to ignore those platforms, as it gives them an opportunity to reach far more customers than they could under more general marketing approaches.

Whereas, larger companies may very well have the brand recognition to lean away from those platforms and comfortably absorb the lost potential business. It's that ability to survive that is being described as "privilege". Part of a pretty terrible linguistic shift around the idea of businesses as distinct individuals.

And as a final note, what you're zeroing in on is a quote from Rumman Chowdhury, so it's probably not Rose Eveleth's words (The Vox Reporter), though she did absolutely choose to include them.

> In the context of personal life, you are under absolutely no obligation, regardless of social caste, to join Instagram or Facebook and it's disingenuous to claim otherwise.

I've had an employer require me to make a facebook account. They let me use a fake name, but it seems like that decision was made during hiring by my immediate manager. Upper management only allowed it to continue because it was agreed upon during hiring. If I were required to use my real name, it would be impossible to stop actual acquaintances from seeing my profile. You're not obligated to work for a specific company, of course, but saying "nobody is obligated to clean toilets regardless of social class" would seem ignorant of the reality of working class life.

Why would employer require anyone to make a facebook account? Also if you make one but never post anything on it, how does it help the employer with whatever their goals may be?

Facebook is an employer that has a legitimate reason to require that you have a Facebook account.

It never came up when I interviewed there :-) and I doubt it's why I didn't get the offer.

They were advertising products via facebook posts. They did check in on the account periodically to see if posts were being made.

Ah then it's normal, like an employee is supposed to participate in company's marketing efforts in that way. I see no problem with it, as long this is a part of the job and written in contract, i.e. something he's getting paid for.

It's not like they wanted me to make a Facebook account to keep tabs on my private life.

Cleaning toilets is also "normal," and you're free to see no problem with it. But if somebody acts like nobody has to clean toilets as a condition of emplyoment and calls anyone who says otherwise "disingenuous," I'm gonna call them out on being wrong.

Americans who "work for the federal government" were required to delete their social media profiles as a condition of employment. Not sure if this is still the case.

Edit: For those that don't know, thats code for an intelligence agency or similar.

Re you edit: No, it's not.

It is literally what intelligence employees are told to say when asked where they work.

I strongly disagree with the shoehorning of the term "privilege" into basically every situation that involves any level of inequality, but I think the idea is vaguely sound.

I don't use Facebook, or LinkedIn, or whatever else.

I can do that because:

a) I have enough personal wealth that I am comfortable with working for reasons other than money.

This is distinct from simply being able to afford it at a minimal level.

b) I have a level of self confidence, hard won, that allows me to stand up to people and say no.

This might mean, for example, interrupting a conversation at a bureaucratic firm about how "all X are required to do Y"; or just not doing it; if I think it's wrong.

I don't agree with calling it privilege - it's more like a personality trait, or perhaps even a talent or skill, because it's developed rather than bestowed.

But not everyone is in that sort of situation. A checkout worker, for the most part, just does what the boss says. Regardless of the actual personal power they have, that's just "how it works" out in the real world.

Society is not full of hyper individualistic people. If it were, it would look radically different, if it even functioned.

To me there's an apt comparison between data-sucking, attention-sucking technology and sugar.

It's healthy to minimise consumption of them, and harder to do when your decision-making brain reserves are taxed by anxiety, social pressure, and lack of good available alternatives.

You think being wealthy enough to not need to work, isn’t a privilege, it’s a talent or personality trait???

Edit for the -1 downvote: being able to interrupt a meeting to refuse to do some work, because you have enough personal resources that the negative social, financial or reputation consequences won't harm you, is "A special advantage, immunity, permission, or benefit granted to or enjoyed by an individual". It is a privilege, held by very few people.

It's not a binary thing.

Being born in a developed country in a relatively stable home environment is a privilege.

Having the above as a baseline, and being born with a particular set of talents and personality can propel a person far higher than that.

I dislike the use of the term 'privilege' when used in the context of any form of success because it is, as you point out, tautological.

That you dislike it, doesn't make it inaccurate - it feels a bit like you're saying "it's unfair to call me privileged - I earned it". But regardless of how it came about, it describes you in certain situations, and enables you to do things others cannot.

People who need their job and have few other options are not necessarily docile and compliant by personality, as you seem to be saying; you can be outspoken and principled by personality /and/ have the privilege to be able to use that, where others can be outspoken and principled by personality but must appear docile and compliant to avoid consequences which you can ignore.

Were you instead running for public office, you would need to avoid taking unpopular positions or you would be out of the running. You couldn't ignore the consequence of people not voting for you, compared to an unelected positions who don't have to care about popularity.

It's not tautological to say that success ~= privilege, but that is where the idea of "fuck you money" comes from - it's an amount of money which lets anyone do the things you attribute to your talent and personality. If anyone can buy it, how much personality or talent can it involve? And if it's situation dependent - you might not do the same things if working behind a Top Secret classification, or conscripted into the military, or if dependent on your public image - again how much can it be "success"?

Oh, I'm super privileged. Loadsamoney white male Oxford graduate. I don't quite have all the boxes ticked - I had a poor upbringing (though in a wealthy country).

That said - I don't think it's even meaningful to discuss whether someone earned their place in life. Personally I pretty much figure I was born with a reasonably "useful" organization of neurons or whatever and so lo and behold, I get rewards whilst random other people suffer. Nature is a bitch.

But I digress.

What I'm trying to get at, I think, is that the personality traits govern what you actually end up doing in life, right.

One does not simply "run for public office". You make an active choice to do that - at least if you believe in free will anyway - and so you've intentionally limited your capacity to stand out of line.

I mean, in some sense, you could even say that running for public office is precisely the opposite of that. You're intentionally choosing to fall in line with a large portion of society - you're going to be their representative!

I could expand on this more (your other examples are fairly similar - top secret classification? like that just happens?), but really what I'm trying to get at is - the level of privilege required in order to stand for what you believe in really depends on what you want to do.

You probably can't simultaneously be an oil executive and a climate protestor. No amount of money will change that.

But anyone - anyone can stand up for what they believe in. There might be sacrifice. You allude to it in 'avoid consequences which you can ignore'.

Some people - a _lot_ of people - are loss averse to the extent that they just won't do anything interesting. It's income / career / whatever maximization to the end.

I've been a stubborn prick since as far back as I can remember. Before the money. It's my defining characteristic - for good and bad.

From their about page "Vox explains the news."

So they tell you how you are supposed to think. Smells like propaganda to me.

Oh no, my employer might mandate that I use Zoom!

If that's your biggest complaint about your job, you have a pretty nice job.

The author wrote: "Evolution is driven by random mutations - mistakes, not plans." But...plans are often mistaken or go awry and random mutations are not actually mistakes as there is no plan. But to note, Elon has really been a driver to push space tech forward so it does take people to decide to do this, but zooming way back, there does seem to be an overall pattern of building things on top of other things and so forth, creating an ever increasing complex solution that enables humans to do more than ever before.

Elon has contributed to space? I thought he was a military/nasa supplier.

If anyone has insight, I'm interested.

They provided the funding, but he pushed the cost of manufacture down so low that new things can be done with the same resources.

First organization to ever reuse an orbital booster, instead of rebuilding it from scratch for each launch. Among many other things (commercial crew, raptor engine, etc)

They're mistakes in the sense that there is a "plan" -- replication of a genome with full fidelity. A mutation is an error/mistake in replication.

Kind of but not really as there is no correct blueprint or end result in mind as there can be beneficial mutations. Its kind of like the philosophy of a tree in the forest falling making a sound when no one is around to experience sound type thing as it comes down to a human perception at that point of what correct is supposed to be but I do understand what you mean as there are clearly bad errors that happen resulting in terrible birth defects etc that clearly are not good outcomes for the organism resulting in immediate or painful death.

Saying evolution is driven by mistakes is confusing and attributing agency to the algorithm. "Mistakes" don't exist when it comes to evolution as the outcome is not driven by anything and as such cannot "end up" in the wrong place. As an example, tigers aren't less evolved than humans, rather both species have the same level of evolution, tigers happen to have evolved tools to hunt with their teeth and claws, and that wasn't as rewarding as optimizing for brain size, but neither species is more correct than the other.

I wrote something with a very similar title in 2009:

https://www.takimag.com/article/the_myth_of_technological_pr...

I've considered turning it into a book, since it is almost self-evidently true and saying it out loud seems to piss people off.

Frankly, the dismissals you use for insulin (“allow fat people to eat more sugar without slaughtering horses and pigs”) and smartphones (“can we really do anything with computers now that we couldn’t have done 30 or even 50 years ago?”) kind of destroy the legitimacy of your article.

Readily available insulin (along with automated pumps) allows folks with type 1 diabetes (you know, not the “fat people”, but the almost-died autoimmune people) to live quasi-normal lives.

The point of smartphones isn’t that they’re small versions of regular computers, the point is that they’re everywhere. Do you not see that as categorically different? You could not, for example, hail a cab from a mainframe in 1959. Whereas now you have a device in your pocket that connects you with a cabbie with a similar device in their pocket. The fact that they’re computers using radio networks (old tech that makes it “not progress” to you) is completely irrelevant. That’s to say nothing of the fact that in 1959 cabs wouldn’t stop for black Americans, or visit gay neighborhoods in the ‘80s, etc. etc. — smartphones have completely changed the landscape there.

These kinds of dismissals are like sitting in 1959 saying that planes aren’t that fundamentally different from cars — sure they’re faster, but they’re still fuel-powered engines that take you from point A to point B! And they’re more expensive! Radio is just a telegraph with no wires! The smallpox vaccine is just so that those slummy “urban dwellers” can avoid spending time with cows while they’re kids!

All technology development is path dependent, and looking at the path and saying “therefore this isn’t progress” is not a particularly valuable insight in my humble opinion.

Takimag audiences appreciate non politically correct jokes; a man writes for his audience. If you don't like it, well, I'm sorry you're so sensitive I guess. I'm not sorry for making jokes. That statement also makes an important point: diabetics had solutions back in the old days 40 years before 2009, and there sure were a lot less people with self-inflicted diabetes then.

My dismissals are simply the magnitude of the difference. The comparison class for nerd dildos is ... the invention of the computer and networking technology in the first place in the decades before. The invention of the computer and associated networking technology is a vast increase in human power. Smart phones are a convenience, and a democratization of old technology; not a categorically new thing which insanely changes people's way of life. Even in 1969 (now that it's been 50 years), one could put a nickel in a pay phone and summon a cab. It worked about as well as Uber does in most circumstances. In cities, where you're most likely to use such services, you could also just wave at a taxi. I did it for 3 months earlier this year in Lisbon: it worked just fine, and was often faster than uber!

The sad thing, to me, is people really think their networked electrical dingus is comparable to something like computers -to say nothing of antibiotics, the atom bomb, spaceflight and so on. I mean, you're in good company: no less a personage than Jerry Pournelle made the same argument you are making here. But it's still wrong!

Takimag audiences appreciate non politically correct jokes; a man writes for his audience.

Is your audience filled with intellectually non curious people? Your description of insulin is factually incorrect, leads to more ignorance. I knew there was a difference but many don’t.

Smart phones are a convenience, and a democratization of old technology; not a categorically new thing which insanely changes people's way of life.

Having a phone in everyone's pocket -- especially in developing countries has led to a completely new economy for the unbanked.

In cities, where you're most likely to use such services, you could also just wave at a taxi. I did it for 3 months earlier this year in Lisbon:

Unless you're a person of color and statiscally, cab drivers were less likely to stop for you....

I refuse to engage with your ridiculous virtue signalling. You can do that somewhere else with someone who will be impressed.

Nobody is denying smart phones have had a large impact on the world. I do deny they are anywhere near in importance to, say, the invention of the computer, space flight, the atom bomb or antibiotics. There is absolutely no comparison.

It's like comparing the invention of a specific kind of internal combustion engine to ... the invention of the heat engine in the first place. The harnessing of heat into mechanical energy was a cataclysmic event for humanity. It made possible industrial civilization. The invention, say, of the diesel engine was an improvement which also had consequences. It's not really comparable to "heat engines" though!

So it’s “virtue signaling” that a goal for a blog that you hope to turn into a book should be factually correct?

Btw. ancient greeks already had a form of steam engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile. Why it didn't produce an industrial revolution is debatable (they had slaves, for one).

There's a decent book on the history of steam engines called "The Most Powerful Idea in the World" which answers the question fairly convincingly.

So instead of being 'banked' by some institution with actual businesses in places they now have to make sure their phone is always on/loaded when it has to, have to rely/trust some online services which probably costs them money for transactions/credit, and whatnot else. So instead of being unbanked they are banked online which has other hassles.

I can see conventional banking shrinking where i am, by closing off branch offices, offering appcrap instead. I RESIST! Because it changes parts of the banks responsibilities over to me, reversal of evidence/shifting the burden of proof. Over to gadgets which are inherently incecure. Nice try...

Have you actually read anything about mobile banking in developing countries?

https://hbr.org/2012/04/innovations-in-mobile-banking

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-mobile-banking-is-tra_b_1...

Yes, i have. Looked interesting at first, like skipping the technological steps older economies had to develop, and are stcuk with it because of sunken costs, regulatory capture, thereby overtaking them. Sounded reasonable, intelligent, smart.

But i also recently read something about debt traps, maybe even here. But am to tired to search for that now. Anyways, would it matter? Should i have to hide my opinion behind some link i can point at, and say 'there, they said so too!'

Edit: Anyways, cash is king. It's simple. It works. Electronic cash seems simple, and may work. Or not.

Except cash is easily stolen, and can’t be sent over along distance safely. What do you think “cash” is? It’s just a common accepted way to store value. Do you really get paid in paper currency and keep it all on you all the time?

And your gadget is safe from being stolen? And you can't be forced to give the pin, password, fingerprint, whatever? I don't know where you are, but from the place where i am this whole paypal thing made no sense because we already had the possibility to 'wire' money relatively fast and cheap. Which can work even faster now with SEPA instant payments. Not to forget: credit cards! I know i'm sounding old and cranky, but most of that new stuff made NO REAL SENSE WHATSOEVER for most people in my region. That is why they are slow to adopt, because they don't need to!

There is no need for something like 'payday loan checks' around here. And no need to plug in some upstarts which are trying to circumvent established infrastructure by going exclusively mobile, while in reality using established credit card companies also. They are just one additional man in the middle, snorkeling up data, and adding fees. What do you think Apple Pay is?

Edit: Of course i don't carry all my money with me all the times. Why should i? I do have a banking account. But when i need it, there usually is an ATM somewhere within 10 minutes max pedestrian distance from a network called 'Cash Group' which my bank is a member of. You know? Physical ATMs, installed in branch offices of members of Cash Group. If not there are others, and i maybe have to pay EUR 1 for drawing EUR 100, or something like that.And not some freestanding suspicious thing, riddled with skimming devices and dirty, operated by some suspicious entity. I'm used to this sort of physical infrastructure and think that is how it should be. Not out of stubbornness, but after evaluating the pros and cons of alternative systems. Going fully cashless may appeal at first because of convenience, and in theory it may be implemented right. But usually history shows 'worse is better'. Where does that leave the 'unbanked'? Yah, well, with something worse?

Edit: Maybe i'd see it different when i'd have traveled to Sweden, the Megapolises of China, or having used some card for a public transportation network which doubles as convenience cash for other things as transport. But it wouldn't change my principal criticism of that stuff. If only usable by Smartphone you are F..... when that is without power, broken, stolen, stuck in some digital mess by either Telco/ISP, online banking account by upstart which does banking in a lazy way, or some such.

I repeat: cash is simple. It works. Use it when you can.

Maybe think about antifragility and resilience for a while.

You are missing my point, or at least not really addressing it, so perhaps I wasn't clear.

Your dismissals are "just about magnitude of difference", but your supporting examples are also about magnitude of difference, you are just choosing not to frame them that way.

> That statement also makes an important point: diabetics had solutions back in the old days 40 years before 2009, and there sure were a lot less people with self-inflicted diabetes then.

> Smart phones are a convenience, and a democratization of old technology; not a categorically new thing which insanely changes people's way of life. Even in 1969 (now that it's been 50 years), one could put a nickel in a pal phone and summon a cab.

I can make this argument about anything you listed as being "progress" from 1909-1959. People who now fly could have driven, or taken the train, or rode on horseback. Flying is just faster, right? The jet engine is just an evolutionary change over the turboprop. The atom bomb is just a really big bomb, right? Couldn't you just drop 10,000 equivalent bombs? And that's me trying to take you seriously -- one of your examples is "fuel-injected internal combustion engines", which you claim is a bigger "invention" than anything that's happened in computing since 1959.

In 1959, computers did almost nothing for almost nobody. You are taking an entire half century of advances in computing and saying they are irrelevant because you can draw some "fundamental" line in 1959 that everything was done before. But if we still had 1959-level computers our society would be, to use your words, insanely different. So what makes 1959-2009 "not progress"?

You started with a thesis and selected your evidence to match. What you write is "almost self-evidently true" because your examples are extremely selective. It "pisses people off" because you're trying to deceive them and they can see it.

Look, the ridiculous part of this argument is that I actually agree with you: I think the pace of technological development has slowed and that it's a problem. But you're making extreme claims that are just wrong, and your argument is based in some kind of weird definition of the world looking different than before that I can't relate to.

You write in your piece: "as such, I don’t think the world of 50 years hence will look very technologically different from the world now."

If you already don't think 2019 looks very different from 1969, then, sure, 2069 might not look very different from 2019 either. But I venture that if we transported you back to 1969 you're be complaining about the lack of progress since 1919 too, because you can make that same argument by cherry-picking facts. Each half-century of technological progress has looked different from the last. If you're looking for the type of progress that happened in the previous 50 years you'll miss the forest for the trees, just as you've done here.

Some of the grumpy people who were expecting the continuation of development of the railroads and giant industrial machines from 1859-1909 probably looked at the bio breakthroughs and jet engines and electrification of 1909-1959 as not being the same kind of progress. ("Planes were invented in 1903!")

We won't really know what mattered from 1959-2009 until 2059, and I suspect we will see a ton of groundbreaking "invention" work making real changes in people's lives when we look back from 2059. (Just look at the ads from 1959 and tell me how much of that garbage really still matters.)

And also:

> Takimag audiences appreciate non politically correct jokes; a man writes for his audience. If you don't like it, well, I'm sorry you're so sensitive I guess. I'm not sorry for making jokes.

That's nice. I'm glad there's an audience out there for you that also finds humor in mocking human illness. Diversity provides strength.

>I can make this argument about anything you listed as being "progress" from 1909-1959. People who now fly could have driven, or taken the train, or rode on horseback. Flying is just faster, right?

Flying is categorically vastly different than ... taking the train. So is space flight.

>The jet engine is just an evolutionary change over the turboprop.

Um, the jet engine came before the turboprop, so, in fact, no. The jet engine was indeed an improvement over other kinds of heat engines; not only were they more efficient (which is why they're used in energy production, and, say, turboprops), they enabled vastly faster and safer flight, are vastly more reliable (which is why they're used on ships and in prop driven planes instead of piston engines), and are very, very physically different from more complex internal combustion engines. It's not the atom bomb, but there sure aren't too many commonly used things invented between 1959 and the present which have increased human power over nature the way the jet engine did. Even if you put the cell phone in the same class of improvement as the jet engine (I don't, but I'd concede the point for the sake of argument): that's one thing.

> The atom bomb is just a really big bomb, right? Couldn't you just drop 10,000 equivalent bombs?

Of course not: this is ridiculous. With 10,000 nukes you could pretty much wipe out civilized life. It is categorically vastly different. It is a factors of 100000 difference in power available to human beings. There has been no such change in the most recent 50 years which can compare to the bomb at all. And that's just one of the cataclysmic inventions of the 1919->1969 years.

> In 1959, computers did almost nothing for almost nobody. You are taking an entire half century of advances in computing and saying they are irrelevant because you can draw some "fundamental" line in 1959 that everything was done before. But if we still had 1959-level computers our society would be, to use your words, insanely different.

You really need to read up on your history. In 1959, computers were doing: atomic weapon and nuclear reactor design, networked atomic weapon defense (the SAGE system was in place and operational -and ran until the 1980s, FWIIW it also had a graphical user interface, not conceptually unlike that on your nerd dingus), running large corporations, guiding missiles and other autonomous vehicles, running banks, it was being used for early AI experiments, it was being used in engine design, climatology, it had huge impact on physics and engineering and pretty much everything else. It made things possible which were simply impossible in the 1919 date 50 years prior. The things we've done since then in computation are obviously progress, and important, but there have been no huge category changes such as the invention of the computer.

> So what makes 1959-2009 "not progress"?

I never said those years were not progress. Fourier transforms, coding theory and so on were great leaps forward that made new things possible. But they were nowhere near the leap forward that the invention of the computer was in the first place. The invention of the computer happened in the years before 1959; it really did change everything in a categorical way. I can't think of a single thing since 1959 which compares to the invention of the computer. Or antibiotics. Or the human harnessing of atomic energy. Or space flight.

> I venture that if we transported you back to 1969 you're be complaining about the lack of progress since 1919 too...

In 1969, absolutely nobody could make the argument that antibiotics, the atom bomb, computers, space flight, (autonomous) guided missiles meant there was no progress since 1919. Most people in 1969 fully expected we'd live in the world of "2001 a space odyssey" by 2001; with sentient computers, nuclear interplanetary flight, space tourism, moon bases, routine hypersonic flight, suspended animation, video calls (which didn't become routine until ~ 10 years later). Lots of people thought Clarke/Kubrick were too conservative in their predictions! They did get flat screens right though!

The reason everyone thought the world would be so ... futuristic in 2001 -futuristic to the point these innovations are now considered to be ridiculously optimistic, is because the years between 1919 and 1969 (to say nothing for 1869->1919) had so much ridiculously and egregiously giant progress. That's my point! Progress has inarguably slowed: the end. Denying it is silly. If you're not denying it, well, I'm glad we agree! If you agree and are saying you don't like my arguments; which arguments would you make?

> Your argument is specious; flying is categorically vastly different than ... taking the train

That's too strong a claim to accept immediately. 'flying is different' is acceptable if you have evidence or a strong argument. I'd also accept it as a 'fact' if everyone agreed, but they don't - I certainly don't.

Psychologically (rather than physically) taking plane is just a way of getting from here to there, no different than a train in that respect.

OK, I look forward to your surveillance photographs of enemy territory taken on a train. Bombing runs and overnight trips over the ocean in a train will also be amusing. Shooting down enemy planes in a train will also be a neat trick. So will taking the train from remote regions to the hospital. Crop dusting using a train: ditto. Just because your jetblue trips to Baltimore can be replaced with Amtrak doesn't mean the aircraft hasn't radically changed the human condition in ways something like the nerd dildo can't compare to.

Very embarrassing, I was thinking only of human transport. OK, but still, some facts.

> look forward to your surveillance photographs of enemy territory taken on a train

"In 1794, during the Battle of Fleurus, the French Aerostatic Corps balloon L'Entreprenant remained afloat for nine hours. French officers used the balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian Army, dropping notes to the ground for collection by the French Army,[3] and also signalled messages using semaphore.[4]"

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_aircraft#Pre_Worl...

A little more dubiously (I'd need to read up a bit to be sure it's not total tripe):

"In or around the second or third century, a prototype hot air balloon, the Kongming lantern, was invented in China, serving as a military communication station.[2][3]"

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aerial_warfare

> So will taking the train from remote regions to the hospital

same could be said of roads. Once a road is present new areas are immediately much more accessible. Roads are ancient.

> the nerd dildo can't compare

Dildos have been around for a long time. Not sure this ad hom adds to your point though.

You know; here's a real simple way to adjudge which technological innovations are important. I should really have thought of this before, but as they say, "stone sharpens steel." Certainly a lot of stones around here.

A categorically "important technological innovation" is the kind that, the possession of which would provide an overwhelming and obvious advantage for the society which possesses it, versus the society which doesn't, in the event of a war. Airplanes. Jets. Spacecraft. Atom Bombs. Radar. Antibiotics. Since 1969, no society on the planet has developed such a technology, or if they have, they ain't talking about it. The end.

I'm confused about your computer point. Anything done with a computer could have been done by hand, manually. How is there any category difference? Is it because it's 1000x faster instead of non-categorical "10x faster" faster changes?

Flying is different because it's what...in the air? Surely not that it's only 5x faster than the train, or doesn't require tracks or roads, because speed and wireless alone aren't enough for today's computers to be categorically different from 1959.

My point is that you are making up categories to fit your argument, but you think the categorical differences are obvious. That makes it a weak argument.

Apologies about the error re: turboprop, I was thinking of regular propellor engines and miswrote. But this is a great example: how is the jet engine categorically different compared with a propellor plane? What does it enable aside from going higher and faster? What's the "category"? You just keep repeating the word "vastly" in your argument.

And how is a fuel-injected ICE "categorically" different?

You are full of examples of changes in "category" that don't make the impossible newly possible, just easier -- I don't think you actually have an articulable definition of "category" that fits.

> In 1969, absolutely nobody could make the argument that antibiotics, the atom bomb, computers, space flight, supersonic air flight, (autonomous) guided missiles meant there was no progress since 1919.

Nobody is making the argument today that there's been no progress, either.

My point is that we can't measure the rate of progress by only looking at the past 50 years. Something feels slower, sure. I bet in 1969 something felt slower than the previous 50 years too, to some people. We won't know until we know the actual implications of the last 50 years, and that will take a while.

That we're also using tech to make useless things is not a marker of slowing progress.

> Anything done with a computer could have been done by hand, manually.

No, that's not true at all. It was true in ~ 1945... sort of. By 1950, there were plenty of calculations happening which, even if you harnessed the entire planet's educated population and gave them marchant calculators, they couldn't have produced the answer. That's a category difference. It also planted the seeds for the present day when it is obvious you're not going to get your 3-d porn videos via heliograph and human marchant calculator computer.

A similar category difference is the atom bomb. If the entire industrial output of the world were dedicated to making TNT for decades, it couldn't compare to the power of nuclear weapons in existence today. Categorical difference.

>My point is that you are making up categories to fit your argument, but you think the categorical differences are obvious. That makes it a weak argument.

If by "making up categories" you mean "using real world examples and assuming people can tell that the use of antibiotics is more important to humanity than cell phones" -I guess I agree with you. Seriously man: people used to routinely die like flies of infection. What compares to that change? Name one thing invented after 1959 which compares to this! My use of this example isn't making up a category: it's stating the obvious. If you really think cell phones or the fast fourier transform are more important than antibiotics, well, "that's just, like, your opinion, man." Billions of people who would otherwise be dead disagree with you.

You can nitpick about flying (which is not an example I actually used, FWIIW; people were flying in 1919) if it makes you feel better. I suppose taking the train is equivalent to the ICBM and having artificial satellites around the earth?

>My point is that we can't measure the rate of progress by only looking at the past 50 years. Something feels slower, sure.

This doesn't make any sense. OK, don't use 50 year intervals. Use 10 year increments. I am naming the somethings which make things "feel slower" -I don't know how you could possibly disagree with any of them. If the substance of your disagreement is "Scott is a dick and I don't like his tone" -that's OK; many people agree with you.

> I bet in 1969 something felt slower than the previous 50 years too, to some people.

You're on. Find an example. Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen are examples from more or less current year who have written books and essays more or less saying what I just said above (FWIIW, both after my essay). Elon Musk is someone who has made it his life's mission to reverse this trend. There were links to IEEE spectrum in the original article arguing against "the singularity" more or less making my argument for me as well; I could track them down somehow. There are no examples from 1969, because in 1969, unlike today: it simply was not true.

> "Scott is a dick and I don't like his tone"

OK dude, this is the third time you've tried to steer this thread towards a character attack on yourself, and that's just with me--others took the bait. People can have legit disagreements with you and also think you're a "dick". That you bring it up so often suggests that maybe one person who thinks you're a "dick" is you, and maybe you should talk to someone about that.

> I am naming the somethings which make things "feel slower" -I don't know how you could possibly disagree with any of them.

I don't disagree with any of them! In fact, I already said that I agree that things feel slower. Antibiotics, vaccines, etc. are all great things! They've saved millions of lives! None of the foundational principles of biology behind them were discovered in the last 50 years, correct.

But, you know, I'm trying to figure out what's actually going on, not merely looking for evidence that already supports what I think -- I'm looking for counterexamples.

Do you disagree that the impact of a particular decade, or any time period, looks totally different when viewed from the last year of that time period, compared with 50 years later? We already know this to be true for basically any time period in the past 300 years. Are you saying recent decades are somehow immune to this effect?

Yeah, you're gonna need a much stronger argument for this than a list of things from 50 years ago that are obvious huge inventions and...what, a much shorter list for the last 50 years?

> Find an example. Peter Thiel and Tyler Cowen are examples from more or less current year who have written books and essays more or less saying what I just said above (FWIIW, both after my essay). Elon Musk is someone who has made it his life's mission to reverse this trend. There are no examples from 1969, because in 1969, unlike today: it simply was not true.

What? There were a ton of people around 1900 that thought physics was "done", including respected physicists. They were wrong.

Every era has short-sighted ranters with a mouthpiece and an ego to feed. Don't be one of them, dude.

Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening? What could be causing it? Come up with a definition of category -- I like your "computers are different because all the people on earth doing math couldn't do it", that's good. That works also for things that are explosive increases in energy use, but inventions that aren't that kind of thing don't quite fit that notion of category. Ask in what ways these categories make Thiel's zero-to-one changes.

There's way more depth to be explored here. If you just repeat yourself and make claims that things are obvious, and think people only disagree because you come off as a "dick", then you're not doing much more than trolling.

>I don't disagree with any of them!

Well you sure "didn't disagree" at great length above!

>you're gonna need a much stronger argument for this than a list of things from 50 years ago that are obvious huge inventions and...what, a much shorter list for the last 50 years?

I don't think I do need a much stronger argument than this: you just said above you agree with all of my examples. Now you say ... my examples aren't enough. Yet you "feel" I am right anyway? What would be "enough?" Simply looking at 1969's vision of the future is pretty damning as well.

Re your Kelvin goalposting; you don't have an example of technological pessimism from 1969, do you? You've been a reasonably honest interlocutor thus far; don't goalpoast me, bro. "So what makes 1959-2009 "not progress"?" was bad enough.

>Propose a mechanism of action, ask why is this happening?

I have my suspicions, which is why I consider writing a book on it. First, though, I'd like to get you, who agrees with me on one line, then disagrees on another (you assure me this is not routine bay area tone policing, and I'll just assume so for the sake of argument), to admit it is actually happening. What evidence besides your subjective feelings on the matter would you accept? What evidence do you, who claims to agree with me, yet disagrees on every detail, have?

I think naming a series of bonkers technological revolutions that happened in one time period with not even one comparable example in a later time period is a reasonable and strong argument. If you disagree with the time span in question, I invite you to suggest a better time span, or one going back another 50 years. 1869 to 1919 was super amazing, and nobody thought technology was over in that time period, even if Kelvin thought physics was done (which was a reasonable thing to think back then; oddly people no longer think this, despite the parallel lack of experimental results which contradict theory). Same with the 50 years prior to 1869; technological progress was vast then. Any of those 50 year periods had more important breakthroughs than today. It's the recent era which has slowed down. You'll get the same result breaking it down by decade, by 20 years or 40 as I did in the original takimag article.

I'm going to meta-level with you:

1. No one is saying that the inventions of 1909-1959 were not amazing. Yes, the jet engine is fantastic. Flying is bonkers. Antibiotics, great. No one is seriously arguing that these are not spectacular inventions that transformed humanity. You don't need to keep repeating the argument that 1909-1959 was great, by listing great things from then, because no one is arguing against that.

2. I (at least) am making an argument about the proof you offer that progress is slowing, I am saying it is weak proof. I am doing so in two ways:

(A) by pointing out that the ways you are arguing 1909-1959 things are great can also be applied to post-1959 things, and the ways you are arguing post-1959 things aren't great can also be applied to things from 1909-1959. This argument looks like this: jets are great compared with props in the same way that iPhones are great compared with ENIAC. So why is the former transformation categorically different from the latter?

You are interpreting A as me saying that things from 1909-1959 weren't great. I'm not saying that. No one is saying that. You are saying that my examples are absurd: yes, that is the whole point of this argument. It's absurd to say that jets are not great because we already had props, just as it's absurd to say that iPhones are not great because we had ENIAC (or whatever appropriate computer from 1950 you're thinking of).

(B) by pointing out that it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 years after the fact. Not all things, of course, which is why this thread is full of examples and counterexamples. People being optimistic or pessimistic about tech in 1969 is irrelevant -- if I found someone who in 1969 thought that 1919-1969 was lame compared with 1869-1919, would that convince you of anything? No, because it's irrelevant. The whole Kelvin thing is apparently apocryphal anyway.

With that out of the way, you ask: what would be enough evidence to convince me that progress is slowing?

First, one problem is that we'd need a definition of progress. "Rate of invention of things Scott thinks are obviously amazing with 50 years of hindsight"--aka your list---is not a great definition because we don't have 50 years of hindsight on 2009. See point (B) above.

Other people have looked at counts of patents, per-capita research papers, etc., all of which continue to accelerate. But these are all also problematic, because these things can be gamed and end up correlated with other things that are irrelevant to that ineffable "actual progress" we're both arguing around.

We could go with lives saved, by which measure 1959-2009 looks amazing except that most of those lives aren't in the USA or Europe, compared with 1909-1959.

In another post, you say (paraphrasing, but I think I got it) "things that give a society that possesses them a guaranteed win in a war over societies that don't" but this is a very pre-atom-bomb type of definition. At this point, the atom bomb is that thing for everyone all the time, so it makes sense that societies don't prioritize weapons like that anymore: you don't need them! We already have the bomb. Who needs a second world-annihilating type of device? So technological progress doesn't look like this anymore, post-bomb. (Even the things you list as examples of post-1969 definitely don't fit. Coding theory feels like a stretch here IMO.) I speculate that it's because societies tend to fight more in economic terms today than physical terms. So we get information-related inventions and financing inventions, not physical-dominance or energy-extraction inventions. But I digress.

I don't have a good definition of progress. But I'd love to come up with one that fits.

Second, without a definition, things are tricky, but I tend to look at proxy measures like productivity. Technology lets people do more, so, how much can people do per unit time? The rate of productivity growth has been slowing a bunch since 1970-1980. Another proxy measure you could look at is health outcomes: life expectancy at birth (reflecting childhood diseases, mostly) has basically been stagnant since 1980.

These proxy measures are what make me think that progress is slowing. But it could be the proxy measures losing their proxy-value instead.

I welcome a new definition of progress from you to argue about.

Thanks for continuing the discussion in a constructive way!

> it is really hard to know the impact of many really amazing, crazy foundational things until 50 years after the fact.

That's absolutely untrue in all of the examples I listed. Nukes, antibiotics, supersonic jets, space flight, the invention of computers; all of these things were immediately recognized as of titanic importance. There is nothing recognizable in the last 50 years as being of comparable importance. Cell phones and search engines are cool, but not hugely different from what we had before, and again: not comparable to the previous 50 years. They were minor revolutions, and how I make my living, but compared to antibiotics? Feh!

Sure there may be things in the lab now or back a few years which will eventually prove amazing. That's pretty impossible to talk about; I doubt there is even a single decent example from the prior 50 years you could name that was as hidden as these alleged breakthroughs are now. Important things aren't often kept secret. I mean, maybe the air force has antigravity UFOs like the tinfoil hat brigades say; I kind of doubt it! There is a distinct lack of obvious breakthroughs of the last 50 years. That's what I keep saying! Maybe CRISPR or whatever will change everything; but they've been saying stuff like this since the 70s, and again, the biggest biotech revolution thus far is ... as I said ... cheap insulin. Not even close to antibiotics.

Your point about us not developing super-weapons is not obviously true. The US has basically failed at this, just as it continues to fail at most things involving large scale industry: but the Russians just fielded a nuclear ramjet cruise missile (the US was working on this in the 50s) as well as a crazy doomsday torpedo and some weird hypersonic things I haven't fully parsed yet. Also, antibiotics wasn't a super weapon, nor was computers, nor any number of other examples; but these technologies conveyed huge advantages on the possessors of such technologies that have military implications. The point of measuring breakthrough techs via their military advantages is to have some obvious metric. It's a pretty good one! Nothing is perfect, but it's a decent way of pointing out why some technological innovations are more important than others; evolutionary fitness.

Re productivity; if you remove chip improvements from economic measures of productivity; things look super grim. That's what I said in the original article!

> Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?].

Supersonic jets do not belong on that list. I get that you like them; the world would be pretty similar if no one had ever invented them.

Personal computers ('70s-'80s) definitely belong on that list, and I'd argue that smartphones (~2007) do too but you apparently disagree. Maybe the Web too ('90s), though I imagine you definitely disagree there.

So, now that we have a list that's more evenly distributed across decades for the last 90 years, what? We just argue about what's on the list? Who cares? Is it just what I see as humanity-changing vs. you? This is exactly the kind of useless argument I don't want to have, because it tells me nothing except what Scott thinks is important.

Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways. So, good at pointing out why some inventions are more important than others? Yeah, for some subset of inventions, but conveniently not recent ones. So I don't really think it strengthens your argument.

Further:

> Your point about us not developing super-weapons is not obviously true.

I made no such point. I said that the incentives for people to work on breakthrough inventions has shifted, and thus as a result that progress would look different post-bomb.

The US rewards invention differently than Russia, so it's not surprising that Americans aren't building superweapons, that military funding no longer produces amazing breakthroughs at the rate it did, and that the Russian military is still working on new ways to annihilate everyone.

> Re productivity; if you remove chip improvements from economic measures of productivity; things look super grim. That's what I said in the original article!

But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket!

> Nukes [1940's], antibiotics [1920's], supersonic jets [1940's], space flight [1960's], the invention of computers [what are we calling this, 1950's?].

Sputnik was in the 1950s, computers happened in the late 40s, and yes, we're calling the time period these things were invented to be 1909 through 1959 or 1919 to 1969; whatever. Compare to the following 50 years of 1959 to 2009... Or compare 1969 to 2019; whatever; doesn't matter. One chunk of time; the EARLY chunk of time demonstrates enormous and obvious progress. The other one contains the iphone and "personal computers." One of them represents a preposterous increase in actual, measurable human power over nature. New things were possible that were not possible before. The other one represents an increase in distractions available to individuals.

>Your military-usefulness definition is interesting, but I think limited, and ignores how competition between societies has changed in non-military ways.

Indeed it does ignore this change, very self consciously so. Imagine if we're playing a game of "Civilization." Which invention, which requires the limited resources of the civilization to be dedicated to its development, confers advantage over the other civilizations? Atom bombs and antibiotics and the invention of computers in the first place, or personal computers and smart phones? Pretty sure the first couple of them are giant leaps forward which means your civilization dominates the other one. Maybe networked computing helps too, if you can use them to subvert the other cultures, but it sure don't look like it from where I am sitting!

>But this is wrong? Productivity stalled in the '70s, just as chip improvements really started to skyrocket!

Yes: that's the point! It may have stalled because the smart people were fucking around uselessly with chips and their useless biproducts when they could have been, say, building better solar or other non-carbon power technologies, or, like Gerald O'Neil's space colonies!

...and we're back to repetition. It doesn't seem like you're willing to question your assumptions, unfortunately.

Anyway, it's been fun! Thanks for the conversation.

In this post you looked at an argument that was essentially Reductio Ad Absurdum, and then argued that those things were absurd.

Yes, they are. That’s the whole point being made, and that strengthens your opponents argument, not yours.

If it’s absurd to say that a propeller and a jet engine are equivalent, then it’s just as absurd to claim a mainframe and an iPhone are equivalent.

wrt last paragraph: YES! Where is my Tricorder? Or at least modules which could plug into a standard port on smartphones, thereby extending its capabilities? The ideas have been there(and realized in spots), but there is no real (market) incentive for the corporations to do so. It's all about collecting consumer data, profiling, customer retention, rent seeking via dark patterns, bundling, delivering more ads and so on. For nothing. Except the next generation of gadgets.

In 1959 there were public phone booths or stands in the cities, or the cab companies installed dedicated ones by themselves at public places. I have seen them maybe up to around 2000. In less dense places it probably wouldn't have made sense, because the cost of the ride were too expensive, prohibitive for most, except in emergencies. For which other services did and do exist, at least in developed countries. Where there is no cell phone reception now, a cab/taxi/uber is probably still too expensive nowadays. So i'm not getting why you are using this as example, while ignoring the fact that you are carrying a f..(-word).. Orwellian TELEVISOR with you, while the usefulness leaves much to be desired because of the formfactor even with good eyesight/vision. I don't want to read books on smartphone. Why would i? Do you read books in the size of a cash reciept/sales slip? Oh yes, there is navigation! But it's often wrong. I know this goes against the grain of most of you, because it's your source of income(Mobile First!1!!) or you've grown up with them, without knowledge of the times before cell/smartphones. But you know what? For all i care you can shove those things where the sun doesn't shine!

(Edit: I hear teledildonics are a thing now. The last sentence was meant as an insult, not endorsement. Just to be clear about that, k?)

or you've grown up with them, without knowledge of the times before cell/smartphones.

Guess what the “74” in my name signifies?

Where there is no cell phone reception now, a cab/taxi/uber is probably still too expensive nowadays.

There are very few populated areas on the earth without cell phone reception from at least one provider.

I don't want to read books on smartphone.

My phone is about the size of a page in a paperback book and the words are definitely the size of normal text. Also, any modern phone you can increase the size of text if your eyesight isn’t good.

Yawn. With the exception of so called 'phablets' i doubt that, because the aspect ratio usually doesn't fit. Anytime i'm trying that it just feels wrong. As i mentioned before, like staring at a cashiers receipt/sales slip.

Read it and I agree with the sentiment. I think the more relevant questions is why has this happened?

Also the promise of a distributed digital networked society is revolutionary. It our actualization that is a simple elaboration on the existing.

If we were all working remote, being educated online, trading digital goods and currencies, and primarily living in VR then I would say a new world had been born.

It's not a myth, it's the default state of humanoids to invent new tools all the time. What is the article suggesting, that we sit on our chair doing nothing? Everything humans do is progress forward so that thinking doesnt even make sense.

> that they are fundamentally different from any other industry. They’re not.

Yes, tech is fundamentally different from all other industries because it's not regulated. Regulation kills innovation thats why tech is progressing faster.

Author makes the claim that tech is not random mutation like evolution, but then goes on to mention 1000 projects like smart diapers which are nothing than random mutations of existing products, most of them destined to die, leaving 1 or 2 which will thrive. That sounds a lot like evolution.

I assume technology came out of specialization. Which is fueled by population growth.

it sure accelerated but technology has always been progressing since tool-making primates exist

The changes aren't random and generally small. It's closer to Lamarck than Darwin.

Remember that successful products aren't necessarily good or beneficial. Tetraethyl lead in gasoline is one example. The Late nineteenth, early 20th century radium craze was full of other examples.

Mutations in nature also aren't random and generally small. Different types occur with different probability, and nucleotides are replaced with other nucleotides and not some new life form. But just like startups, mutations are blind to whether they will be beneficial or not. Lamarck's idea of inheritance is not really related to this.

> What is the article suggesting, that we sit on our chair doing nothing?

no, it's suggesting that just because something is new it is not automatically an improvement, and progress exists both on the technological plane and also the moral/ethical/societal one.

the title reads the myth of progress itself, not the myth of progress being an improvement

>It's not a myth, it's the default state of humanoids to invent new tools all the time. What is the article suggesting, that we sit on our chair doing nothing?

Sometimes yes, why not? As a great mathematician said, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone".

>Everything humans do is progress forward so that thinking doesnt even make sense.

Well, nuclear warheads, and bio-warfare are not "progress forward". Many things non-war related aren't either.

People should stop being naive and confuse mere technological innovation with societal advancement. Or to think that just because some technology is created and gets widespread it's necessarily more good than bad (nukes got widespread too).

Technological progress could be the very opposite of societal progress, even help bring a regression in certain aspects (e.g. make it easier for governments to be despotic, and eventually kill democracy).

That's not just something for luddites to say either - consider how people like Kurzweil, Hawking, or Musk warned about an "AI Singularity" that could enslave us all. Whether you consider that concern overblown, or not, in principle it shows that not all technological innovation is good.

> man's inability

yep. the wise mathematician saw that it's impossible

> are not "progress forward"

nuclear warheads gave us nuclear power and brought a long peace in the world. They were very beneficial. Nuclear war and biowarfare are terrible, but the deterrence stalemate it creates is beneficial to the species. It's arguably the most stable recipe for peace so far

> mere technological innovation with societal advancement

"Societal advancement" is a totally relative term. Advancement towards what? Individual Freedom? Collectivism? OOps ... politics

Technology is monotonically advancing towards more advanced (complex) effective tools, always. The two are not related

>nuclear warheads gave us nuclear power and brought a long peace in the world. They were very beneficial.

And tomorrow they could wipe out the whole planet (besides the 250,000 people they've already wiped out). What would the verdict be at that case? Probably there wont be one, as there would be noone to make it (or noone who cares to make it).

>"Societal advancement" is a totally relative term.

My sentiments exactly. So one can't throw it willy nilly when they merely mean technological advancement. Nazi Germany was more technologically advanced than the Weimar republic that preceded it, for example, but few would consider it a "more advanced" society towards more social harmony in general...

>Advancement towards what? Individual Freedom? Collectivism? OOps ... politics*

Yeah, so? You can have technological progress without getting into politics on whether it's progress, but you can't have "progress" in abstract without defining towards what.

"Freer markets" for example, or "more democracy" is already talking politics...

>Technology is monotonically advancing towards more advanced (complex) effective tools, always.

That's also false. Civilizations have lost technology and regressed backwards at a few points (the "dark ages" after the Roman empire was one of them).

And, magical thinking and wishing aside, there's no guarantee from the universe that it can't happen again, even in a much more severe state. Either caused by man (e.g. after a nuclear war or similar) or by forces of nature (e.g. a meteor or similar).

> It's not a myth, it's the default state of humanoids to invent new tools all the time.

Is this actually true? Doesn't technology stay fairly constant going back in history? For how long did we only have fire and rocks?

I would say the current phase of technological change is fuelled by

1) We finally discovered a few thing about how the universe actually works, and we used those things to change how we live over the last few hundred years.

2) We were able to use the above to beat some natural constraints around how many people there can be, and the scale allows specialisation, giving us a bit more of the above again.

> Doesn't technology stay fairly constant going back in history? For how long did we only have fire and rocks?

The point is, it always progresses forward, except in rare cases where a population is completely lost, though the rate of change has varied widely. I m sure even fire-building would have been somewhat refined before the neolithic era.

Progress is fairly recent idea. When you didnt see much difference between your life and your grandparents, then progress is not obvious.

Plus some histories and myths have humans degenerating from a golden age- Eden, Atlantis, etc. Other have eternal cycles.

If you're interested in the history of the idea of progress there is a great journal article, by John Gray (Oxford philosopher), on the history of the idea of progress:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20027925?seq=1#page_scan_tab_co...

"Progress is merely a modern idea, which is to say, a false idea."

In the United States, the idea seems to date back at least to the early years of independence:

"I accost an American sailor, and I inquire why the ships of his country are built so as to last but for a short time; he answers without hesitation that the art of navigation is every day making such rapid progress, that the finest vessel would become almost useless if it lasted beyond a certain number of years."

Alexis de Toqueville, "Democracy in America," 1840

> Technologists’ desire to make a parallel to evolution is flawed at its very foundation. Evolution is driven by random mutation — mistakes, not plans

But this is not what the evolution metaphor is alluding to. Nobody in their right mind would argue that technological progress is driven by random mutations. But it is driven by market pressure. If something can be invented and sold, it will be invented and sold, be it invasive surveillance tools for your kids or Bluetooth enabled condoms. And market pressure is in some sense akin to evolutionary pressure where if there is a biological niche, some form of life will evolve to take advantage of it.

That said, the argument about regulation is somewhat sound. Just because the current market for technological innovations is pretty much unregulated (at least as far as things like privacy are concerned), doesn't mean it has to stay that way. Back in the day pharmaceutical companies sold heroin laced cough drops and radioactive face creams, but then FDA was established and took control of drug safety. There is no theoretical reason why something similar cannot happen in the technology market.

The problem, the way I see it, is that regulation is driven by perceived risk. It is easy to argue that pharmaceutical industry has to be regulated, since the danger of bad and/or inefficient drugs is fairly obvious to everyone. Arguing that technology has to be regulated is a lot harder, because the perceived risk of erosion of privacy is a lot lower and hard to quantify.

> But this is not what the evolution metaphor is alluding to. Nobody in their right mind would argue that technological progress is driven by random mutations.

I agree and will add that human evolution IS becoming plan driven, we are learning to fix genetic diseases, and keep people alive to reproduce despite genetic conditions (genetic diseases via various treatments, susceptibility to disease via antibiotics and vaccines and basically all of medicine). Soon we are likely to be making intentional changes to people's dna before they are born.

So evolution itself is becoming planned.

There's been plenty of technological progress in the drug trade despite being illegal nearly everywhere, and a widespread perception of drugs being a social ill.

It's inevitable that if there is enough demand for something, someone will make it. There will be people out there that don't care about the ethics. Some of those things can be constrained by regulation or social pressure, but only some of them.

> Evolution is a terrible metaphor for technology

If you remove this assertion, the article is unnecessarily alarmist about all new tech.

A nice quote from the article:

> Evolution doesn’t have meetings about the market, the environment, the customer base. Evolution doesn’t patent things or do focus groups. Evolution doesn’t spend millions of dollars lobbying Congress to ensure that its plans go unfettered.

Those making bold claims about a "natural evolution" of technology remind me of people who like to expound Adam Smith's "invisible hand" whilst ignoring Smith's warnings on the collusive nature of business and need for government oversight.

As we acquire more control over our bodies and environment, so we must have more considered discussion on the direction we want to take as a species.

The article's line of reasoning is silly. Sure, technology does not personally hold meetings or lobby Congress, just like evolution doesn't personally have sex or eat other creatures; they just effectively kill everything that doesn't, so what's the difference?

I find it insane that people really think they can directly control the direction of our species. Congratulations on, for example, having a great discussion about how surveillance and automated weaponry is bad and wrong and Americans, for example, should stop making it. Applause all around. Do you think China is having the same discussion? Do you think this discussion will somehow prevent China from using its surveillance and AI weaponry to usurp American dominance, spread and develop its technology unfettered, and render your neat little discussion completely worthless?

Just like evolution, technology relies on the basic fact that there's always someone to pick up its mantle. There's actually no practical way to forever stop everyone from making market-efficient or gene-efficient choices, because those efficient choices inherently grant the power to surpass people like you who seek to stop it.

I think the sooner people realize this, the more influence they gain over their destiny. Technology isn't completely untameable, but don't delude yourself into thinking you can directly control it or stop it. Feel free to focus your efforts on ethical and "good" technology, but remember that the only thing that actually matters in this cold universe is power and the technology that creates it. Ethical technology is worthless if it creates no power or efficiency. Decentralized tech is a perfect example of this. A lot of moral talk and hype - like discussion about what direction we want to take as a species - but most decentralized tech made so far is simply worse and tries to appeal to people's morality to adopt it. Is it any surprise that it has mostly failed?

A "more considered discussion" is not the answer. Instead, make something that's more or equally efficient while also being better for society. Don't bring rhetorical or regulatory weapons to a tech fight. You won't win.

The article is displaying an ad with the tagline "The Evolution of Watching Movies in your PJs".

I don't think the author is suggesting that you can stop technological change. The author is saying that it is fair to recognize the change often comes with a cost, and you can ask if you want to pay that cost. You can takes steps to mitigate those costs. Also, that the people who create and deploy these changes should recognize their own responsibility for it. They're not operating as blind natural forces, but deliberate human actions, and we can judge them as such.

I don't think the important question is whether Progress is a myth - it has all the qualities and functions of one - but rather, whether it is a useful myth. Plenty of myths are highly useful, and I would happily argue the the myth of Progress has been a strong net positive.

For one thing, it seems to me that rather than the author's sparring partners having misunderstood technology, she may have misunderstood evolution.

Technology gets better, alright. And there so many things, I can do today, I could not do just a decade ago.

Hardware is fantastic, it's fast, almost never fails, it's lightweight and just works.

The software side has been a great disappointment, on the other hand. Software spies on you, makes you a marionette of a corporation, it's getting more brittle in many parts. Many people in business do not care about security or some basic ethics and it's mirrored in the apps and tools we use.

Imagine a world, where software respects every users privacy, most connections are safe by default and people feel ok about updating things, because things most of the times get better. It sounds like a utopia today.

I really wanted to like software as a thing, but the current and the next decade do not look bright to me. On the contrary.

We'll have many more abandoned devices, abandoned software, that some poor guy will depend on, more chaos, more junior developers who do not understand basic things, let alone caring about ethics or the consequences of what they are building. It's sad.

To be clear, the article isn't denying that technology advances and has advanced.

The author is correcting the subtle, prevalent mindset that views technological improvement as essentially a Darwinian process of blind progress. But technology isn't like that. It's inherently teleological. Somebody (or a group of somebodies) expends enormous effort to create technology on purpose for a purpose.

TL;DR – just because I can build this doesn't mean I should.

> “What already happened doesn’t really matter. You don’t need to know that history to build on what they made. In technology, all that matters is tomorrow.”

I think one of the advantages of engineers studying history is that you understand that while the technology we build has never been done before, nothing is inevitable about any of this, and there's no reason to think it should go on forever by itself. Societies have lost literacy (see eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_Dark_Ages). There are books that have been lost forever. Technologies have been forgotten until they were rediscovered. And studying history also shows that while technology might change, human nature does not.

The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Cirve is a thing. Ultimately logarithmic.

It's generally cast as personal/individual, but applies to groups, organisations, and cultures as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting_curve

Most grows is not exponential, rather it is shaped like an S curve. A novel phenotype/technology flourishes by taking advantage of some free energy, but after the low hanging fruits have been picket the multitude of offspring has to compete for smaller returns.

I think people are tripping up on the word 'evolution' too much. The more important word in the article is 'inevitable'.

Sometimes it's good to be reminded that there is nothing inevitable about everything in our lives becoming a surveillance platform.

"This idea persists in part because Americans cannot resist the allure of “progress”

i think the UK was a huge part of the information revolution in the 20th century, not to mention centuries of European technologies that had little to do with current American culture. I also suspect there will be new countries jumping in soon and contributing hugely to upcoming IT innovations. I don't think there's much doubt about technological progress at least in info-tech, the singularity is a different conversation that actually includes philosophical questions of consciousness.

The main point rings true, similar to how people often take for granted things predicted by economics. But nothing the "invisible hand" does happens by itself. Opportunities don't get taken advantage of until someone does the work, and their decisions matter.

Still, there is an evolution-like filtering process partially determining which companies succeed and which ones fail, and ignoring the effect of a company's environment (customers, suppliers, competitors, and regulators) on a product's success is missing something essential.

So what's the policy proposal here?

Give some government agency release approval authority on all production software builds?

There is a gross mismatch between the pace of change and the pace of any available mechanism for regulation.

If this is indeed a problem, the solution will have to be a cultural one, not a technocratic one.

In the meantime, this kind of criticism makes me roll my eyes and wonder how much the author actually knows about how hardware and software are actually developed in the year 2019.

This is Vox, so don't waste breath looking for a policy proposal.

Yes, the idea of progress as a straight line is silly, it's like a tree that goes into all directions. All we can do is make progress along a certain route of branches, at the exclusion of others; for every door opened, countless doors close.

To be able to gauge how "well" we're doing, how "good" our progress is, we would have to compare with all other branches we could have ended up on by now, and that is not possible.

Reminds me of the old science fiction trope... "We asked if we can, we never asked if we should".

The technology will happen, because sensors and AI and IoT are just... stuff. Stuff that's useful in non-threatening ways. So the question is, when does society push back? When do we start banning this sort of surveillance? Or will we?

No, it's not inevitable. But that doesn't mean it won't happen.

An interesting parallelism can be drawn between those communities that embraced "progress" and those that didn't. Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your views), communities that adopted technology thrived and are mainly in control of writing our history so yes, we do have an ingrained bias view.

> communities that adopted technology thrived and are mainly in control of writing our history so yes

Define "thriving", if you mean maximising profit, consumption and pollution, then yes. Cancer also thrives right until the host dies, it doesn't mean it's a good thing

HDI is one possible measure.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index

I think evolution is a valid way to look at technology as long as you are open to the idea that it may not be evolving to better serve us. You are simply a part of technologies environment- something it uses to reproduce and grow.

Most technological progress is happening in terms of information processing. It's sort of abstract and dare I say illusory.

In terms of things like space travel, energy or physical technology it feels like we hit a slowdown.

I think there does seem to be a drive toward "progress" in various ways over a long time span, but as they say in investing: nothing goes straight up and nothing goes straight down.

This article is a straw man argument that conflates ideas that there is an inevitable progress in technology, like Moore's law, with a claim that you can do anything you want with technology because it's inevitable.

This article is anti-technology, pro-regulation propaganda.

Evolution is present in all things, it is inevitable. All things evolve because all things are impermanent. The question is, is evolution of technology now only driven by profit and military defense? Or can evolution be driven by the desire for a better future that is more full of Love and less full of violence and fear.

People are defining evolution too narrowly, look to see it happening all around you, socially, technically, geologically, comologically.

Consciousness itself is evolving and that is why we are seeing the limits of Spiral Dynamics stage orange capitalism.

What will our economic system evolve into when society evolves from orange to green? How will this affect our technological evolution?

(this will be quite painful but necessary for our survival)

I disagree with almost everything in this article.

1. The facial recognition on students case. This has been done in physical schools for decades. Teachers had been telling kids to pay attention forever. Now, after moving to virtual, a similar solution has been developed. Personally, I would be happy if I could use something like this for my own learning. Identifying the moments when I didn't focus, so that I could re-learn just what I need, is certainly useful and helps a lot.

2. People don't understand that privacy has a price. If Facebook weren't serving us targeted ads, it would be asking us money. I prefer seeing ads over paying money. 99% of people also do. This is evident by Facebook's success. Some things cannot even be done a different way. We can live without smart speakers. They're not really an essential thing in your lives yet. Still, people buy them. They prefer the loss of privacy, that carries almost no real consequences, over the inability to use a technology that helps them.

3. Regulation around drugs means drugs are expensive and development is slowed down. It's very hard to make new, revolutionary drugs, unless you're a big company. If you're a big company, sometimes you don't want to pursue a certain direction, as not to disturb the status quo and not to kill your golden goose. You're also extremely profit-driven, much more so than small inventors. This will be true about technology. When it gets regulated, any new developments that might benefit humanity will be slowed down or not pursued at all. we will also end up with way more monopollies than we have now.

4. You know, people who never went to america make progress too? Europe has their fair share of startups too. Sure, America was and is the center of technology, mostly for geopolitical/legal/historical reasons, but that doesn't mean anything. I completely don't get this argument.

This article is a perfect example of the anti-big-tech crusade the mainstream media are pursuing recently, which is very alarming. I'm not saying there are no issues with the way current technology works. In my opinion, most of them stem from the fact that law, especially tax law, favors big companies with big armies of lawyers over small companies or even collectives. Those companies usually have shareholders and investors breathing on their necks, so they need to pursue every direction, no matter how unethical, that can bring them more profit. Corporate lock-in and the "move fast and break things" movement are also major issues. Privacy isn't one, though. People think of that surveillance done by machines is equivalent to surveillance done by people. I disagree. If I don't really get any negative consequences from Facebook having my data (and I see none), while getting a lot of positive consequences, I'm all for it.

Technology has been the only change for the past 40000 years. Human nature not so much.

There was little change over much that time.

Human nature, or at least capabilities and behaviours, have shown several marked breakout points.

If I could understand this article I think I would violently disagree.

His criticisms apply to capitalism, not technology. If you accept the Milton Freedman position that corporations have as their sole duty the enrichment of their shareholders, this is what you get.

Why would we expect that any technology we have the ability to develop would be developed? Just because there are literally no counter examples? Why do we expect the sun to come up every morning?

The choice is to let society absorb and adjust to technological innovations, or pretend you can stop them from happening and tilt at windmills while society adapts and absorbs those changes.

The other option is to leave society and refuse to accept new technologies (while society adapts and absorbs them) like the Amish or Ted Kaczynski.

I think our idea of what progress is needs to change. In my mind, the following are not progress: facial recognition, smart diapers, and surveillance devices. And handheld devices like iphones are a very minor progress. the problem with these things is they don't really enable anything new. So what if the diaper tells you that it's full, I could've done that just by sniffing it: bluetoothing it is NOT progress. Facial recognition on my door: now I don't need to pull out a key, big deal. Iphones: wow, now I can get a map on my phone. I used to just print them out and that worked fine, I could still get to my destination. admittedly having on the phone makes getting there a little easier - this is minor progress - saves me maybe a few minutes at most.

Here are examples real progress: (these are all examples that save thousands of hours of labor, not just a few minutes) - being able to get to work faster or more cost effectively

- lowering the cost of housing and bringing housing prices down.

- technology to allow remote work (as if you were there in person)

- lowering the cost of medical insurance and medical costs in general.

- lowering the cost of education (this can be easily done if we get rid of the monopoly of the current institutions -> there are a ton of online schools and programs that would happily teach people at a much lower cost, if not free.)

It's perhaps possible that what tools enable isn't always obvious.

Mobile phones mean mobile connectivity and computing. That means mobile monitoring of medical conditions becomes possible, making it possible to dramatically better assess and treat in a more timely fashion an array of conditions. That's very often a wonderful way to bring down prices, as preventing medical crises is much cheaper than handling them.

Execution matters, and handheld devices like iPhones have great eased execution. It's ludicrous to claim the ease of video calling and using the internet via sandboxed apps is not significant. There are huge efficiency gains made when a person can purchase their own travel, get medical help via their handheld device, ability to consume media without needing set top boxes and televisions, etc.

It's a second rate device. handheld devices are things you use when you don't have a computer with you or aren't able to use it. Most things you can do on a mobile device, you can do on a computer much more quickly and with quicker more accurate typing, better UI, more screens, etc.

when you're stuck on a train, standing and not able to use a computer, do mobile devices become useful.

The data says it’s not considered a second rate device for the millions of people opting to use them over desktops or laptops.

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