In the Shadow of the Great War | Hacker News Reader

In the Shadow of the Great War

rootsofprogress.org

19 pointsjasoncrawford10 comments

In reality, progress did not stop in the twenty years after the First World War.

Many of the great inventions of the 20th century came about in those 20 years: Jet engines, Sound movies, Color movies, Television, Radar, Modern Liquid-Fueled Rocketry, Nuclear Energy, Antibiotics, and several others that I can't dredge up out of my brain just right now.

> In reality, progress did not stop in the twenty years after the First World War.

> Many of the great inventions of the 20th century came about in those 20 years...

Also: nuclear weapons, the seeds of global warming, etc. Since then we've had other great inventions come about, like computerized mass surveillance.

I don't think "progress" should be understood as "accumulation of technology."

Nuclear weapons have killed very few people and have made further large scale war between great powers unthinkable. Global warming is a problem that we will deal with, as we have all other problems we have solved before.

The problems with global warming are easily worth it compared to not having an industrialized society.

> Nuclear weapons have killed very few people and have made further large scale war between great powers unthinkable.

Eh. We're probably a couple malfunctions away from a nuclear war. IIRC, there have been a few near misses in the past, and my understanding Russia has an automated launch system setup to fail deadly.

> Global warming is a problem that we will deal with, as we have all other problems we have solved before.

The thing about existential threats is that you successfully deal with them all until you don't. Then the story stops.

Now I don't think global warming is going to make humanity extinct, but it's quite possible it will cause massive suffering and lead to a future where we're noticeably worse off and diminished.

I am not saying global warming is great, but unless it will reduce us to something worse than an industrialized society it is worth it.

And worse than an industrialized society is 90%+ living at subsistance levels and 50%+ under 5 mortality.

> I am not saying global warming is great, but unless it will reduce us to something worse than an industrialized society it is worth it.

What if it's industrialized, but can only manage output comparable to, say, the world in 1930? So it'd be like a housewarming party so wild it renders the house uninhabitable and you have to go back to living wherever you did before.

And this exchange is a good illustration of "why idea of progress fell out of favor in the course of the 20th century": there are legitimate reasons to expect the future will be worse than today. When we were optimistic about progress, we couldn't see the cliff ahead that we can see now.

Also, we've been myopic in a way very typical of a tech forum: focusing on technology and forgetting about everything else.

Groan... All I can think of is the kids in the hall episode when they make fun of "god is dead." Sure, god is dead (shrug emoji). But to think that progress is also dead, takes a bit more than an obscure quote to convince me. WWII could be considered the genesis of the nuclear age, which is hard to imagine not being "progress". Lately I've been thinking the exact opposite that war drives progress. Maybe I'm not picking up whatever this guy is on about, but it makes no sense to me. maybe someone will enlighten me. *edit spelling

The thesis of the blog overall is that progress has happened, is happening, and is vitally important. Here the author is saying that despite the obvious existence of progress, people are pretending it isn't happening.

> The thesis of the blog overall is that progress has happened, is happening, and is vitally important. Here the author is saying that despite the obvious existence of progress, people are pretending it isn't happening.

I don't think anyone denies some kinds of "progress" are happening. However, the naive optimism is rightfully gone, and that naivete seems to be what the CEO of this blog wants to bring back.

War tends to drive a very specific type of progress, from my understanding. Generally speaking, the more lengthy and devastating the conflict, the more industry benefits. Look to the post war expansion by many of the allied powers following the world wars. Also look to the destruction that it brought to its theaters- the change there was also drastic, and not necessarily for the better.

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