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With increased technology comes more liberties for all. With your kind of thinking we would still live in caves because why work on anything unless we solve all

With increased technology comes more liberties for all. With your kind of thinking we would still live in caves because why work on anything unless we solve all our social issues first? Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. If you want clean water for all humans, you should be supportive of discovering new stuff. For example, for humans to survive in hostile environments on other planets we need to create new innovations and that creates a big incentive to figure out technological solutions to hard problems. Turning salt water into drinkable water is one, this one is actually already solved and being implemented across different countries and if we can improve that and make it cheaper we will have solved the problem of water already.

llukas 9y ago
> Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. Standing on the shoulders of giants is not only about your predecessors that solved engineering problems so you can dive even deeper - it is also about society which found better ways over time for effective financing that allows science&engineering to happen. Also please read (for example) about Samsung and Nokia - they were forced to change industries by politicians in their respective countries.
- staticelf 9y ago
  > It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some power from the church it also clearly made us see that the sun doesn't go around the earth so it showed that Copernicus was right all along. A big discovery that made people doubt the christian religion and change the political landscape forever. All big scientific discoveries changed the societies in a big way and there is no going back. Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago
    > Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward. No, man, that's simply not true. That's an incredibly technocratic view of the world. Using the U.S. as an example, the (belated) end of slavery in the U.S. didn't come about from a scientific discovery or a technological innovation. Technics played a part in the exacerbation of the issues, but it was politics, culture, language, religion and "spirit" that ended state sponsored slavery. I think that was a decently large push forward for society.
    - staticelf 9y ago
      I think it is true though. I am a bit of a technocrat. Just ask the people that have a fulltime job but still cannot afford a place to live if slavery has ended. But sure, politics can change some things but in the end it doesn't change much. To add to my point, politics may alter how we live but it doesn't bring anything new into the world. If we want to progress, we need to solve issues and take away the need for people to do stuff we don't want them to do. If you had todays farming equipment for example, there would never had been any slaves because one machine can do the job of hundreds of slaves. The machine doesn't have to be fed and managed, the machine doesn't fight back. I believe we can solve any such problem with technological advancement and thus our money should be heavily invested there.
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      Yep, aka the basic, but always true "guns vs butter" lesson. Who wants to live in a technologically sophisticated world if most of the spending goes to war, surveillance, bailing out rich bankers, healthcare insurance, and just housing, anyways?
      - staticelf 9y ago
        That is the issue you get when you do not spend money on science though. Compare the NASA budget to the US military budget. What if you would reverse that? Don't you think we would be better off in every way possible?
evanlivingston 9y ago
You make two very, very large claims that require a deep dive to support. >With increased technology comes more liberties for all. ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. >Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. Again, what? That's an overwhelmingly naive and narrow view of the world. JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'? Politicians were not partly responsible for the development of long range rocketry and nuclear fusion that came out of WWII? It's strange to me that people are assuming that when I question the _kind_ of technological advancement being focused on that I'm critiquing _all_ technological advancement. I challenge you to find that critique in my words. Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality. How can we talk about 'progress' without first talking about the rubric for progress itself? How are we (you) defining progress?
- staticelf 9y ago
  Sure. > ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. Electricity, internet, radio, engines, cameras, etc. > JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'? You're just enforcing my point, this is people who understand that we need technological progress in order for us to move forward as a society. Of course they are part of the progress, they help enable the progress to go faster. > Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality. It is my belief that this will never happen, at least not untill we have progressed so far that everyones needs are met. Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality. Just look at history, we've never been able to do this so far so there is no reason to belive that we suddently change our behavior. I am defining progress as a lot of things, it can be the discovery of something new but it can also be an invention that benefits just a small number of people. In the long run, most new inventions will benefit everyone.
  - evanlivingston 9y ago

llukas 9y ago

> Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. Standing on the shoulders of giants is not only about your predecessors that solved engineering problems so you can dive even deeper - it is also about society which found better ways over time for effective financing that allows science&engineering to happen. Also please read (for example) about Samsung and Nokia - they were forced to change industries by politicians in their respective countries.

staticelf 9y ago
> It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries. I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some power from the church it also clearly made us see that the sun doesn't go around the earth so it showed that Copernicus was right all along. A big discovery that made people doubt the christian religion and change the political landscape forever. All big scientific discoveries changed the societies in a big way and there is no going back. Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward.
- evanlivingston 9y ago
  > Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward. No, man, that's simply not true. That's an incredibly technocratic view of the world. Using the U.S. as an example, the (belated) end of slavery in the U.S. didn't come about from a scientific discovery or a technological innovation. Technics played a part in the exacerbation of the issues, but it was politics, culture, language, religion and "spirit" that ended state sponsored slavery. I think that was a decently large push forward for society.
  - staticelf 9y ago
    I think it is true though. I am a bit of a technocrat. Just ask the people that have a fulltime job but still cannot afford a place to live if slavery has ended. But sure, politics can change some things but in the end it doesn't change much. To add to my point, politics may alter how we live but it doesn't bring anything new into the world. If we want to progress, we need to solve issues and take away the need for people to do stuff we don't want them to do. If you had todays farming equipment for example, there would never had been any slaves because one machine can do the job of hundreds of slaves. The machine doesn't have to be fed and managed, the machine doesn't fight back. I believe we can solve any such problem with technological advancement and thus our money should be heavily invested there.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Yep, aka the basic, but always true "guns vs butter" lesson. Who wants to live in a technologically sophisticated world if most of the spending goes to war, surveillance, bailing out rich bankers, healthcare insurance, and just housing, anyways?
    - staticelf 9y ago
      That is the issue you get when you do not spend money on science though. Compare the NASA budget to the US military budget. What if you would reverse that? Don't you think we would be better off in every way possible?

evanlivingston 9y ago

You make two very, very large claims that require a deep dive to support. >With increased technology comes more liberties for all. ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. >Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. Again, what? That's an overwhelmingly naive and narrow view of the world. JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'? Politicians were not partly responsible for the development of long range rocketry and nuclear fusion that came out of WWII? It's strange to me that people are assuming that when I question the _kind_ of technological advancement being focused on that I'm critiquing _all_ technological advancement. I challenge you to find that critique in my words. Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality. How can we talk about 'progress' without first talking about the rubric for progress itself? How are we (you) defining progress?

staticelf 9y ago
Sure. > ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here. Electricity, internet, radio, engines, cameras, etc. > JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'? You're just enforcing my point, this is people who understand that we need technological progress in order for us to move forward as a society. Of course they are part of the progress, they help enable the progress to go faster. > Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality. It is my belief that this will never happen, at least not untill we have progressed so far that everyones needs are met. Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality. Just look at history, we've never been able to do this so far so there is no reason to belive that we suddently change our behavior. I am defining progress as a lot of things, it can be the discovery of something new but it can also be an invention that benefits just a small number of people. In the long run, most new inventions will benefit everyone.
- evanlivingston 9y ago