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> 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

> 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?
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      Of course. What about all the other things I mentioned as well? There are so many more--what about for profit prisons? As technology increases our suicide rate isn't really consistently declining. Our prison population has increased. Technology cant make those improvements alone. We need improvements in governance, culture and education for this to happen. Technology can be used for good or bad. By itself, it is just a tool, it's up to us to decide if we are going to end up in a police state with constsnt surveillance and tyranny, colonize Mars, create weapons that can wipe out most of humanity, solve healthcare problems, etc.
      - staticelf 9y ago
        All of these things are not related to investment in science or technology for the betterment of society. But we also live in a time with least war and a lot less suffering in general. Technology may be a tool, but science is not. With science we can prove that x makes more people happy and reduces suicide rates and hence make that choice. The issue is that science is not really that present in the chamber of politics. With a more science-heavy government investments would look a lot different. I am not advocating for technology alone, basic science plays an equal or even more important role in shaping the society. Science has values and it is the only true values that exist. I would argue that with help of the scienctific method we can figure out what makes people happy and implement it politically. But the progress still starts with science.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I think a more toned down, and a more accurate view would be that progress of science and technology is what causes social changes, and not the other way around. As in, the social dynamics move within the space created by existing level of technology. As an example, consider reformation: many attempts have been made at reforming the church, but the first successful one happened only after the printing press got widespread enough that the reformational thesis could spread around the Europe very quickly. Or you could reasonably argue that the end of feudalism happened because of gunpowder and accessible firearms. Where previously a person had to train half of their life to be able to fight with an armoured knight, suddenly with firearms, anyone could become effective in the field in pretty much no time. This shifted power away from the local lords in a significant way. There are plenty of similar examples you can find in all of history. You can probably shoot plenty of holes through them, too, but still, this for me sounds like a most plausible theory of social changes of the ones I heard.
antientropic 9y ago
> Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat That the Earth is not flat has been known since ancient times. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth.
- staticelf 9y ago
  Well yes, but using the tool he made you could argue that very few would deny it since the truth became so obvious. Even if it was known a long time before that, a lot of people still believed that the earth was flat. With increased technology it was easily disproven.
  - antientropic 9y ago
    Do you have a source for the claim that a lot of people believed the Earth was flat in Galileo's time? (Galileo was born decades after the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of the world.)
    - staticelf 9y ago
      Sorry, it seems you are correct and I was wrong. I mixed up the idea of the geocentric model and thought the flat earth theory was included in that. My bad and thanks for correcting and enlightning me :)

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?
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Of course. What about all the other things I mentioned as well? There are so many more--what about for profit prisons? As technology increases our suicide rate isn't really consistently declining. Our prison population has increased. Technology cant make those improvements alone. We need improvements in governance, culture and education for this to happen. Technology can be used for good or bad. By itself, it is just a tool, it's up to us to decide if we are going to end up in a police state with constsnt surveillance and tyranny, colonize Mars, create weapons that can wipe out most of humanity, solve healthcare problems, etc.
    - staticelf 9y ago
      All of these things are not related to investment in science or technology for the betterment of society. But we also live in a time with least war and a lot less suffering in general. Technology may be a tool, but science is not. With science we can prove that x makes more people happy and reduces suicide rates and hence make that choice. The issue is that science is not really that present in the chamber of politics. With a more science-heavy government investments would look a lot different. I am not advocating for technology alone, basic science plays an equal or even more important role in shaping the society. Science has values and it is the only true values that exist. I would argue that with help of the scienctific method we can figure out what makes people happy and implement it politically. But the progress still starts with science.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I think a more toned down, and a more accurate view would be that progress of science and technology is what causes social changes, and not the other way around. As in, the social dynamics move within the space created by existing level of technology. As an example, consider reformation: many attempts have been made at reforming the church, but the first successful one happened only after the printing press got widespread enough that the reformational thesis could spread around the Europe very quickly. Or you could reasonably argue that the end of feudalism happened because of gunpowder and accessible firearms. Where previously a person had to train half of their life to be able to fight with an armoured knight, suddenly with firearms, anyone could become effective in the field in pretty much no time. This shifted power away from the local lords in a significant way. There are plenty of similar examples you can find in all of history. You can probably shoot plenty of holes through them, too, but still, this for me sounds like a most plausible theory of social changes of the ones I heard.

antientropic 9y ago

> Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat That the Earth is not flat has been known since ancient times. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth.

staticelf 9y ago
Well yes, but using the tool he made you could argue that very few would deny it since the truth became so obvious. Even if it was known a long time before that, a lot of people still believed that the earth was flat. With increased technology it was easily disproven.
- antientropic 9y ago
  Do you have a source for the claim that a lot of people believed the Earth was flat in Galileo's time? (Galileo was born decades after the Magellan-Elcano circumnavigation of the world.)
  - staticelf 9y ago
    Sorry, it seems you are correct and I was wrong. I mixed up the idea of the geocentric model and thought the flat earth theory was included in that. My bad and thanks for correcting and enlightning me :)