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> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to l

> competitive pressure is what drives progress Except when it doesn't. It's perfectly possible to have, for example, a bunch of scientists crazy motivated to learn the answers to their questions and all collaborate as cooperatively as possible toward that end. Adding competition could result in duplicated effort, secrecy… or to added pressure and motivation… I mean the one thing we can say is that there's no guarantee that competition is good or bad for progress, it depends on so many factors. You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense. Consider Richard Dawkins' tree analogy: competition is what drives trees to become super tall, but that means they spend tons of energy doing that. Being tall in itself has no value to the trees. Yes, evolution inherently creates ecosystems around tall trees, but that doesn't mean that particular ecosystem is somehow better than other possibilities. It's more true that competition is just a fact of life rather than that we know it to be good or bad. There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can provide more progress.

badestrand 9y ago
It would be fascinating to know which factors make cooperations and which competition strive. Families and circles of friends quite likely work better on cooperation, large amount of anonymous actors like our economy probably with competition. Countries utilize both. In Star Trek on the Enterprise there seems to be mostly cooperation happening and it is very believable to me. Very interesting topic. Does anyone have good resources about this?
trhway 9y ago
>> competitive pressure is what drives progress >You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense. actually competitive pressure is the primary driver of evolution. Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. >There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can provide more progress. cooperative behavior in a group evolves when it helps the group to compete, and thus it may result in increased competition between the groups. Organized human society would be an obvious example of cooperative behavior. Massive battles and wars and other atrocities inflicted by the human societies upon each other, and overall effect of the human society upon the rest of the Earth species doesn't seem to qualify as reduced competition. If anything, increased competition between organized human societies, like wars for example, has significantly sped up the tech progress as a result of the need for weapons development.
- fouc 9y ago
  Sounds a bit circular, are you somehow saying the definition of "the primary driver of evolution" is "competitive pressure"?
- quadrangle 9y ago
  > Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. And that is key. Indeed, competitive pressure drives evolution (but isn't the strictly sole driver or the mechanism of evolution itself). The most important point is: evolution only values survival/reproduction, it doesn't value "progress". There's a very strong argument that humans now understand evolution enough to make conscious decisions not to just play the natural competitive game. We can actually make a better world by refusing to follow that natural game. Life in competitive natural circumstances is brutal, painful, and short. We value progress as in human (and non-human even) flourishing, happiness, scientific progress, etc. and we get those things best by refusing to just act like competitive evolution but instead by rising above that. For example. we have no evolutionary benefit in caring for the least among us as an entire global human society but when we do so, it's because we recognize the ethical value.

badestrand 9y ago

It would be fascinating to know which factors make cooperations and which competition strive. Families and circles of friends quite likely work better on cooperation, large amount of anonymous actors like our economy probably with competition. Countries utilize both. In Star Trek on the Enterprise there seems to be mostly cooperation happening and it is very believable to me. Very interesting topic. Does anyone have good resources about this?

trhway 9y ago

>> competitive pressure is what drives progress >You can reasonably say that competition can drive progress. Your sentence implies that it is the primary (or sole??) driver of progress, and that's nonsense. actually competitive pressure is the primary driver of evolution. Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. >There are tons of cases where reduced competition and increased cooperation can provide more progress. cooperative behavior in a group evolves when it helps the group to compete, and thus it may result in increased competition between the groups. Organized human society would be an obvious example of cooperative behavior. Massive battles and wars and other atrocities inflicted by the human societies upon each other, and overall effect of the human society upon the rest of the Earth species doesn't seem to qualify as reduced competition. If anything, increased competition between organized human societies, like wars for example, has significantly sped up the tech progress as a result of the need for weapons development.

fouc 9y ago
Sounds a bit circular, are you somehow saying the definition of "the primary driver of evolution" is "competitive pressure"?
quadrangle 9y ago
> Some aspects of evolution when applied to humans we call progress. And that is key. Indeed, competitive pressure drives evolution (but isn't the strictly sole driver or the mechanism of evolution itself). The most important point is: evolution only values survival/reproduction, it doesn't value "progress". There's a very strong argument that humans now understand evolution enough to make conscious decisions not to just play the natural competitive game. We can actually make a better world by refusing to follow that natural game. Life in competitive natural circumstances is brutal, painful, and short. We value progress as in human (and non-human even) flourishing, happiness, scientific progress, etc. and we get those things best by refusing to just act like competitive evolution but instead by rising above that. For example. we have no evolutionary benefit in caring for the least among us as an entire global human society but when we do so, it's because we recognize the ethical value.