This is extrapolation from an extremely small set of facts, and tremendously conjectural assumptions. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to see from a per

This is extrapolation from an extremely small set of facts, and tremendously conjectural assumptions. It’s the kind of thing you might expect to see from a person living in a civilization that just discovered electrons 200 years ago. Come back to me in 100 years once the economy and population has reached some kind of steady state and then let’s revisit some of these claims. A lot of what we think is rational discourse is actually ingrained, unspoken ideology floating to the surface and being coated with a patina of post hoc rationalization. That’s why it’s so hard to do science properly, especially social science- people don’t even know that they have biases, let alone what they are. But biases aren’t something you can point at directly and say, this belief is not true, it’s more that you might be overestimating the probability of truth of a whole bunch of little things by 10 percent and that creates a self reinforcing network of probable facts that adds up to weird beliefs when they are all put together. The author of the article believes on some deep level that progress is inevitable and will go on indefinitely, combined with the unconscious imagery of a lifetime watching science fiction films, and a life of watching progressively more impressive gadgets appear on store shelves. It all adds up to essays like this.