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Halting technological process is way way more costly for humanity than the alternative.
by cm2012 3y ago
Halting technological process is way way more costly for humanity than the alternative.
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoThis is an assertion made, necessarily, without evidence. It's also value laden in terms of what is considered "costly", and who should make the judgement.
- andsoitis 3y agoMaybe if we look at the opposite assertion, that technological regress would improve humanity, we can arbitrate which is likely more directionally correct. There’s also a third assertion which can help our thinking, and that is that we have just about the right amount and type of technology, so we should halt now (vs regress or progress). So the question then is: which of these three assertions are likely correct?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y agoThe fact that moving from A to B is a net negative does not imply that moving "back" from B to A is a net positive. All 3 scenarios (net positive, net negative, neutral) are entirely possible. "The right amount of type of technology" is again a value judgement, tied into ideas about what a good life involves. It is also complicated by long term side effects, as we are seeing with the use of fossil fuels - there was a fairly good argument for their use 120 years ago, but it turns out that whether that argument was or wasn't correct, planning to continue to use them "forever" is not only infeasible, but utterly detrimental.
- andsoitis 3y agoOK. To make it concrete: do you think that if we reduced our technology and never increase it again, humanity would be in a better position than if we continued on the technology train?