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Well, if you’ve built a career on something, you will usually actively resist anything that threatens to destroy it. In other words, what is progress for the f
by Agingcoder 1y ago
Well, if you’ve built a career on something, you will usually actively resist anything that threatens to destroy it.
In other words, what is progress for the field might not be progress for you !
This reminds me of Thomas Kuhn’s excellent book ´the structure of scientific revolutions’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
- PaulDavisThe1st 1y agoIt reminds me much more of Paul Feyerabend's even better book "Against Method" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Method
- throwaway422432 1y agoOr Planck's principle - "Science progresses one funeral at a time".
- qzw 1y agoAnd the more general version, “Humanity progresses one funeral at a time.” Which is why the hyper-longevity people are basically trying to freeze all human progress.
- throwaway422432 1y agoOr Effective Altruism's long-termism that effectively makes everyone universally poor now. Interestingly, Guillaume Verdon (e/acc) is friends with Bryan Johnson and seems to be pro-longevity.
- nolist_policy 1y agoCan you elaborate?
- throwaway422432 1y agoLong-termism is essentially a utilitarian doctrine, but uses the "total utilitarianism" method: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_and_total_utilitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_and_total_utilitariani... Take that moral position and then extend the calculation to cover all potential generations of humans to come, and the value of maximising your utility now is infinitely small.