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Sure, people’s well being as a whole haven’t gotten better since the 1980s, except for >Air quality (no more leaded gasoline) >Life expectancy >Cancer surviv

Sure, people’s well being as a whole haven’t gotten better since the 1980s, except for >Air quality (no more leaded gasoline) >Life expectancy >Cancer survival rates >Access to information >Infant mortality >Violent crime rates across the western world >Access to education >Clean water and food for 4+ billion people >HIV treatment >etc The negativity on this site is insane. They will deny the greatest scientific achievements if it lets them dunk on AI or whoever is the enemy of the week.

dustincoates 1y ago
Not to mention global poverty: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-poverty-declined-substantially-over-the-last-generation#key-insights https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-po...
grafmax 1y ago
My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives. Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.
- atleastoptimal 1y ago
  You need both social change and technological change to drive progress, but more often technological change drives the conversation. Standards for workplace safety, working hours, social welfare are only possible because technologically developed societies are sufficiently productive to even consider those possibilities. The idea of a 40 hour workweek, the fact that most people aren’t farmers now is due to the industrial revolution, machinery and tech multiplying the productive capacity of a single individual. HIV treatment, cancer treatment, blood tests are a standard part of healthcare not because social policies willed them to be so alone, but because the technology to deliver those treatments at scale exists and allows that to be a possibility in the first place. I do agree that without the right social structures, policy and general political will, the conditions for those technological advances may never have come about in the first place, but in general, it is technology that makes certain allowances for human flourishing possible at all.
  - grafmax 1y ago
    You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that factory owners were living lives of affluence that we know the workers were being exploited. There was an highly unequal relationship between workers and owners. It’s not the productivity growth of the Industrial Revolution the made lives better for workers - actually it got much worse initially as they were squeezed by the capitalist class. It’s only when workers organized to struggle for a larger share of the value they were creating for their bosses that their lives got better. Today wealth inequality is at unheard of levels. The wealth of the richest person roughly equals that of the 50% poorest. That is profit extracted from the value workers produce for the wealthy. Technological andvancement isn’t required to give workers a larger piece of the pie; the pie today is already quite enormous. Instead workers must organize if they want better lives. In lieu of that, advances like AI will continue to only profit the very wealthy; the rest of us will likely experience a mix of advantages and drawbacks (analogous to what we’ve seen with the internet or smartphones).

dustincoates 1y ago

Not to mention global poverty: https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-poverty-declined-substantially-over-the-last-generation#key-insights https://ourworldindata.org/poverty?insight=global-extreme-po...

grafmax 1y ago

My position is more nuanced that you present it to be. I’m arguing against Altman’s notion of progress as being driven by scientific and technological achievements. Looking through your list it’s social policies which either drive or are necessary components of most of the improvements you mention. Even the medical advances you mention are dependent on a society’s ability to offer healthcare to its members - a notable deficiency of the US system. I emphasized the importance of the labor movement in my comment; but I don’t want to deny the importance of governmental policy changes. It’s just in the current political arena it’s not clear to me that politicians are interested in much more than serving corporate and billionaire interests, so I don’t have much hope for our ability to continue to make positive policy changes. Therefore the main avenue that people have to take control of their futures seems to me to be organized labor. This is a tool which has shown itself effective in the past for achieving all sorts of improvements in the mass of people’s lives. Besides that I advocate for taking a sober look at our current situation. Painting the picture of society as one of progress by looking at our achievements and denying our societal shortcomings is naive. Examples: the climate crisis, rising authoritarianism, warmongering among nuclear powers, high rates of depression and anxiety, concentration of wealth and power in a few hands. Science and technology may plausibly play some role in addressing these issues, sure, but progress rarely occurs without struggle. Altman’s version is utopian, unrealistic, and will likely make society worse unless the working class can successfully struggle to reap the benefits of “value-creation” for itself.

atleastoptimal 1y ago
You need both social change and technological change to drive progress, but more often technological change drives the conversation. Standards for workplace safety, working hours, social welfare are only possible because technologically developed societies are sufficiently productive to even consider those possibilities. The idea of a 40 hour workweek, the fact that most people aren’t farmers now is due to the industrial revolution, machinery and tech multiplying the productive capacity of a single individual. HIV treatment, cancer treatment, blood tests are a standard part of healthcare not because social policies willed them to be so alone, but because the technology to deliver those treatments at scale exists and allows that to be a possibility in the first place. I do agree that without the right social structures, policy and general political will, the conditions for those technological advances may never have come about in the first place, but in general, it is technology that makes certain allowances for human flourishing possible at all.
- grafmax 1y ago
  You’re right that technology is a necessary ingredient in some cases such as medical treatment. However workplace safety and 40 hour work weeks are not good examples. In the 1800s factory owners extracted as much value from their workforce as they could; they did this by maximizing working hours, dangerous working conditions, child labor, etc; all while enjoying lives of affluence themselves. It’s the fact that factory owners were living lives of affluence that we know the workers were being exploited. There was an highly unequal relationship between workers and owners. It’s not the productivity growth of the Industrial Revolution the made lives better for workers - actually it got much worse initially as they were squeezed by the capitalist class. It’s only when workers organized to struggle for a larger share of the value they were creating for their bosses that their lives got better. Today wealth inequality is at unheard of levels. The wealth of the richest person roughly equals that of the 50% poorest. That is profit extracted from the value workers produce for the wealthy. Technological andvancement isn’t required to give workers a larger piece of the pie; the pie today is already quite enormous. Instead workers must organize if they want better lives. In lieu of that, advances like AI will continue to only profit the very wealthy; the rest of us will likely experience a mix of advantages and drawbacks (analogous to what we’ve seen with the internet or smartphones).