The basic reason "good guys" make progress faster than "bad guys" (in the sense of: immoral guys, like prone to violence) is that they have more stable, peaceful, cooperative societies that are better suited to making progress. It's because good values are more effective in real life.
This sort of claim seems to run into historical problems. A lot of major expansionist violent empires have done quite well for themselves. In modern times, some of the most "bad" groups have done well as well. The Nazis in many ways had much better technology than the Allies. If they hadn't been ruled by an insane dictator they would have done much better. Similarly, if they had expanded just as much but waited to start the serious discrimination and genocide until after they already had won they would have likely won. Similarly, in WW2, Japan did quite well for itself, and if a handful of major battles had gone slightly differently, the outcome would have been very different.
Or to use a different, but potentially more controversial example, in North America and in Australia, the European colonizers won outright, despite having extremely violent, expansionist policies. In North America, you actually had multiple different European groups fighting amongst themselves as well and yet they still won.
Overall, this is a pleasant, optimistic claim that seems to be depressingly difficult to reconcile with actual history.
Similarly, in WW2, Japan did quite well for itself, and if a handful of major battles had gone slightly differently, the outcome would have been very different.
You are wrong about this. Even if every single American ship magically got sunk at some point in 1941 or 1942, and if every single American soldier stationed outside of the U.S. mainland magically dropped dead at the same time, it would only have taken a few years longer for the U.S. to defeat Japan. Once the American war production was up and running, the U.S. could outproduce Japan by at least ...
http://vimeo.com/22099396
What do people think of this, from a Bayesian perspective?
It is a talk given to the Oxford Transhumanists. Their previous speaker was Eliezer Yudkowsky. Audio version and past talks here: http://groupspaces.com/oxfordtranshumanists/pages/past-talks