JoshuaZ comments on David Deutsch on How To Think About The Future - Less Wrong

4 Post author: curi 11 April 2011 07:08AM

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Comment author: JoshuaZ 10 April 2011 02:01:12AM *  4 points [-]

when a society doesn't change for thousands of years that means it's even harsher than the european society i was talking about.

This doesn't follow. (Incidentally, I don't know why you sometimes drop back to failing to capitalize but it makes what you write much harder to read.) For example, if one doesn't have good nutrition then people won't be as smart and so won't innovate. Similarly, if one doesn't have free time people won't innovate. Some technologies and cultural norms also reinforce innovation. For example, having a written language allows a much larger body of ideas, and having market economies gives market incentives to coming up with new technologies.

Moreover, innovation can occur directly through competition. When you are convinced that your religion or tribe is the best and that you need to beat the others by any means necessary you'll do a lot better at innovating.

There's also a self-reinforcing spiral: the more you innovate the more people think that innovation is possible. If your society hasn't changed much then there's no reason to think that new technologies are easy to find.

There's no reason to think that Native American populations were systematically preventing change. There's a very large difference between having infrastructural and systemic issues that make the development of new technologies unlikely and the claim that "everyone's spirits are squashed in childhood -- thoroughly".