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TimS comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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Yeah, this community's meaning of progress doesn't align well with a politically active feminist's meaning of progress. For the most part, the majority of members of this community hope for scientific advances that make our questions moot. That's not a totally unreasonable hope, in the abstract: many advances in female empowerment follow from the invention of The Pill - a reliable method for separating sex from procreation. Once that separation occurred, it became much more obvious how disconnected from physical fact many gender constructs really were.
That said, I think that the LessWrong community as a whole underestimates the impact of constructed social meaning. Part of that is unexamined traditionalism and part of it is the community's well settled aversion to discussing practical social engineering.
I am not completely against change. I just think progress ceases to be progress if it accelerates to the point where humans are unable to acclimate to it.
I don't think I understand.
A new technology is useful if it is serves a specific purpose for human manipulation of territory. The more unknown the technology the more dangerous it is to human survival, and thus can no longer be seen as progressive. Furthermore the introduction of new technology reshapes the social topography of a territory. If erosion/alteration of social topography happens at too fast a rate it becomes impossible to navigate based off the experiences of others. Just as if all the currents and depths of a channel suddenly changed the built up knowledge of generations of fishers would become irrelevant.
Whether technological/scientific advancement is progress or just impact depends on these two factors
1.) The degree of unknowns involved with the technology 2.) The extent to which social topography is eroded/altered.
If we look at cell phones and other types of information-technologies they have completely reconstructed the social topography of the world, and they continue to develop at an astonishing rate. As to the degree of unknowns, cell phones have already been completely integrated into everyday life, despite their relatively short lifespan. What happens when a person lives 70 years with a cellphone in their pocket, or an i-pad? We have no idea because they have not been around long enough to have any cases. There is still a huge degree of unknowns with these new technologies, yet we are already completely dependent on them.
I am not saying that this is not progress, it is not possible to say at this point; but I will say that we are walking a fine line between true progress and unrestrained impact.
Here is a genuine disagreement between us.
I don't think increasing our ability to control the world is an inherently good or bad thing (somewhat like how concepts like equality don't have a particular political affiliation). The Spaniards did terrible things to the natives of the New World, but the proximate cause of their behavior was their extreme aversion to Otherness (like Orientalism, but worse). Spain's technological superiority made their oppressive behavior possible, but it is insufficient to explain what happened.
To your specific point about cell phones, the data is pretty clear they are fairly safe. We have a good understanding of what radiation of various kinds can and can't do. And social topography has nothing to do with this risk.
I don't think he means the biological effects of radiation, but the psychological/sociological effects of always being available for conversation. (Being unable to talk to me for one freakin' day would bother the living crap out of my mother, for example. I'm not sure that's a healthy thing.)
I didn't thumbs down you, just saying.
I agree that our ability to control the world is not inherently good or bad. What I am saying is that the rate at which we use this ability can be beneficial or harmful. In my mind it is analogous to a person running through a forest to win a race. There is no path, but they have a pretty good idea of the general direction they want to go. The faster the run the quicker they close the distance between themselves and their objective, but at the same time, if they run too fast they risk stumbling into a pitfall, shooting off a sudden drop, tripping, building up too much momentum on a downhill run. All these things are potentially dangerous. The cellphones causing cancer was the wrong point to focus on. But it cannot be denied that cell phones in general have changed the structure of society at an alarming pace. Again, I am not saying this is inherently good or bad. It could be that our barreling through the forest brings us to our destination in the least possible time. I guess I am just a somewhat pessimistic person. I think rather than getting there faster, it would be better to minimize any chance of tragedy.
I think these two sentences are in quite a bit of tension. The speed at which we get better at controlling the world can best be judged by whether we should be trying to control the world at all.
I deny. Cell phones have changed the structure of society at a very high pace. Alarming? That's a value judgment that needs a fair amount of justification. Even assuming that it isn't possible to live "how things used to be" because of widespread expectations of cell phone usage (and I'm not sure this is true), why is this worse?
I don't think there is a tension. It is kind of like I do not not think coffee is inherently good or bad. It is the rate of use that defines it as good or bad to me. Drinking 10 cups of day (a very high rate of use) I find to be bad for you; whereas if you have a cup of coffee a day (a slower rate of use) it is good for you. I think the same principle is true for technology. Developing too fast without regard for the societal impact or potential dangers of what you are creating is negative in my opinion.
I don't really understand this sentence could you explain it more. What I get from reading it is: "if it does not seem feasible it should be abandoned?"
Mobile phones have changed social interaction, how people think (through texting), the structure of business and economics, they have become a status symbol, do I need to keep going?
Coffee isn't such a good analogy. That's got a certain finite set of effects on a well-known neurotransmitter system, and while not all of the secondary or more subtle effects are known we can take a pretty good stab at describing what levels are likely to be harmful given a certain set of parameters. Social change and technology don't have a well-defined set of effects at all: they're not definitive terms, they're descriptive terms encompassing any deltas in our culture or technical capabilities respectively.
Speaking of technology as if it's a thing with agency is obviously improper; I doubt we'd disagree on that point. But I'd actually go farther than that and say that speaking of technology as a well-defined force (and thus something with a direction that we can talk about precisely, or can or should be retarded or encouraged as a whole) isn't much better. It may or may not be reasonable to accept a precautionary principle with regard to particular technologies; there's a decent consensus here that we should adopt one for AGI, for example. But lumping all technology into a single category for that purpose is terribly overgeneral at best, and very likely actively destructive when you consider opportunity costs.
When I talk about technology, what I am really talking about is a rate of technological innovation. Technological innovation is inevitably going to change the dynamics of a society in some way. The slower that change, the more predictable and manageable it is. If that change continues to accelerate, eventually it will reach a point where it moves beyond the limitations of existing tracking technology. At that point, it becomes purely a force. That force could result in positive impacts, but it could also result in negative ones, however, To determine or manage whether it is positive or negative is impossible for us since it moves beyond our capacity to track. Do you disagree with this idea?
Really nice post. I apologize about my analogy. Truthfully I picked it not for its accuracy, but its ability to make my point. After recently reading Eliezer's essay about sneaking connotations I am afraid it is a bad habit I have. I completely agree it is a bad analogy.
As to your second point. It is a really interesting question that honestly I have never thought about. If you don't mind I would like a little more time to think about it. I agree with it is improper to speak of technology as a thing with agency, but I am not sure if I agree that speaking of technology as a well-defined force is just as bad.
My point is that the factors that are relevant to deciding how fast to research new technology are the same factors that are relevant in deciding whether to use technology at all.
The word I was disputing in your prior post was alarming. Cell phones have caused and are causing massive social change.
What do you see as the primary factors determining how fast to research new technology? Ideally technology would be driven by necessity or efficiency, but that is an idea. In my opinion the driving factor for new technologies is profit. For example, my uncle installs home entertainment systems for the rich. He tells me that he gets sent dozens of new types of wire, new routers, new systems for free that some engineer is hoping to make it big off of. The development of new mediums of audio/video, drugs, TVs, honestly I feel like in most fields there is a constant push for innovation for the sake of entrepreneurship alone, and I don't think that is relevant to the actual use of the technology.
P.S When I say technology I am using it as a extremely broad term for any tool used to manipulate the physical world.