Rationality Quotes September 2012

Jayson_Virissimo

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

Here's the new thread for posting quotes, with the usual rules:

Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be voted up/down separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
Do not quote yourself
Do not quote comments/posts on LW/OB
No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.

What is moral progress? - Is having a society with a vast disparity between rich and poor where the poor support the rich through the resource of their labor considered morally progressed from a more egalitarian tribal state? Is the progress of the empire to a point of collapse and the start of some new empire considered moral progress?

What is economic progress? - Is having a society with a vast disparity between rich and poor where the poor support the rich through the resource of their labor considered morally progressed from the primitive hunter-gatherer society where everyone had more free time considered economic progress? Is the progress of the empire to a point where the disparity in wealth incites revolution or causes collapse considered economic progress?

You're not making arguments.
The points you raise are not responsive to the points that either he or I made.
If it increases total aggregate utility. Tribes were small, there weren't very many people. I'm also not sure how happy most tribes were. Additionally, bad moral societies might be necessary to transition to awesome ones.
You conflate moral and economic progress in your second paragraph.
A financial system which collapses probably isn't too healthy. It still might have improved things overall through its pre-collapse operations though.

Universal pay does not even seem possible now.