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OrphanWilde comments on Just One Sentence - Less Wrong
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Do you think wisdom automatically follows knowledge, however?
I think we can take it as given that even with the nukes, science has been a win. Then again, we are talking about a post-apocalyptic future....
Science has been a win in cultures in which knowledge hasn't exclusively been pursued for the purposes of killing people. It's not merely that it's a post-apocalyptic future, it's a problem that there has historically been a self-selection process about who pursued knowledge, which is getting subverted here.
That's a good point. Maybe we can come up with a better incentive.
"If you do X, you will unlock the secrets of the ancients."
We need some historical cites, because I don't know what you are talking about.
For the obvious example, many of the best scientists working on the Manhattan Project only agreed because they were worried about Germany getting nuclear weapons first and what it would mean; likewise, scientists in Germany were deliberately sabotaging their own research.
There's a safety feature here that this quote, to the extent that it is effective at all, deliberately attempts to remove.
Brief research suggests this might not be true.
I'm unconvinced that scientific progress is an existential risk, and the increased wealth scientific progress has created has funded or inspired most social progress.
Scientific progress for the explicit and deliberate purpose of killing people more efficiently is a different animal than scientific progress more generally. You're engaging in an association fallacy, specifically honor by association (although that fallacy is more often used to refer to individuals or organizations rather than abstract concepts).
Yes, that is the essence of our disagreement. You think I'm committing an association fallacy, and I think you are artificially dividing science in ways that don't reflect actual historic scientific practice.
In aggregate, over time? Probably.
For what reason do you believe this?
I believe it because where do you see human affairs comprised of strictly one and not the other?
It isn't 1 to 1. Maybe there isn't any guaranteed ratio. But I think with enough knowledge and enough people, eventually wisdom grows (like mold -- patchy at first, but spreading given the right conditions).
Or the reverse, "wisdom" turns into knowledge, which turns into wisdom (no scare quotes = good examples of tool use).
Strictly one? Or overwhelmingly one?
Wisdom seems rare in all cases; knowledge, however, is common.
If you're talking about the surge in pure knowledge, then yeah, the ratio is changing. But I don't think most people notice beyond a dim awareness of "my iPhone is magic, I wonder what makes it go."