All of Semih__'s Comments + Replies

Just because I've used couple of terms people are automatically putting me into leftist category.

 

Anyway, agenda is not about how something is equally distributed. It is about a holistic perspective. 

Possible effects of innovation and progress on arts, health, architecture, social disciplines, culture in general etc. must be planned properly to not only to ensure progress but create an actual civilization/culture of progress, innovation.

To plan that you need to have very firm values, be it economic and social to build that culture on it.

Thats what I am emphasizing on.

Capitalist success lies in its ability to utilize economical/technological progress for the sake of a very large group which, as the living conditions went better and better, included nearly all of the society.

Problem is we are not at that stage anymore.

 I never claimed there is something wrong with bourgeoise....

Progress, aka moving forward from current state of art is done by inventing things which requires one to know the fundamental principles in his field. Scientist is not a job but engineer is.  One can be scientist and engineer at the same time.

Bourgeoise is essentially, through leftist/marxist narrative, a group of people who held capital. And they used this capital to finance scientists of their time or they were those scientists, and through that they ensured economical progress.

The ma... (read more)

0ChristianKl
If that would be true we wouldn't have so many young successful startup founders.
2ChristianKl
Bourgeoisie is not a word that meant in Marx time everybody who makes the bulk of their money via rents from capital. Middle class people who just own their own house and all professions (including groups like carpenters) were bourgeoisie. In the earlier part of the 19th century most of the capital wasn't held by the bourgeoisie but by aristocrats. By the time Marx writes The Capital businesses run dy the bourgeoisie amassed enough capital to make them more economically powerful then the aristocrats but the bourgeoisie was still a much larger group of people than just those who owned the new businesses of the industrial revolution. Middle class people were still bourgeoisie. Patronage is in spirit not very bourgeoisie and if you look at the Wikipedia article it suggests nobel (which means aristocrat and not bourgeoise) and religious patronage as being important but doesn't say anything about bourgeois patronage existing in a significant manner before the 20th century. Thomas Kuhn makes the point that academic fields where researchers don't follow external agenda but are driven by the scientific quest to understand their field better are more productive the fields where scientists follow external agenda like education research (Or even worse domestic science).
4Richard_Kennaway
I don't agree with the necessity. To me it is more important that a glorious future arrive than how evenly distributed it is.

Technology must be defined properly and should not be framed as "everything else." There are many theories on that but you could check Heidegger and Technology as a starters.

1Clownfish
i'm not sure if you're disagreeing with me, i too would like technology to be defined properly. i think the common understanding of technology would be confined to things like gadgets, software, automation. economists seem to use more of a civ version of the word, which includes things like writing, buddhism, plastic. if technology is not framed as "everything else", i'd be curious to know what kinds of things are used in the production function but don't fall in one of the three buckets. however, i'm more curious to know which bucket ai ends up in. i think most people would call it a technology, but i could be persuaded to stick it in capital (tool) or labor (brain).  

If culture does not have any common ground which binds them together, it simply disintegrates. You are essentially for atomization of society actually. If you rip apart different parts of culture, and they stop making sense to each other, same will happen with people.  Without a common narrative, a myth, it is impossible to keep society together.

To frame complexity as a problem is like "I am not smart enough x problem therefore how about I pretend that there is no x." 

Nations and peoples are bound together by common myths, common cuisine and comm... (read more)

If a group capable people does not want to struggle for better institutions in their home country, no one has the obligation to open a piece of their land to them.

If someone is trying to catch a fish with very old, rusty fishing rod, getting them a new rod will probably feed a person who is self-sufficient. If people of a certain country wants to build a better society but lacks funds, we can help them.

But you can not help people who does not want to help themselves. 

The main problem in this text is the term "progress" is assumed as something good from the very start. Progress or technology or "techne" in itself is neutral.  If there is no underlying meta narrative that not only justifies the progress but also shapes it and shows it's direction, progress will cease to exist. Now I'm not a leftist or Marxist or anything but bourgeoise is a thing and Enlightment Era has been started by them not for the sake of progress but for the sake of themselves.

So a group/class/clique whatever essentially invests in preparing g... (read more)

0ChristianKl
Plenty of progress isn't done by scientists who do science for science's sake but by engineers.  Bourgeoise essentially means "middle-class" in today's terms. What's wrong with the middle-class from your perspective?
2jasoncrawford
Sure, a crucial question is whether (and to what extent, and in what way) progress in science, technology, industry, and the economy leads to human well-being. That is at the core of what any philosophy of progress should address

Just started to read "Rationality From AI to Zombies". Thanks for the lead. I'll be waiting for your post.

Hello, I'm very interested in technological growth and how to trigger it. And what would be the role of lawyers to assist the process. Got any leads?

I am really bad at maths tho...

2Matthew Barnett
My next post will be about endogenous growth theory, which tries to understand the causes of technological progress. It may take a while to come out though, so for now you can take a look at the excellent blog The Roots of Progress.