"But the idea [of progress] should contain within it the commonsense notion that we wish to liberate ourselves from arbitrary power, not concoct visions of it and gleefully help enslave ourselves."
Erik, I had to emerge temporarily from my self-imposed commenting abstinence just to say:
“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” - GK Chesterton
And so it remains. Your essay sounds like an updated version of CS Lewis’s “Is Progress Possible.” The concerns he enumerates there are still valid and more or less mine. When you lack a consensus on what the ultimate purpose of human life is, Progress - except in the most obvious cases, improved health, hygiene, sanitation, etc. - is a question of one man’s progress is another man’s regress.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
And meanwhile, the gods of the copybook headings lurk.
Progress, like The Good, is a concept rooted in classical Platonic Idealism. It's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to find an objective single ideal in a world made up of countless subjective particulars.
There have been various points in history where it was possible (not guaranteed, not probable) for the average person (rather than a fortunate few) to live a better life than their parents. If I had to put a pin on my idea of Progress, it would be moving toward another of those historical points.
Optimistically, I think human history is far more cyclical than linear, so there's a good chance that time will come again for someone. Pessimistically, I don't think it will come again for Western Civilization -- although it seems likely to happen for some of our so-called "enemies," but only if we fail at taking them down with us.
I teach finance and, as you know, talk to a lot of CS folks. The CS folks resist understanding themselves as a commodity. And so the entire culture is built around a kind of origin story, which occasionally happens, of two guys in a garage. That these guys get folded into or bought out by some of the largest corporations ever is conveniently left out. The frontier gets settled.
The other thing that is left out, as you know and we've discussed, is military power. Some huge amount of CS research is funded, directly or indirectly, by governments seeking, or seeking to secure, national power. The worry about AI is largely a worry about weapons and surveillance and what China gets first. Silicon Valley pays attention to its navel, projects itself as the cockpit of history, and so forth. So California. But Livermore, etc., wasn't about "California" either.
Now again, I teach corporations. There are many things that people must do together, as a body, corpus. The university, the church, and of course governments are collective bodies. But that means that all this talk about tech is profoundly social and political, too, in ways that few in the conversation are in a position to begin articulating. Articulating politics is hard. Vide the current election.
Yes, we have discussed! We're in agreement on the roll of the military. I feel almost, what? apologetic when I point out that much of the energy and funding going into AI is in service of what we might call a technological arms race. Modern warfare seems to be headed toward a mutually assured destruction model, but we can see that's it's not working--there are conflagrations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. More broadly I think folks would be shocked to know the collusion between the commercial and government (particularly DoD) sectors. Anyway, one thing that never ceases to befuddle me is how the discussion about AI never seems to take account of the actual power brokers. One reason I'm so steadfast in denigrating "sci-fi AI" is that it manages to ignore all the real dangers and levers of power. The last thing we have to worry about is the computer "coming alive," and the alignment problem--if you really think about it--is a joke. We design systems to be aligned; that's the whole point. If AI acts autonomously on the battlefield it will be a kind of "pseudo-autonomy" where (for instance), we clear automatic targeting because it's been vetted and green lighted, and so on. Nothing is gained by building unpredictable machines--hence the concept of a "machine" in the first place. Anyway, thanks Bert!
Thank you Erik for coming up with this follow-up post so fast!
Come to think of it, I’ve been probably subconsciously equating “progress” with “technological progress” - that the more advanced machinery humans had to their disposal, the better, starting probably somewhere around the wheel and going all the way towards the 4nm cpus of today… without all the societal implications, just judging the technological advances.
Thank you! It makes sense to tie progress to technology in certain respects. It would, for instance, be odd to insist that we were better off crossing the Atlantic on ships, or that antibiotics are a waste, or I suppose even that telecommunications with Wi-Fi and cell phones isn't progress. It's true that technology extends our powers. It's true as far as it goes, is my point. It's not the whole discussion, and if we take a more integrated look at things, it's not difficult to see the downside. There are so many examples here that they sort of swim through my mind. To take one that Matt Crawford has written about effectively, how is it progress to be stuck pathetically thrusting your hand under an automatic public faucet, hoping that the sensor will start the water flowing? Why do this at all? Because some percentage of folks will leave the water on. There are just innumerable examples of "modern technology" actually taking away individual agency. And, since it's really hard to see what the point of life is without some autonomy and agency, it's not hard to make a case that the notion of technological progress is slippery. I'm VERY suspicious of folks like Stephen Pinker who see everything as a march toward better and better. Back to my original essay on Da Vinci and the machines, the point there is that fostering human agency and excellence ought to be the goal, but weirdly it's hardly ever true. Mostly we get endless lip service and a concentration of power at the expense of the culture. My point in the last follow-on post is simply that there isn't any convincing techno-future where the uber-powerful technology isn't accompanied by an uber-powerful government or corporation. What we're really worried abut is that. Building a shovel or making a T-shirt is one thing. Building a nuclear powered server farm for "AI" is quite another. The society that can make that happen is centralized and will very likely not be interested in fostering human excellence--that would be competition after all. So that's one way to read sci-fi. Even very linear geeks can see the connection to the human stuff, though they are at such pains to ignore it (in my view). Thank you.
Very interesting points, thank you! So do I understand you correctly that you’d want technological progress as a means to an end (=of improving human excellence and flourishing), while the tech bros increasingly see it as an end in itself, thus making it a central focus instead of the human and wanting the human simply make room for it and shut up?
You're *such* a Gen-Xer, Erik, to ask this question.
A few comments:
Wasn't one of the primary theses of Pinker's book on progress that aggregate levels of violence have dramatically decreased during the modern period? I thought his idea was that we pay more attention to violence, but that the fact that it dominates the "news" is actually proof that there is less violence. There have been a few conflicts in the last two years (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan) that have perhaps upset the trend, but I think this question has to be looked at in decades or centuries, not in months or years. You can even put WWII in perspective -- according to Wikipedia, Genghis Khan and his immediate heirs killed something like 10% of the world population. Did aggregate world population even decrease during WWII?
I also would question whether or not mental health has declined, as we don't have a stable reporting baseline over a long period of time. How many people were stuck in poverty and abusive marriages that you would never had heard about, or who wouldn't have complained about their situation publicly, now get divorced and can broadcast their feelings on social media or to whoever compiles these population level surveys? We should be careful to make conclusions about this because of shifts in culture, media, wealth, law, etc. (i.e., not actual mental health).
There's nothing inherently slimy about commerce as a human activity -- how else should we organize the division of labor to produce the essential goods and services that humans require to be what we are? It would be better if we set economic questions to the side and asked ourselves -- what do we actually value? What qualities in life and in our environment do we truly want to invest ourselves in? This is partly a matter of taste, but coming to an answer also takes the form of a spiritual reckoning. And it's one that has to happen both for individuals in the narrow ambit of their lives, and collectively. If we understand what we value, then economic systems (including "capitalist" systems), paired with good political governance and civic participation, are excellent at organizing collective activity towards those ends.
One more, as I'm currently writing about this. My word for modernity is strange. It's strange, isn’t it? How we keep supporting the very systems that quietly work against our own interests. We buy the latest tech, use the platforms, feed into the data-driven economy, and yet the more we engage, the more power we hand over—not to ourselves, but to a tiny group at the top. And what's even more perplexing is that we seem to know it, but we keep playing along, as if there’s no alternative. Wealth continues to concentrate, tech titans get richer, and the tools we rely on only make us more dependent. Are we really choosing this, or are we just too deep in the system to question it anymore? Maybe we've conformed so thoroughly that we don’t even see it for what it is. These are the big questions, in my view...
I don't know about this. I try to live on my own terms. Most people can opt out of a lot of this technology if they have steady employment, and, outside of the educated classes, that's probably more common than you might think. Personally, I'm only on the internet, reading and talking to people like you whom I only know virtually because I'm intellectually ambitious. That's a choice for which I take full responsibility. I'm not convinced this would be any easier in an earlier era if I were anything like what I am now, which is to say not a wealthy person or someone with institutional power or rock-star levels of personal charisma.
Taking here your comments about Pinker and violence:
While global violence may have decreased overall, there are localized areas where violence has escalated in recent years. Here's a rough and ready (but hardly exhaustive) look at it:
Civil Wars and Terrorism: The Syrian civil war, conflicts in Yemen, and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS have contributed to high levels of violence in certain regions, I think challenging the idea that all forms of violence are universally declining.
Increase in Urban Violence: In many countries, urban violence has increased due to gang activity, drug cartels, and economic inequality. For example, Latin America, particularly countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela, continues to experience some of the highest homicide rates in the world. What's getting better?
On Pinker specifically, we have major data Interpretation Issues:
Quality of Historical Data: Pinker relies on incomplete or problematic historical data to assert his claim. Violent deaths from earlier centuries are difficult to quantify accurately, and there are valid concerns about potential underestimations or misrepresentations of past violence. This alone weakens the claim that violence has decreased substantially.
Counting Non-Lethal Violence: Pinker focuses heavily on lethal violence, particularly in warfare and homicide rates, but this overlooks other forms of violence that persist, such as sexual violence, human trafficking, and state repression, which might not always lead to death but still represent significant forms of harm.
I could go on about "problems with Panglossian Pinker," but let me point something else out that directly challenges the "onward and upward" thesis. Namely:
Steven Pinker’s thesis that aggregate violence is decreasing is at odds with the fact that there's been a much documented worldwide decline in democracies themselves. (Quite literally, the world was more free a few decades ago.) Pinker argues that liberal democracies are among the most peaceful forms of governance, as they generally promote human rights, reduce conflict, and offer peaceful transitions of power. However, the decline of democracies globally threatens his view and suggests that violence—especially state-sponsored violence, repression, and civil unrest—may increase as a result. Here’s how this decline plays into concerns about rising violence and societal instability:
1. Democratic Backsliding:
Erosion of Democratic Norms: Countries that were once strong democracies are now facing erosion in democratic institutions and norms. Countries like Hungary, Poland, India, Turkey, and Brazil have been fingered many times over as examples of "illiberal democracies" where free press, judicial independence, and electoral integrity are under attack. This backsliding increases the potential for political repression. It also undermines the mechanisms that prevent state violence.
Rise of Populism: The rise of authoritarian populist leaders has become a global trend, with leaders consolidating power through undermining democratic institutions. These regimes often increase surveillance, curtail freedom of speech, and use police or military force to suppress dissent, all of which can lead to spikes in state violence.
2. Authoritarian Regimes and Political Repression
Crackdowns on Protests and Dissent: As democracies decline, authoritarian regimes intensify their use of force to quell political opposition and civil unrest. In many countries, protests against authoritarian rule have been met with brutal crackdowns, such as in Hong Kong (against China’s tightening grip), Belarus (against Lukashenko’s regime), and Myanmar (following the military coup). This is progress?
Suppression of Civil Liberties: As governments tilt toward authoritarianism, civil liberties erode. Freedom of assembly, speech, and press are often the first casualties, and the state's power over citizens increases. For example, the global use of internet shutdowns to control information flow during protests or elections has risen, effectively isolating populations and increasing the potential for unreported human rights abuses.
3. Increase in Human Rights Violations
State-Sponsored Violence: Declining democracies see a corresponding increase in state-sponsored violence, including police brutality, political imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings. Note Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro’s government, which has used state security forces to crush political opposition, leading to thousands of deaths and rampant human rights abuses.
Surveillance States: In both authoritarian and backsliding democracies, governments are increasingly relying on surveillance technologies, such as facial recognition and AI-powered predictive policing. These technologies as we all know are developed by corporations and adopted by governments, and they enable more widespread control and repression of populations, furthering the state's power to act violently against its citizens without accountability.
4. Breakdown of the Rule of Law
Judicial Erosion: The decline of independent judiciaries is a hallmark of weakening democracies. Without independent courts to check executive power, abuses of power become more common. In countries like Poland and Hungary, governments have sought to pack courts with loyalists, removing a key check on the power to use state violence.
Erosion of Electoral Integrity: In democratic systems, the peaceful transfer of power depends on fair and free elections. In declining democracies, the erosion of electoral integrity can lead to violence, as seen in recent elections in Belarus, where large-scale protests broke out in response to allegations of rigged elections, only to be met with severe repression.
5. Increased Risk of Civil Conflict
Polarization and Civil Unrest: As democratic institutions erode, societies tend to become more polarized. Political divisions often result in civil unrest, protests, and violence. This polarization makes peaceful resolution of conflicts within the system more difficult, and the absence of democratic mechanisms to address grievances over and over, we see lead to violent outcomes.
Potential for Civil War: In extreme cases, the breakdown of democracy can lead to civil war. A key historical example is the breakdown of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where a once multi-ethnic federation disintegrated into violent ethnic conflict as democratic norms failed and authoritarian nationalism took hold.
6. Rise of Nationalism and Ethnic Violence
Nationalist Movements: In many cases, the decline of democracy is accompanied by the rise of nationalist or ethno-nationalist movements. The movements often promote exclusionary policies against minority groups and lead to state-sanctioned violence or genocide. In Myanmar, the Rohingya genocide is a stark example of how declining democratic values and rising nationalism leads to mass violence against minority populations.
Ethnic Tensions and Exclusion: Democracies in decline often resort to scapegoating minorities or immigrants, as seen in India’s recent policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which have increasingly targeted the Muslim population. This has led to rising ethnic and religious violence, with state complicity in many cases.
7. International Implications of Democratic Decline
Weakening of Global Democratic Norms: The decline of democracies in major countries weakens the global norms that promote peace and diplomacy. As countries like the U.S. and other Western democracies struggle with internal political crises and polarization, their ability to promote democratic values abroad diminishes and I think creates a vacuum where authoritarianism can thrive. This is a huge issue that can't be addressed by facile views of progress.
Increased Global Instability: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's increasingly aggressive stance toward Taiwan and Hong Kong are examples of how authoritarian powers can challenge the international order and lead to large-scale violence.
8. Weaponization of Technology by Authoritarian Regimes
Surveillance Technology: The decline in democratic norms has coincided with the proliferation of sophisticated surveillance technologies developed in liberal democracies and sold to authoritarian regimes. Technologies like China's social credit system and facial recognition surveillance allow for tight control over populations and the potential for systematic repression without accountability.
Autonomous Weapons and AI: The rise of AI-powered surveillance, drone warfare, and autonomous weapons systems is increasingly under the control of authoritarian governments. The new forms of violence here are difficult to regulate or predict. Regardless, I would certainly challenge the very premise that violence is declining in a meaningful way.
Soooo....
I disagree with Pinker. Pinker’s thesis claims that violence is on a long-term decline, but the decline of democracies globally is a serious counterpoint. Democracies, historically the most stable and least violent forms of government, are being replaced or undermined by authoritarian regimes, populism, and nationalism. The trend raises the likelihood of state violence, human rights abuses, and civil conflict. As political repression and the breakdown of rule of law increase, count on more state-sanctioned oppression, civil unrest, and international conflicts. I highly doubt we're making progress in Pinker's sense.
Thanks, Jeffrey. These are big issues I realize, but I have a particular disdain for (not Pinker himself) but the view he propounds, as if he was dropped out of the Enlightenment and still manages to forget the first lesson in the French Revolution.
I didn't read Pinker's book (my disdain for Pinker comes from his association with Chomsky) -- the claim that came out in interviews and book reviews made intuitive sense to me, so I've penciled it in as something that's probably true.
When I read about history older than the last two hundred and fifty years, what always stands out to me is the volume of catastrophes normal folks would regularly endure as a normal part of life, usually amidst what we in 21st century America would experience as terrible poverty. The most shocking thing, though, is that I don't think people in prior eras looked at aggregate violence in their society and among their neighbors as something that needed to be "fixed." And some cultures would find any interest whatsoever in non-violence at all to be utterly nuts -- the Mongols, for instance, or the Vikings. Some religious traditions have preached avoiding violence, notably Christianity and Buddhism, but their teachings usually emphasize non-violence as a matter of personal conduct, not as an overriding social goal that should be of central interest to the state. Even in Christian and Buddhist societies, if you went around telling everyone that major institutions should devote themselves to cultural innovation and reducing the general violence in society, the locals would probably think that you belong in a madhouse. You might even be thrown in the clink as a heretic and subversive.
By the same token, democracies are not known in longer history to be particularly stable. Governments in recorded history have mostly been monarchies or oligarchies, and democracies have only been really successful for extended periods since the Industrial Revolution kicked off.
"Progress" in my book is that you and I, neither of us of noble lineage, could even be talking about these things in the comfort of our large, electrified, conditioned homes. The Industrial Revolution is the big thing to pay attention to, and the cultural and social changes it has engendered.
Let me add this peroration as well (I'm not attributing the opposite view to you, but I do want to put this out for reading):
Yes, advanced technology—cell phones, laptops, social media—gives us undeniable utility. We can communicate instantly, access information, and work remotely. But here’s the rub: we don’t own the tools that shape our lives. The data, the platforms, the algorithms—those are controlled by tech titans, not the community. These technologies concentrate power in the hands of a few, and while we get convenience, they get control. We use their products, but they set the rules. The real power isn’t in the tools; it’s in who controls them. That’s not us.
Hi Jeffrey, in general, I agree that getting the bubonic plague in London with no hope of the medical community stopping it (at least at first) says volumes about the march of science. Agreed. But let me throw some of Graeber's anthropological insights into the mix, as yet again I suspect the "stuff's gettin' better" view is a little too simplistic. Sure, it’s true where it’s obviously true, but you can’t just stretch it across the board.
Yale anthropologist turned London School of Economics professor turned "anarchist intellectual rock star," David Graeber, in his 2020 The Dawn of Everything, paints a completely different picture than the Pinker-inspired idea that progress is just obvious. According to Graeber, the narrative that hunter-gatherers lived short, brutal lives is largely a myth. They likely had more varied, nutritious diets compared to early agriculturalists, who were stuck eating grains and facing nutritional deficits. Disease was far less of a problem for them, too. Hunter-gatherers lived in small, mobile groups, which limited the spread of infections—unlike the dense, settled communities that later suffered from plagues and waterborne diseases.
Graeber also points out that the shift to farming didn’t automatically make life better. In fact, it often made things worse—harder work, social inequality, worse overall health. So, while the myth of agricultural “progress” dominates, it overlooks the chronic malnutrition and suffering early farmers dealt with. Sure, hunter-gatherers didn’t live as long as we do now, but they weren’t dying off miserably at 30 either.
And here's the kicker: It’s been repeatedly observed that settlers in the American frontier, when captured by Native American groups as children, almost without exception chose to stay. It wasn’t a rare phenomenon. Take Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured by the Comanches, fully embraced their life, and tried to escape back to them after she was "rescued." Or Adolph Korn, who became a warrior for the Comanches and refused to return to his old life. What does that tell you? It suggests that the “primitive” life wasn’t viewed as worse by people who had experienced both worlds.
Also, it’s not at all clear that even allowing for obvious advances like medicine, people were actually more miserable a few centuries ago. Don’t forget who writes history—it’s the elites, the survivors, the rulers. We tend to project our modern values onto the past, assuming lives were bleak, but it’s entirely possible that people five hundred years ago—or in ancient Rome—were doing just fine. Maybe they had fewer comforts, but they had stronger communities, richer spiritual lives, and less of the isolation, burnout, and alienation that plague us now. They weren’t measuring happiness in GDP or life expectancy. Sure, life was tougher in some ways, but it wasn’t necessarily miserable by their standards.
Bottom line: this whole “march of progress” thing needs a bit more scrutiny. There's a lot we're missing.
Maybe this is counterintuitive, but my point is that people in the past DID NOT see their lives as short, brutish and miserable -- at least relative to any other culture. If we, like Bill and Ted, traveled back in time, they would see us as the freaks with weird, untenable values, and bad taste in music.
From what I've read, it does appear that quality of life was generally better before the Neolithic era, at least from a public health point of view. However, I do think we need to keep in mind that life could be risky and terrible in ways that forced people to live with more uncertainty than we can tolerate these days. Disease and famine were not rampant, but they could hit at any time. Childhood and maternal mortality was much higher. Periodic intertribal violence was common. Pressure to conform to small-group social dynamics would have been existential (if you've ever worked in a small office, you know that office politics with the wrong mix of people can be terrifying).
The major change has been more than just specific technologies produced by companies. This needs emphasis. Our whole outlook has changed -- on how a society should be organized and what our collective goals should be. "Progress" is something that *we* value, not something that has been valued by humans universally. By the same argument, however, don't walk around thinking that you're a Paleolithic person stuck in a modern person's body.
A lot of this talk about the ethos of different eras is like comparing Bill Russell to LeBron James. Who was better? Hard to say because the conditions in which they played were so radically different. Both awesome, path-breaking basketball players. Except that if we're talking about history, "awesome" maybe isn't the right qualifier. James Joyce has his character Stephen Daedalus say "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." This is the right attitude. And what matters is what nightmare you find yourself in, not what nightmare you would prefer.
There’s a moral arc to an individual life—overcoming temptation, learning, struggling. No one just endlessly improves. We know that. Life is more about wrestling with challenges than a constant upward trajectory. So why do we think history is different? Why do we insist on seeing it as a straight line toward something “better”? It’s obviously false.
Take Giambattista Vico, for example. He didn’t see history as endless progress. Instead, he argued that history moves in cycles—what he called corsi e ricorsi. Civilizations rise, reach their peak, and then inevitably fall, only to begin the cycle again. For Vico, history wasn’t just a story of progress, but one of regression and renewal. His idea was that societies go through stages: from a divine era where they are guided by religion, to a heroic era where aristocracies rule, and finally into a democratic era where reason dominates. But that democratic stage isn’t the end of the story—it crumbles, and the cycle starts over.
Vico’s view flies in the face of this modern idea that things are just “getting better.” Maybe history is more like a life—there’s striving, but there’s also decline, temptation, and failure. So why do we cling to this myth of endless improvement? We should know better.
"But the idea [of progress] should contain within it the commonsense notion that we wish to liberate ourselves from arbitrary power, not concoct visions of it and gleefully help enslave ourselves."
Erik, I had to emerge temporarily from my self-imposed commenting abstinence just to say:
Spot. On.
Thanks, Eric! Good to hear from you.
“Progress is a comparative of which we have not settled the superlative.” - GK Chesterton
And so it remains. Your essay sounds like an updated version of CS Lewis’s “Is Progress Possible.” The concerns he enumerates there are still valid and more or less mine. When you lack a consensus on what the ultimate purpose of human life is, Progress - except in the most obvious cases, improved health, hygiene, sanitation, etc. - is a question of one man’s progress is another man’s regress.
What’s it all about, Alfie?
And meanwhile, the gods of the copybook headings lurk.
Progress, like The Good, is a concept rooted in classical Platonic Idealism. It's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to find an objective single ideal in a world made up of countless subjective particulars.
There have been various points in history where it was possible (not guaranteed, not probable) for the average person (rather than a fortunate few) to live a better life than their parents. If I had to put a pin on my idea of Progress, it would be moving toward another of those historical points.
Optimistically, I think human history is far more cyclical than linear, so there's a good chance that time will come again for someone. Pessimistically, I don't think it will come again for Western Civilization -- although it seems likely to happen for some of our so-called "enemies," but only if we fail at taking them down with us.
Hi Cynocephalus,
I'm of a cyclical or curved view as well.
I teach finance and, as you know, talk to a lot of CS folks. The CS folks resist understanding themselves as a commodity. And so the entire culture is built around a kind of origin story, which occasionally happens, of two guys in a garage. That these guys get folded into or bought out by some of the largest corporations ever is conveniently left out. The frontier gets settled.
The other thing that is left out, as you know and we've discussed, is military power. Some huge amount of CS research is funded, directly or indirectly, by governments seeking, or seeking to secure, national power. The worry about AI is largely a worry about weapons and surveillance and what China gets first. Silicon Valley pays attention to its navel, projects itself as the cockpit of history, and so forth. So California. But Livermore, etc., wasn't about "California" either.
Now again, I teach corporations. There are many things that people must do together, as a body, corpus. The university, the church, and of course governments are collective bodies. But that means that all this talk about tech is profoundly social and political, too, in ways that few in the conversation are in a position to begin articulating. Articulating politics is hard. Vide the current election.
Anyway, as always, keep up the good work.
Hi Bert,
Yes, we have discussed! We're in agreement on the roll of the military. I feel almost, what? apologetic when I point out that much of the energy and funding going into AI is in service of what we might call a technological arms race. Modern warfare seems to be headed toward a mutually assured destruction model, but we can see that's it's not working--there are conflagrations in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. More broadly I think folks would be shocked to know the collusion between the commercial and government (particularly DoD) sectors. Anyway, one thing that never ceases to befuddle me is how the discussion about AI never seems to take account of the actual power brokers. One reason I'm so steadfast in denigrating "sci-fi AI" is that it manages to ignore all the real dangers and levers of power. The last thing we have to worry about is the computer "coming alive," and the alignment problem--if you really think about it--is a joke. We design systems to be aligned; that's the whole point. If AI acts autonomously on the battlefield it will be a kind of "pseudo-autonomy" where (for instance), we clear automatic targeting because it's been vetted and green lighted, and so on. Nothing is gained by building unpredictable machines--hence the concept of a "machine" in the first place. Anyway, thanks Bert!
Thank you Erik for coming up with this follow-up post so fast!
Come to think of it, I’ve been probably subconsciously equating “progress” with “technological progress” - that the more advanced machinery humans had to their disposal, the better, starting probably somewhere around the wheel and going all the way towards the 4nm cpus of today… without all the societal implications, just judging the technological advances.
Thank you! It makes sense to tie progress to technology in certain respects. It would, for instance, be odd to insist that we were better off crossing the Atlantic on ships, or that antibiotics are a waste, or I suppose even that telecommunications with Wi-Fi and cell phones isn't progress. It's true that technology extends our powers. It's true as far as it goes, is my point. It's not the whole discussion, and if we take a more integrated look at things, it's not difficult to see the downside. There are so many examples here that they sort of swim through my mind. To take one that Matt Crawford has written about effectively, how is it progress to be stuck pathetically thrusting your hand under an automatic public faucet, hoping that the sensor will start the water flowing? Why do this at all? Because some percentage of folks will leave the water on. There are just innumerable examples of "modern technology" actually taking away individual agency. And, since it's really hard to see what the point of life is without some autonomy and agency, it's not hard to make a case that the notion of technological progress is slippery. I'm VERY suspicious of folks like Stephen Pinker who see everything as a march toward better and better. Back to my original essay on Da Vinci and the machines, the point there is that fostering human agency and excellence ought to be the goal, but weirdly it's hardly ever true. Mostly we get endless lip service and a concentration of power at the expense of the culture. My point in the last follow-on post is simply that there isn't any convincing techno-future where the uber-powerful technology isn't accompanied by an uber-powerful government or corporation. What we're really worried abut is that. Building a shovel or making a T-shirt is one thing. Building a nuclear powered server farm for "AI" is quite another. The society that can make that happen is centralized and will very likely not be interested in fostering human excellence--that would be competition after all. So that's one way to read sci-fi. Even very linear geeks can see the connection to the human stuff, though they are at such pains to ignore it (in my view). Thank you.
Very interesting points, thank you! So do I understand you correctly that you’d want technological progress as a means to an end (=of improving human excellence and flourishing), while the tech bros increasingly see it as an end in itself, thus making it a central focus instead of the human and wanting the human simply make room for it and shut up?
You're *such* a Gen-Xer, Erik, to ask this question.
A few comments:
Wasn't one of the primary theses of Pinker's book on progress that aggregate levels of violence have dramatically decreased during the modern period? I thought his idea was that we pay more attention to violence, but that the fact that it dominates the "news" is actually proof that there is less violence. There have been a few conflicts in the last two years (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan) that have perhaps upset the trend, but I think this question has to be looked at in decades or centuries, not in months or years. You can even put WWII in perspective -- according to Wikipedia, Genghis Khan and his immediate heirs killed something like 10% of the world population. Did aggregate world population even decrease during WWII?
I also would question whether or not mental health has declined, as we don't have a stable reporting baseline over a long period of time. How many people were stuck in poverty and abusive marriages that you would never had heard about, or who wouldn't have complained about their situation publicly, now get divorced and can broadcast their feelings on social media or to whoever compiles these population level surveys? We should be careful to make conclusions about this because of shifts in culture, media, wealth, law, etc. (i.e., not actual mental health).
There's nothing inherently slimy about commerce as a human activity -- how else should we organize the division of labor to produce the essential goods and services that humans require to be what we are? It would be better if we set economic questions to the side and asked ourselves -- what do we actually value? What qualities in life and in our environment do we truly want to invest ourselves in? This is partly a matter of taste, but coming to an answer also takes the form of a spiritual reckoning. And it's one that has to happen both for individuals in the narrow ambit of their lives, and collectively. If we understand what we value, then economic systems (including "capitalist" systems), paired with good political governance and civic participation, are excellent at organizing collective activity towards those ends.
One more, as I'm currently writing about this. My word for modernity is strange. It's strange, isn’t it? How we keep supporting the very systems that quietly work against our own interests. We buy the latest tech, use the platforms, feed into the data-driven economy, and yet the more we engage, the more power we hand over—not to ourselves, but to a tiny group at the top. And what's even more perplexing is that we seem to know it, but we keep playing along, as if there’s no alternative. Wealth continues to concentrate, tech titans get richer, and the tools we rely on only make us more dependent. Are we really choosing this, or are we just too deep in the system to question it anymore? Maybe we've conformed so thoroughly that we don’t even see it for what it is. These are the big questions, in my view...
I don't know about this. I try to live on my own terms. Most people can opt out of a lot of this technology if they have steady employment, and, outside of the educated classes, that's probably more common than you might think. Personally, I'm only on the internet, reading and talking to people like you whom I only know virtually because I'm intellectually ambitious. That's a choice for which I take full responsibility. I'm not convinced this would be any easier in an earlier era if I were anything like what I am now, which is to say not a wealthy person or someone with institutional power or rock-star levels of personal charisma.
Hi Jeffrey,
Taking here your comments about Pinker and violence:
While global violence may have decreased overall, there are localized areas where violence has escalated in recent years. Here's a rough and ready (but hardly exhaustive) look at it:
Civil Wars and Terrorism: The Syrian civil war, conflicts in Yemen, and the rise of extremist groups like ISIS have contributed to high levels of violence in certain regions, I think challenging the idea that all forms of violence are universally declining.
Increase in Urban Violence: In many countries, urban violence has increased due to gang activity, drug cartels, and economic inequality. For example, Latin America, particularly countries like Mexico, Brazil, and Venezuela, continues to experience some of the highest homicide rates in the world. What's getting better?
On Pinker specifically, we have major data Interpretation Issues:
Quality of Historical Data: Pinker relies on incomplete or problematic historical data to assert his claim. Violent deaths from earlier centuries are difficult to quantify accurately, and there are valid concerns about potential underestimations or misrepresentations of past violence. This alone weakens the claim that violence has decreased substantially.
Counting Non-Lethal Violence: Pinker focuses heavily on lethal violence, particularly in warfare and homicide rates, but this overlooks other forms of violence that persist, such as sexual violence, human trafficking, and state repression, which might not always lead to death but still represent significant forms of harm.
I could go on about "problems with Panglossian Pinker," but let me point something else out that directly challenges the "onward and upward" thesis. Namely:
Steven Pinker’s thesis that aggregate violence is decreasing is at odds with the fact that there's been a much documented worldwide decline in democracies themselves. (Quite literally, the world was more free a few decades ago.) Pinker argues that liberal democracies are among the most peaceful forms of governance, as they generally promote human rights, reduce conflict, and offer peaceful transitions of power. However, the decline of democracies globally threatens his view and suggests that violence—especially state-sponsored violence, repression, and civil unrest—may increase as a result. Here’s how this decline plays into concerns about rising violence and societal instability:
1. Democratic Backsliding:
Erosion of Democratic Norms: Countries that were once strong democracies are now facing erosion in democratic institutions and norms. Countries like Hungary, Poland, India, Turkey, and Brazil have been fingered many times over as examples of "illiberal democracies" where free press, judicial independence, and electoral integrity are under attack. This backsliding increases the potential for political repression. It also undermines the mechanisms that prevent state violence.
Rise of Populism: The rise of authoritarian populist leaders has become a global trend, with leaders consolidating power through undermining democratic institutions. These regimes often increase surveillance, curtail freedom of speech, and use police or military force to suppress dissent, all of which can lead to spikes in state violence.
2. Authoritarian Regimes and Political Repression
Crackdowns on Protests and Dissent: As democracies decline, authoritarian regimes intensify their use of force to quell political opposition and civil unrest. In many countries, protests against authoritarian rule have been met with brutal crackdowns, such as in Hong Kong (against China’s tightening grip), Belarus (against Lukashenko’s regime), and Myanmar (following the military coup). This is progress?
Suppression of Civil Liberties: As governments tilt toward authoritarianism, civil liberties erode. Freedom of assembly, speech, and press are often the first casualties, and the state's power over citizens increases. For example, the global use of internet shutdowns to control information flow during protests or elections has risen, effectively isolating populations and increasing the potential for unreported human rights abuses.
3. Increase in Human Rights Violations
State-Sponsored Violence: Declining democracies see a corresponding increase in state-sponsored violence, including police brutality, political imprisonment, and extrajudicial killings. Note Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro’s government, which has used state security forces to crush political opposition, leading to thousands of deaths and rampant human rights abuses.
Surveillance States: In both authoritarian and backsliding democracies, governments are increasingly relying on surveillance technologies, such as facial recognition and AI-powered predictive policing. These technologies as we all know are developed by corporations and adopted by governments, and they enable more widespread control and repression of populations, furthering the state's power to act violently against its citizens without accountability.
4. Breakdown of the Rule of Law
Judicial Erosion: The decline of independent judiciaries is a hallmark of weakening democracies. Without independent courts to check executive power, abuses of power become more common. In countries like Poland and Hungary, governments have sought to pack courts with loyalists, removing a key check on the power to use state violence.
Erosion of Electoral Integrity: In democratic systems, the peaceful transfer of power depends on fair and free elections. In declining democracies, the erosion of electoral integrity can lead to violence, as seen in recent elections in Belarus, where large-scale protests broke out in response to allegations of rigged elections, only to be met with severe repression.
5. Increased Risk of Civil Conflict
Polarization and Civil Unrest: As democratic institutions erode, societies tend to become more polarized. Political divisions often result in civil unrest, protests, and violence. This polarization makes peaceful resolution of conflicts within the system more difficult, and the absence of democratic mechanisms to address grievances over and over, we see lead to violent outcomes.
Potential for Civil War: In extreme cases, the breakdown of democracy can lead to civil war. A key historical example is the breakdown of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where a once multi-ethnic federation disintegrated into violent ethnic conflict as democratic norms failed and authoritarian nationalism took hold.
6. Rise of Nationalism and Ethnic Violence
Nationalist Movements: In many cases, the decline of democracy is accompanied by the rise of nationalist or ethno-nationalist movements. The movements often promote exclusionary policies against minority groups and lead to state-sanctioned violence or genocide. In Myanmar, the Rohingya genocide is a stark example of how declining democratic values and rising nationalism leads to mass violence against minority populations.
Ethnic Tensions and Exclusion: Democracies in decline often resort to scapegoating minorities or immigrants, as seen in India’s recent policies under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which have increasingly targeted the Muslim population. This has led to rising ethnic and religious violence, with state complicity in many cases.
7. International Implications of Democratic Decline
Weakening of Global Democratic Norms: The decline of democracies in major countries weakens the global norms that promote peace and diplomacy. As countries like the U.S. and other Western democracies struggle with internal political crises and polarization, their ability to promote democratic values abroad diminishes and I think creates a vacuum where authoritarianism can thrive. This is a huge issue that can't be addressed by facile views of progress.
Increased Global Instability: Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's increasingly aggressive stance toward Taiwan and Hong Kong are examples of how authoritarian powers can challenge the international order and lead to large-scale violence.
8. Weaponization of Technology by Authoritarian Regimes
Surveillance Technology: The decline in democratic norms has coincided with the proliferation of sophisticated surveillance technologies developed in liberal democracies and sold to authoritarian regimes. Technologies like China's social credit system and facial recognition surveillance allow for tight control over populations and the potential for systematic repression without accountability.
Autonomous Weapons and AI: The rise of AI-powered surveillance, drone warfare, and autonomous weapons systems is increasingly under the control of authoritarian governments. The new forms of violence here are difficult to regulate or predict. Regardless, I would certainly challenge the very premise that violence is declining in a meaningful way.
Soooo....
I disagree with Pinker. Pinker’s thesis claims that violence is on a long-term decline, but the decline of democracies globally is a serious counterpoint. Democracies, historically the most stable and least violent forms of government, are being replaced or undermined by authoritarian regimes, populism, and nationalism. The trend raises the likelihood of state violence, human rights abuses, and civil conflict. As political repression and the breakdown of rule of law increase, count on more state-sanctioned oppression, civil unrest, and international conflicts. I highly doubt we're making progress in Pinker's sense.
Thanks, Jeffrey. These are big issues I realize, but I have a particular disdain for (not Pinker himself) but the view he propounds, as if he was dropped out of the Enlightenment and still manages to forget the first lesson in the French Revolution.
I didn't read Pinker's book (my disdain for Pinker comes from his association with Chomsky) -- the claim that came out in interviews and book reviews made intuitive sense to me, so I've penciled it in as something that's probably true.
When I read about history older than the last two hundred and fifty years, what always stands out to me is the volume of catastrophes normal folks would regularly endure as a normal part of life, usually amidst what we in 21st century America would experience as terrible poverty. The most shocking thing, though, is that I don't think people in prior eras looked at aggregate violence in their society and among their neighbors as something that needed to be "fixed." And some cultures would find any interest whatsoever in non-violence at all to be utterly nuts -- the Mongols, for instance, or the Vikings. Some religious traditions have preached avoiding violence, notably Christianity and Buddhism, but their teachings usually emphasize non-violence as a matter of personal conduct, not as an overriding social goal that should be of central interest to the state. Even in Christian and Buddhist societies, if you went around telling everyone that major institutions should devote themselves to cultural innovation and reducing the general violence in society, the locals would probably think that you belong in a madhouse. You might even be thrown in the clink as a heretic and subversive.
By the same token, democracies are not known in longer history to be particularly stable. Governments in recorded history have mostly been monarchies or oligarchies, and democracies have only been really successful for extended periods since the Industrial Revolution kicked off.
"Progress" in my book is that you and I, neither of us of noble lineage, could even be talking about these things in the comfort of our large, electrified, conditioned homes. The Industrial Revolution is the big thing to pay attention to, and the cultural and social changes it has engendered.
Let me add this peroration as well (I'm not attributing the opposite view to you, but I do want to put this out for reading):
Yes, advanced technology—cell phones, laptops, social media—gives us undeniable utility. We can communicate instantly, access information, and work remotely. But here’s the rub: we don’t own the tools that shape our lives. The data, the platforms, the algorithms—those are controlled by tech titans, not the community. These technologies concentrate power in the hands of a few, and while we get convenience, they get control. We use their products, but they set the rules. The real power isn’t in the tools; it’s in who controls them. That’s not us.
Hi Jeffrey, in general, I agree that getting the bubonic plague in London with no hope of the medical community stopping it (at least at first) says volumes about the march of science. Agreed. But let me throw some of Graeber's anthropological insights into the mix, as yet again I suspect the "stuff's gettin' better" view is a little too simplistic. Sure, it’s true where it’s obviously true, but you can’t just stretch it across the board.
Yale anthropologist turned London School of Economics professor turned "anarchist intellectual rock star," David Graeber, in his 2020 The Dawn of Everything, paints a completely different picture than the Pinker-inspired idea that progress is just obvious. According to Graeber, the narrative that hunter-gatherers lived short, brutal lives is largely a myth. They likely had more varied, nutritious diets compared to early agriculturalists, who were stuck eating grains and facing nutritional deficits. Disease was far less of a problem for them, too. Hunter-gatherers lived in small, mobile groups, which limited the spread of infections—unlike the dense, settled communities that later suffered from plagues and waterborne diseases.
Graeber also points out that the shift to farming didn’t automatically make life better. In fact, it often made things worse—harder work, social inequality, worse overall health. So, while the myth of agricultural “progress” dominates, it overlooks the chronic malnutrition and suffering early farmers dealt with. Sure, hunter-gatherers didn’t live as long as we do now, but they weren’t dying off miserably at 30 either.
And here's the kicker: It’s been repeatedly observed that settlers in the American frontier, when captured by Native American groups as children, almost without exception chose to stay. It wasn’t a rare phenomenon. Take Cynthia Ann Parker, who was captured by the Comanches, fully embraced their life, and tried to escape back to them after she was "rescued." Or Adolph Korn, who became a warrior for the Comanches and refused to return to his old life. What does that tell you? It suggests that the “primitive” life wasn’t viewed as worse by people who had experienced both worlds.
Also, it’s not at all clear that even allowing for obvious advances like medicine, people were actually more miserable a few centuries ago. Don’t forget who writes history—it’s the elites, the survivors, the rulers. We tend to project our modern values onto the past, assuming lives were bleak, but it’s entirely possible that people five hundred years ago—or in ancient Rome—were doing just fine. Maybe they had fewer comforts, but they had stronger communities, richer spiritual lives, and less of the isolation, burnout, and alienation that plague us now. They weren’t measuring happiness in GDP or life expectancy. Sure, life was tougher in some ways, but it wasn’t necessarily miserable by their standards.
Bottom line: this whole “march of progress” thing needs a bit more scrutiny. There's a lot we're missing.
Maybe this is counterintuitive, but my point is that people in the past DID NOT see their lives as short, brutish and miserable -- at least relative to any other culture. If we, like Bill and Ted, traveled back in time, they would see us as the freaks with weird, untenable values, and bad taste in music.
From what I've read, it does appear that quality of life was generally better before the Neolithic era, at least from a public health point of view. However, I do think we need to keep in mind that life could be risky and terrible in ways that forced people to live with more uncertainty than we can tolerate these days. Disease and famine were not rampant, but they could hit at any time. Childhood and maternal mortality was much higher. Periodic intertribal violence was common. Pressure to conform to small-group social dynamics would have been existential (if you've ever worked in a small office, you know that office politics with the wrong mix of people can be terrifying).
The major change has been more than just specific technologies produced by companies. This needs emphasis. Our whole outlook has changed -- on how a society should be organized and what our collective goals should be. "Progress" is something that *we* value, not something that has been valued by humans universally. By the same argument, however, don't walk around thinking that you're a Paleolithic person stuck in a modern person's body.
A lot of this talk about the ethos of different eras is like comparing Bill Russell to LeBron James. Who was better? Hard to say because the conditions in which they played were so radically different. Both awesome, path-breaking basketball players. Except that if we're talking about history, "awesome" maybe isn't the right qualifier. James Joyce has his character Stephen Daedalus say "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." This is the right attitude. And what matters is what nightmare you find yourself in, not what nightmare you would prefer.
There’s a moral arc to an individual life—overcoming temptation, learning, struggling. No one just endlessly improves. We know that. Life is more about wrestling with challenges than a constant upward trajectory. So why do we think history is different? Why do we insist on seeing it as a straight line toward something “better”? It’s obviously false.
Take Giambattista Vico, for example. He didn’t see history as endless progress. Instead, he argued that history moves in cycles—what he called corsi e ricorsi. Civilizations rise, reach their peak, and then inevitably fall, only to begin the cycle again. For Vico, history wasn’t just a story of progress, but one of regression and renewal. His idea was that societies go through stages: from a divine era where they are guided by religion, to a heroic era where aristocracies rule, and finally into a democratic era where reason dominates. But that democratic stage isn’t the end of the story—it crumbles, and the cycle starts over.
Vico’s view flies in the face of this modern idea that things are just “getting better.” Maybe history is more like a life—there’s striving, but there’s also decline, temptation, and failure. So why do we cling to this myth of endless improvement? We should know better.
I addressed this a few weeks ago: https://substack.com/@guywilson/p-147601199. It is mostly about taking "progress" out of context.