Musings about progress
Jan. 2nd, 2022 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alaysI have been musing (not very deeply) about progress.
I am not a big fan of space travel on the grounds that firstly it sucks up vast amounts of funds that might be better spent for stuff on earth (education, infrastructure, flood defenses...) and secondly we are messing up our future on this planet pretty badly. Nothing indicates we would treat other planets better.
But on the other hand, the inventions made for space travel have been very useful to the general public, especially in medicine. But surely, if more money was put into educating all children and adults, inventions would still happen.
Last year I read an article that mentioned the progress trap. A theory of thought positing that every technological advance made by humans has led to more problems that then were adressed with other inventions that created new problems...
This reminded me of a video on the Youtube channel of Kurzgesagt: Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change?
One of the solutions posited is to make technology more efficient/invest more in innovation. But then it mentions rebound effects which are in this example: if something is more efficient, people might use it more therefore negating the energy savings & when something becomes more efficient and therefore cheaper for the consumer, people use the money saved on other things that then again are emitting more CO2, negating energy savings.
All the while the more efficient something is/becomes, the harder/more expensive it is to make more improvements.
I don´t have an actual point but I´m pretty sure de-progress (like de-growth) is not in most humans´ nature.
I am not a big fan of space travel on the grounds that firstly it sucks up vast amounts of funds that might be better spent for stuff on earth (education, infrastructure, flood defenses...) and secondly we are messing up our future on this planet pretty badly. Nothing indicates we would treat other planets better.
But on the other hand, the inventions made for space travel have been very useful to the general public, especially in medicine. But surely, if more money was put into educating all children and adults, inventions would still happen.
Last year I read an article that mentioned the progress trap. A theory of thought positing that every technological advance made by humans has led to more problems that then were adressed with other inventions that created new problems...
This reminded me of a video on the Youtube channel of Kurzgesagt: Is It Too Late To Stop Climate Change?
One of the solutions posited is to make technology more efficient/invest more in innovation. But then it mentions rebound effects which are in this example: if something is more efficient, people might use it more therefore negating the energy savings & when something becomes more efficient and therefore cheaper for the consumer, people use the money saved on other things that then again are emitting more CO2, negating energy savings.
All the while the more efficient something is/becomes, the harder/more expensive it is to make more improvements.
I don´t have an actual point but I´m pretty sure de-progress (like de-growth) is not in most humans´ nature.
no subject
Date: 2022-01-10 12:01 pm (UTC)