I suppose the question is really not about technology but are we as a society using technology responsibly and in the best interests long term. Will we eventually get to a stage in our development where money isn't our priority? My vision / hope of the future is more Star Trek than Star Wars
Our nature is to fuck things up, often without realizing it. Our challenge is to get over our nature. The road is long, the destination uncertain, and missteps inevitable. But fortunately the universe is vast and tolerant of our fumbling attempts. No point in giving up. There's nothing we can do to truly fuck things up except for ourselves. Might as well play the game.
Do you mean this in the sense that during our attempt to solve one problem, we often create secondary issues. If so, I would say that it is our nature to be problem solvers, but that we often lack the foresight or insight to see the complexity of a given problem.Our nature is to fuck things up...
Yeah, there's incompetence and malice, and a spectrum of benign neglect in between. Sometimes we have good intentions but lack foresight. Sometimes we want something and don't care about consequences. The world becomes an externality to our desires. Sometimes we think we don't care about the consequences, but if our foresight were improved we'd realize we should care.
Let's consider one of the largest secondary problems we currently face: Global warming. Two of the main drivers of global warming are methane from large farms and carbon dioxide from burning of organic fuels. Today, we may think of greed as the primary motivating factor that can explain why it is so hard to find consensus solutions to global warming. But the problem's roots (both for methane and CO2) result from the same basic place, which is the improvement of the human condition. I don't think it was possible, in principle, to have predicted global warming in the early days of the industrial revolution. Further, I think that ascribing to malice that which can be ascribed to ignorance is counter productive and dangerous. Foresight is often underutilized, I agree, but it is at least as often unavailable, as some phenomena can only be observed empirically and cannot be predicted.
I think we're in vehement agreement. It might not be obvious, though. Perhaps my labels are not clear. Incompetence is when you do something bad but didn't realize it at the time. Malice is when you realized it but didn't care. You're right that malice often starts out as incompetence. At first we didn't know that methane and CO2 could be bad. That was ignorance or incompetence. Then we knew, but it was too hard/unprofitable to change the way things were done. That's not ignorance, now that's malice. Standing by can be as bad as actively doing harm oneself. If we don't believe that then we'll be utterly doomed by tragedies of the commons. Definitely. Even if we eliminated all malice (ha!), incompetence is often unavoidable. Which is why it's a good thing that the universe is vast and we have lots of opportunity to recover from missteps.Foresight is often underutilized, I agree, but it is at least as often unavailable, as some phenomena can only be observed empirically and cannot be predicted.
Yes, fortunately, for reasons of mathematical necessity, we live in a world dominated by negative feedback. The worst case scenario for global warming is that it creates a positive feedback loop when the warming climate starts to release gas trapped in the oceans and tundras. There, we might find out what its like to live in an alternate stability. Let's hope not. And in the meantime vote for candidates that understand that how we got here is less important than how we move forward.Which is why it's a good thing that the universe is vast and we have lots of opportunity to recover from missteps.
I think the "world" is a broad term. If the question was relegated to "me", then I think it is a more obvious "yes". The "world" could mean our ecology, ecosystem and all of earth in general. The answer may not be so easy for me given this.
Yeah, I wouldn't worry about it. As George Carlin so eloquently put it "The planet is fine, people are fucked"
Better is always a value judgement and is dependent on choices and situations. You and I are most likely better off for technology.
The people of the western Australian desert less so. To me the real change of the "singularity" would be the post-scarcity economy not AI or immortality. How does a culture that has been based on inequality survive ?
I'd argue that the world is not better off because of science and technology. While this has nothing to do with our science and technology itself, it is important to see who controls these things. Most of the good things that come from science and technology are out of reach from a lot of people. Lets take advances in medicine. This is an area of science that has made a lot of great strides but which is not available to all people. Why? Most of it has to deal with money and the rest has to deal with location. If you don't have the money to afford certain medicine then how is that any good to you? If you live in a third world country and your village is in a remote area, how good is modern medicine? Resources and manpower are another issue. Yes, science and technology are good for me but that is because I have relatively easy access to it and can afford some of it. But I am not truly representative of the entire world. I guess the only problem lies within the wording of the question presented. I also think this is partly what thenewgreen hinted to in his comment a couple posts below this.
I think by your argument that it would still seem that on the balance we are collectively better off, unless you think that the negatives of not having access to medical care outweigh the positives of having it. That seems specious. We would be a better society if everyone could get good quality care, but then the goal should be trying to improve access, not scorning those who already have access. Also, even in remote regions, the poverty level and access to clean water have improved dramatically in the last several decades, even if hospitals are a long way off.