Is 'Progress' Good for Humanity?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Musika, Apr 29, 2018.

  1. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    i am not entirely sure which side of the table you are coming at this from.
    the lack of the animal, or the over abundance of the animal ?

    feral cats & dogs do not compete for food with domestic cats & dogs.
    domestic horses are fairly well looked after as a norm that prevents them becoming victim to wild horse pressure.

    "wild" honey bees or, "wild bees" compete for the same food source as other(certain types of) insects and birds.

    would a wild bee hive displace a domestic bee hive ?
    sure.
    do they ?
    sure
    do the bee keepers know about this and how it happens ?
    sure do

    i sense a tone of "naturralness" in what you have posted.
    maybe that is just your tone and not your underlying ideology.

    i am quite interested in your scientific or observational/experiential data regarding the nature of wild bees influencing CCD.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    They displace local predators, and put extra pressure on local prey.
    So do the domesticated ones. They can knock down the populations of everything from bumblebees and hoverflies to whatever flowers they find difficult to handle. The feral ones extend the influence beyond the tended hives to the landscape in general.

    I don't know anything for sure about colony collapse in honeybees. I've spoken with a Canadian beekeeper who blames his collapse on a truck accident that loosed a few hives worth of diseased bees into his formerly pristine neighborhood.
     
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  5. naturallygorg Registered Member

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    Yes, as far as I know, Insects can catch bacteria from trees, parasites, and viruses. They also get sick.
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Progress is an illusion to time. It must be redefined.
     
  8. psikeyhackr Live Long and Suffer Valued Senior Member

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    The Maxim machine gun was progress:



    Who decides which way is "Progress"? And then there is not just the technology but its implementation.

    WWI was progress.
     
  9. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    4,885
    Many of the poor or under privileged folks today are far better off than the serfs & slaves of the feudal era & other cultures of long ago.

    It is possible (perhaps likely) that some of our cultures are evolving toward economies in which robots or lessor automation result in many (most?) folks living a life requiring less working hours per week & less strenuous work.
     
  10. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,856
    I think the OP contains a false premise. Technological progress and moral progress aren't directly related. One may make it easier for progress in the other but it's not required.

    Of course some things were better (or different) in the past and many things are much better.
     
  11. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    that would only make sense in a socialist base mixed market economy.
    economys like the USA ideological model are incongruent to automation as they remove wages from low income workers and there is no balance of trade to give training or higher skilled jobs to that same industrialised low income group.

    some European countrys are capable of matching technalogical advancement with social advancement, but not the usa.

    USA system is simple and clear cut,
    no job no health care
    no job no income
    no job no economy of scale for afforable market economy provided utilities.

    The rich argue over what level of malnutrition is going to be afforded the poor.

    if you have a working example that shows something different please post it as i can not see how the USA system can sustain technalogical advancement without forcing a social revolution.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,856
    I don't have a working example that shows anything different. It's a "tough" system. It works by providing motivation to not be left at the bottom. For those who are left at the bottom, it's not a good system.

    To be fairly judged you would need to consider how many are at the bottom under various systems. When comparing all countries on Earth, it's hard to argue that it isn't working but it's also hard to argue that it is very supportive of those at the bottom.

    The good news is that most people don't stay at the bottom. There is mobility but that is more limited than at some periods in the past. The "glory days" were probably after WWII. It's probably hard to argue that the situation today is outside the norm considering our entire history.

    It's also hard to ignore that it's outside the norm when judged against most other countries.

    This is not to argue that I'm not for changing many aspects of this system. I'm just trying to make a few impartial statements here.
     
  13. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    so any way to the top is justified...
    thus morality is subjective in such a system.
    which is quite odd when you look at how many americans claim to follow christian values.

    did jesus say "every man for himself" !
    dont think so, though i could be wrong.

    i agree that advancement has brought a great deal of benefits and i am not opposed to the idea of insentivised public work schemes that expect people to work in exchange for a house, medical care and food and school for their children..
    and medical care for their children, and food for their children...
    but that is a long way from survival of the fittest as a moral absolute to nurture children in to then use weaponised force to enslave those same people into complance of the elitists ideological privilage.

    i accept you may not think soo deeply and may at this point be completely lost so i will leave it there.

    staying poor and sickly is not something that happens in the media for long.
    this expresion you use ... i have heard it before.
    why does it make me think of "just following orders" ?
    because it lacks the clarity to see those whom are being sent to the gas chambers via lack of health care and malnutrition.
    the effective genocidal system remains in stead of the lack of direct action to cull the heard and give all their work & possesions to the elite.

    culling the heard so only the elite survive ...note fitnes is only defined by survivability and morality is void by this system as a form of subjective slavery

    ... agreed, though surely the intellectually acclaimed should not be living by comparing the self to others, but more soo comparing themselves to themselves ?
    e.g the last man standing alive is the one who is morally superior, or politicaly correct.

    blood lust societys and cultures that embrace torture and killing of people as a normal legal process are in my humble opinion starkly different to some others.

    fair point, and if it were not for the ability to live a life of impartiality then where would art and intellectual culture come from ?
    we would all be living in a mad-max like world feeding off whom ever could be killed first.

    recapping the cycle of normative psychological pathology...
    all systems that do not claim to agree with the bully are not variant codes of barbarianism.
    pyramid systems of social order are fairly normal.

    err-go ... why was slavery abandonned ?
    because of some moral fortitude of the slave masters ?
    did they have a leap of some type of intellectual consciousness ?
     
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2018
  14. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,856
    What country do you live in and what are you thoughts on that system?

    The U.S. political system isn't a "Christian" system. Structurally that is supposed to be separated from government. In practice, it's not as separate as I would like for it to be.

    The problem with any system are the side-effects and it's not a simple solution.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    As far as I know, and I've looked around a bit, actual slavemasters have never, as a class, abandoned slavery or freed their slaves as a matter of principled choice.
    Their slaves were taken from them by force (including by law), lost to rebellions and escape, coercively taxed or pressured until they could not afford their keep, etc. Often, their slaveholding (and the market for slaves in general) was restricted in tenure in the first place, by hard custom and formal law (such as the Jubilee Year of the Bible).

    Slaves are freed at swordpoint, gunpoint, etc - same way they are made. And that is progress - we have made that much progress - good for humanity. We have entire empires, continental ones, in which slavery is so little a structural aspect that some people can honestly claim they don't think it exists.
     
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  16. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    simplicity in its self is good for some, though rarely affords the result to service the intellectual majority.

    the USA is incapable of electing a non christian President.
    The Presidential process requires the President to go to church on the way to the swearing in process.

    Soo... in practice the US political system and social culture is a Christian Country that affords others a right to follow their own chosen religion.

    you can not solve problems in a system by ignoring how it works or what drives it.

    Soo... when people continue to parrot off that the USA system is not a Christian system they are de-railing the apple cart before it gets to the orchid.

    Maybe some people are confused by the differences between those countrys which allow debate and membership to other non state legalised religions.
    There are hundreds of millions of people living in state sanctioned religious dictatorships
    i do not class the USA as a Religious dictatorship as it does not have laws that force religous actions.

    i think there is quite a bit of room for a debate around the concepts of how philisophical ideology and religous ideology meet to form social contracts as express morality.
    though... greed & sadism do bend the lines a bit to make open public debate a little blury.

    note for those thrown by the use of the word "sadism" sadism is normalised(& a defined culture) in all countrys that allow capital punishment & corporal punishment.
    note for some thrown by the word "greed", Greed is not exclusive to facism.
     
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  17. Dinosaur Rational Skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    4,885
    In the USA, the so called Robber Barons of the 1800's created a marvelous economic engine which greatly improved the standard of living of the typical farm & factory worker.

    They used the technology created by inventive minds. I think banks & affluent investors supported their efforts.

    The from some time in the 1700's industry started to become more important, requiring a different type of worker than the preceding agriculturally dominated economy. The number of agricultural workers declined with the use of various inventions. Note that there was a time when humans (with & without the use of horses) did the work required for farming.

    An agricultural economy can make better use of slaves than an industrial economy. As industry became more prevalent, slavery became less important. This had a significant effect ending slavery.

    The industrial North wanted tariffs to protect their early industries, while the agricultural South wanted to import products from Europe without the added cost of tariffs. This had some effect on the start of the Civil War.

     
  18. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,635
    A great many atheists and non-Christians have been sworn in to government jobs. It's not a barrier.
    Well, it is largely a Christian country, but is in no way defined by that.
     
  19. psikeyhackr Live Long and Suffer Valued Senior Member

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    Last edited: Jul 1, 2018
  20. Hayden Registered Senior Member

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    110
    We are making sound progress in developing biological/chemical weapons (read highly deadly bacteria or virus or chemical), this progress need not be good for humanity. A joke in control of such weapons may unleash them.

    The process of progress itself need not be good for humanity. Take for example medical trials, human beings are used as guinea pigs in a very inhuman manner.

    The advancement in medical science may create a scenario when majority of human beings alive will be 80+, healthy but with restricted mobility and lesser output as compared to younger people. Will this advancement in medical science leading to such scenario be good for humanity?
     
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  21. RainbowSingularity Valued Senior Member

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    7,447
    african americans need to move to china to get work in the american companys ?

    i am trying to picture how the new made in europe harley davidson emblem will look like against the EU united nations flag background.
    once they move to europe their value will probably go up anyway.
    if i was going to spend 5 years total income on 1 motor cycle, i would much rather buy it knowing i was paying for good working conditions and universal health care and real democracy.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    A few numbers, along with an argument, on the topic of "progress":
    https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/02/silicon-valleys-inequality-machine-anand-giridharadas/

     
  23. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

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