On progress and prosperity

Abstract

I often encounter the following argument, or a variant of it: historically, technological, economic, and social progress have been associated with significant gains in quality of life and significant improvement in society’s ability to cope with challenges. All else equal, these trends should be expected to continue, and so contributions to technological, economic, and social progress should be expected to be very valuable. I encounter this argument from a wide range of perspectives, including most of the social circles I interact with other than the LessWrong community (academics, friends from school, philanthropists, engineers in the bay area). For example, Holden Karnofsky writes about the general positive effects of progress here (I agree with many of these points). I think that similar reasoning informs people’s views more often than it is actually articulated.