[chezlaw]

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The argument is invalid. just because progress is cumulative it doesn't follow that one step back for us means people in the future will be one step back.


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This is true only if the one step back somehow results in multiple subsequent steps forward. That is, if the net effect is positive.

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Yes I'm saying the net effective is positive for precisely that reason.

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And look at our own history - the black death, who knows. But the end of the ice age led to the development of civilization - its effects define each of our lives. The Roman Empire set the cultural underpinnings that we live with to this day. The establishment of religions, the wars through the world, the literature and philosophy, these are the ingredients that make the present what it is. I think it's reasonable to suggest that what we do today will similarly affect the future.



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I agree.


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I'd appreciate some clarification: This seems to contradict the position I thought you were defending (that actions taken in the present have minimal impact on the far future).

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Talking about expected satisfaction or happiness. We don't suffer because people long in the past suffered. Of course the world was shaped by the Roman empire but it doesn't make any difference to us if it was a miserable time to live through or not. The exception being cumulative matters like technology which is a genuine point of contention.

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Your statement that the stimulus to new technologies would outweigh years of lost advances is a big one, and you still haven't explained where this stimulus would come from, or why a disaster would be necessary to create it.

Maybe we will just have to disagree.

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Its too much like an essay question for me to answer, seems obvious to me but maybe its wrong. Necessity is the mother of invention, technological progress is correlated with demand etc etc. WW1/WW2 is an obvious example of a calamity being a massive stimulas to technological advance but one example doesn't prove much.

chez