Progress
The idea that human conditions — knowledge, ethics, material wellbeing, freedom — can be cumulatively improved over time through reason, science, and the deliberate solving of problems. Its defenders treat new technologies and institutions as openings that create fresh problems alongside fresh capabilities, with the right response being to work through the new problems rather than to retreat. Its critics — Luddites in the original technology-smashing sense, and a wider lineage of romantics and declinists — argue that each apparent gain ushers in unseen losses, and that some traditions, intuitions, or ways of life are worth more than the conveniences that displace them. The debate over progress recurs whenever a new cognitive tool — writing, the printing press, Google, generative AI — promises to remake how humans think.
Episodes
- 65. Walking away from 'The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas'
- 61. Atomised, part 2: Sympathy for the Incel
- 60. Was the sexual revolution a mistake? (Houellebecq's Atomised, part 1)
- 58. Moby Dick finale: Ahab Derangement Syndrome
- 57. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein: Look how they massacred my boy
- 49. C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures: the original stemcels vs shape rotators beef
- 43. One Hundred Years of Solitude: The optimal amount of incest is non-zero
- 41. Truth of Fact, Truth of Fiction: Is Ted Chiang a Luddite?
- 19. Philip K. Dick's paranoid classic Ubik: Fluttering at the windowpane of reality
- 16. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, part 1: Post-nut clarity and forbidden knowledge
- 12. W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, part 1: Nobody loafs like Larry