People get it wrong in a lot of weird ways. A new problem I’ve noticed is assuming a goal is stupid because people in the past tried to achieve it in stupid ways.
The thinking, if you can put it that way, goes like this: “The means are absurd, therefore the ends are absurd.”
For example: “Anti-aging and longevity research is the elixir of life for modern people who don’t believe in magic.” Of course it is. The problem with elixirs is not that extending human life is an absurd or impossible goal, but that alchemical means are (probably) woefully unsuited to achieving this goal.
The feasibility and appropriateness of the goal are separate issues from the effectiveness of any particular means of achieving the goal.
In keeping with the alchemical example, transmutation is possible. in a nuclear reactor.
Many things that people used to try to do in silly ways are now actually done routinely through other means.
Trying to fly with ointment is ridiculous, my sinsarabin Carpets, jumping off cliffs with feathers stuck to their arms, but now we have airplanes. So, you know – wanting to fly is not a problem.
See things and talk to people on the other side of the world, gain access to all human knowledge at will, see naked ladies doing unspeakable things from the convenience of your home – the magical black mirror in your pocket can now do it all. This is also a very different kind of Black Mirror than people imagine.
The fact that communists are murderous idiots who make everything worse – especially for the working class they pretend to represent – does not mean that social problems are not worth solving.
To take a particularly poignant example, consider human genetic enhancement. Historically, this has been very bad – violence based on junk science, just a cover for venting personal vendettas. But embryo selection, gene editing—those things are very different ethically, as long as we understand what we’re doing. Granted, that’s not the case, but the Chinese selflessly volunteered to provide data through their own experiments, so… xixi.
It would be rather foolish to try to treat serious illnesses with leeches and spells, but treating serious illnesses is actually possible, and a good thing. People can look retrospectively at problems that have been solved (to some extent), but cannot extend logic to things we are still figuring out – to them these are silly or impossible. Actually, they are Stupid and impossible.
“It’s a bad goal because someone tried to do it badly in the past” is a hitherto overlooked fallacy (failure?) that deserves to be named and canonized. Check my Latin, it hasn’t been used in ten years, but maybe it’s “Malo modo, ergo mala res” – “in a bad way, therefore a bad thing”. Even better: “Male, ergo malum” — “Bad, so bad.”
Yes, I know “Male, ergo malum” is also a feminist catechism. Anyway.
Don’t mistake incidental properties of means for essential properties of goals.
This matter is not ridiculous or inappropriate, it is a completely different matter.
Our goals haven’t changed, but we’ve gotten better at finding non-crazy, practical ways to achieve them.
Ironically, when the key to achieving this goal is actually science – which is almost always the case – defending supernatural ideas is directly counterproductive to achieving this goal.
You need to stop believing in magic in order to do it properly.
People are so zealous in their pursuit of the Cargo Cult (Cargo Occult) ways that they shoot down anyone who tries to do it in a practical way. Who knows how many centuries it took us.
You can become disenchanted with the methods, but not the goals. If anything, knowing what doesn’t work is a step in the right direction.
This carelessness, throwing out the baby of great ambition with the bathwater of ancient superstition and organized stupidity, has created much of modern sense of futility and boredom. But this is a simple mistake.
Worse yet, whenever and wherever people are engaged in something interesting, out of the woodwork come the despondents, the demoralizers, the desperate party poopers, the grima-talkers, the techno-pessimists who, and other excellent examples, insisted until recently that “the dream of human flight is futile and will never be realized,” that “no one needs a PC,” and that “the Internet is forever 30 km/h”, “No one needs a PC”, “Humanity can survive”, and there are a million more such idiots. now they are doing it Marslongevity, Tesla, cryptocurrency, advanced nuclear reactors, the possibility of interstellar travel, and all the other promising technologies and interesting things in the world. Why? I doubt why.
Basically it looks like this:
People who have lost hope try to make others give up hope too. Insisting that nothing interesting or exciting is possible, always coming from a place of insecurity, is a coping mechanism. Losers try to shit on something they gave up on. They know they’ll never do anything interesting, so they hope others won’t do it either – and try to stop them to make sure they do. Screw them.
Let’s end with a quote from Elon Musk: “Engineering is real magic. Or at least the closest thing to magic in the real world.”
As Arthur C. Clarke said, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I would add that you cannot achieve this by pursuing magic, you can achieve this by pursuing technology.
Always remember: We have not even begun to scratch the surface of the wonders we are capable of in this universe.
