Life expectancy, infant mortality, health generally, poverty decreasing rapidly, starvation decreasing rapidly violence decreasing rapidly, literacy rates soaring, knowledge growing every year.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
Definitely things are on the up-and-up materially. That's the great thing about the age. Eradication of more deadly diseases is the thing that gets me all starry-eyed.
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Replying to @RickVonJaeger @OldSaintRiot
This is a direct result of our improved epistemology and ethics, tho? This is secular liberal modernity.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
Partly, I'd say so. Epistemology, yes, we owe much to the great strides we've made in scientific advancement. Ethically? I think that's a mixed bag. Advanced in some respects, regressed in others, mostly about the same.
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Replying to @RickVonJaeger @OldSaintRiot
Really? When was it better? I admit to thinking of the fact that I can vote, own property, get paid the same now as well as homosexuals and atheists being able to be so openly without dying. And no more workhouses or child labour or torture or death penalties for stealing.
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Replying to @HPluckrose
That's not people, that's culture, and yes, it's definitely improved in many of those respects. "People being better" implies that were the laws and culture different, we good people would voluntarily do none of those things. I do not think that's true.
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Replying to @RickVonJaeger @HPluckrose
Coming from the religious perspective, you won't like or agree with this, but the long slow decline of people's spirits such that they value menial, superficial things over the states of their own soul and fellow men is not an improvement overall.
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Replying to @RickVonJaeger @OldSaintRiot
Why do you think this has happened tho? Fewer people believe in a soul but unlikely fewer believe in morality. We care much more about our fellow men now. Our circle of empathy has widened to other nations & we focus much more on wellbeing - welfare, humanitarian aid, laws etc
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Replying to @HPluckrose
I don't see large amounts charity as proof that we care more about fellow men. Advancements in technology allow more people to give more, wealthier people can give more than poorer, and laws enabling charity subsidize additional giving.
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Replying to @RickVonJaeger @HPluckrose
In other words, I find it more believable that times have changed and people reacted to them, than that people's fundamental natures have changed in a couple hundred years.
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So do I. Moral progress is cultural, not biological. Our values changed. Our moral brains remain the same.
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