Two criticisms of the progress community:
“You want everyone to just complacently accept the status quo!”
“Why can't you just be happy with the progress we've already made? Nothing is enough for you!”
Is this a failure in communication, or a motivated reading? Genuinely asking
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Speaking very generally, I think this reaction is mostly about mood affiliation. Certainly some proportion are in good faith, but I suspect most aren't reading the material in question; responding in earnest seems unlikely to do anything.
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Good faith respondents of this type represent various (reasonable!) positions including eg:
* I believe the money you'd like to direct this way is rivalrous with better causes
* this way of talking about progress doesn't resonate with feels meaningful to me
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* many kinds of progress have negative externalities; I don't trust you to notice or mitigate those in a way I'd endorse
* your time discount factor is way lower than mine
* mindshare is zero-sum
(nb I don't actually endorse these positions, but don't think they're 100% wrong)
Sort of want to change my answer; I think Emma's point about #1 here is the biggest driver (tho I still think much of it is more auto-response mood affiliation than explicit belief). Better versions of this reaction motivate afrofuturism, solarpunk, etc
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Replying to @jasoncrawford
1) is the radical criticism, they see you as wanting *more of the same* rather than a decisive and egalitarian break with the modes of progress of the past
2) is the conservative criticism, their priority is to protect what they already have, which progress always threatens
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