Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers. If you want clean water for all humans, you should be supportive of discovering new stuff.
For example, for humans to survive in hostile environments on other planets we need to create new innovations and that creates a big incentive to figure out technological solutions to hard problems.
Turning salt water into drinkable water is one, this one is actually already solved and being implemented across different countries and if we can improve that and make it cheaper we will have solved the problem of water already.
It is very easy to forget that high-tech engineer is a species that only thrives in politically stable countries.
Standing on the shoulders of giants is not only about your predecessors that solved engineering problems so you can dive even deeper - it is also about society which found better ways over time for effective financing that allows science&engineering to happen.
Also please read (for example) about Samsung and Nokia - they were forced to change industries by politicians in their respective countries.
I disagree, a lot of nations became stable because of engineering solutions in the first place and also more scientifically literate. There is a ton of examples of this. The first telescope, as an example, thanks to Hans Lippershey and Galileo Galilei showed that the earth wasn't flat and removed some power from the church it also clearly made us see that the sun doesn't go around the earth so it showed that Copernicus was right all along. A big discovery that made people doubt the christian religion and change the political landscape forever.
All big scientific discoveries changed the societies in a big way and there is no going back. Scientific discoveries and technological innovation is the only thing that push a society forward.
No, man, that's simply not true. That's an incredibly technocratic view of the world.
Using the U.S. as an example, the (belated) end of slavery in the U.S. didn't come about from a scientific discovery or a technological innovation. Technics played a part in the exacerbation of the issues, but it was politics, culture, language, religion and "spirit" that ended state sponsored slavery. I think that was a decently large push forward for society.
That the Earth is not flat has been known since ancient times. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth.
>With increased technology comes more liberties for all.
...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here.
>Progress is not made by politicians, it is made by engineers.
Again, what? That's an overwhelmingly naive and narrow view of the world. JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'?
Politicians were not partly responsible for the development of long range rocketry and nuclear fusion that came out of WWII?
It's strange to me that people are assuming that when I question the _kind_ of technological advancement being focused on that I'm critiquing _all_ technological advancement. I challenge you to find that critique in my words. Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality. How can we talk about 'progress' without first talking about the rubric for progress itself? How are we (you) defining progress?
> ...uhm. What? How? Examples? a line of thought? Gimme something here.
Electricity, internet, radio, engines, cameras, etc.
> JFK helped expedite aerospace research, as well as the NASA administrators who didn't do any engineering work but kept the agency running on track? They get no credit in the 'progress'?
You're just enforcing my point, this is people who understand that we need technological progress in order for us to move forward as a society. Of course they are part of the progress, they help enable the progress to go faster.
> Again, I would be most excited about a future where the _primary_ goal of the progress is the reduction of inequality.
It is my belief that this will never happen, at least not untill we have progressed so far that everyones needs are met. Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality. Just look at history, we've never been able to do this so far so there is no reason to belive that we suddently change our behavior.
I am defining progress as a lot of things, it can be the discovery of something new but it can also be an invention that benefits just a small number of people. In the long run, most new inventions will benefit everyone.
I agree wholeheartedly with that. Let's consider those people, and lets consider some other, mmm, how about Rwandans as well. Has electricity and the radio, cameras and engines increased the liberties of those people? I many cases a lot of those technologies have been used to remove liberties from those people, and sometimes to even kill them.
We have the technology now to meet everyone's need. Right now. We can produce enough food, we can build enough houses and supply everyone with enough calories. What technological things need to happen in order to distribute our resources accordingly? You'll probably say that's not a technological problem, at least not primarily, and I agree. This is the larger point I'm trying to get at and challenge others to address. I don't believe the most exciting future is one that requires enormous technological progress and when we focus on enormous technological progress for the sake of progress, rather than the sake of equality, well then we as a society continue to create a world the mirrors our goals: progress instead of equality.
>Until then, there is no real incentive for people to reduce inequality.
Sure there is, it's called compassion.
As for questioning the kind of technological advancement and the reactions to it, I think the defensive comments come from a combination of the following:
1. Questioning spending on space exploration in the topic about space exploration is like questioning the existence of football on a football match. You're talking to an audience who loves it and telling them that it takes resources away from More Important Things. Except that space is at the same time much more underfunded and much more important than football, baseball, basketball, movies, concerts, celebrity gossip and all the other stuff people like[1]. So it kind of feels unfair to single it out here.
2. Basic research is increasingly becoming underfunded. The funny thing about solving the world problems with technology is that, more often than not, what enables those technologies is pie-in-the-sky research with no expected immediate results. This doesn't fly well with the markets, and as countries increasingly treat science in the same way market economy does, the funding for long-term research is in ever greater jeopardy. Attacking space exploration through arguments of other more immediate problems is in a big way attacking basic research.
3. People need to dream about better future. Space exploration is somewhat unique that it captures and nourishes the imagination and hope for a better world.
4. We have enough resources to solve the more important problems like clean water and food for all. And yet they are not solved. Taking the meagre few $B from space research will most likely not help in solving those problems, but it will shut down space research.
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[0] - Note that in that they're not unique - theoretically, a private institution with large amounts of resources can do the same thing too. Still, to date, it's usually governments that are willing to spend money on actual research.
[1] - Also, there's plenty of money in wasted military spending that could be taken first, even without reducing the actual military capabilities of a country.
