[extropy-chat] uh oh, something's right

[Anders Sandberg]

spike wrote:
> Things are working.  They are working damn well,
> working early and often.  Something is right.
>
> But we are afraid to congratulate ourselves.  Why don't we all take some
> time to recognize all the things that are working right, such as the THAAD
> missile, the highway system, capitalism incorporated.
>
> Let us congratulate ourselves unapologetically, shall we?

Definitely! Congrats to everybody who gets everything to work!

Of course, there is plenty of stuff left to fix, be it political systems,
climate change, software development or the British banking system, but
that doesn't mean that indeed things are working.

I think you have made an important observation. Friction, that we lose
time, energy, materials, ideas or whatever due to inefficiencies or
incompatibilities in our systems, seems to be decreasing quite nicely. I
think that may be a much better measure of progress than looking at how
much time, energy, FLOPS or whatever are produced. Maybe we should try to
index it?

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University