🚀 go-pugleaf

Bruce White asked on the extropians list for debate on the question
of whether the moral development of mankind has kept pace with the
development of technology.

I will take the position that we have seen tremendous advancement in
morality in this century.  One hundred years ago, war was seen as an
acceptable technique for acquiring new national territory.  Communism
appeared to present the hope of a world of equality and brotherhood.
Women were inferior members of society, unable to vote, effectively
kept out of most professions.  Racism was pandemic, open, and
widely accepted.

Note that in many cases the shedding of these morally abhorrent
positions was driven by technology.  The fall of communism, for
example, was due in part to the inability of a tyranny based on
control of information to enter the information age.  Nuclear weapons
have played a major part in rendering war unacceptable.  The extension
of rights to previously downtrodden groups may have been driven in
part by economic changes.

I believe that moral progress will continue, and that in the next 100
years we will again see as much moral progress as technological.  In
short, I expect to see a virtual revolution in morality.  This is one
of the things I find so exciting about the extropian philosophy.  It
provides some possible directions that future morality may take.

Hal Finney
ghsvax!hal@uunet.uu.net				...!uunet!ghsvax!hal
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