Awatmath.1590 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!watmath!pcmcgeer Mon Jan 25 23:01:28 1982 Humanists and Technologists While one hates to destroy cherished illusions, it's hard to see that any major social problem has ever been solved by a `humanist' or other form of social theorist. Typically, it has been engineers and hard scientists (those materialistic, crass, and soulless men) that have provided the solutions to the major social and political problems of their day. Slavery and hard, grinding, muscle labor at poverty pay, to take two classic examples from the 19th century, weren't eliminated by the wailing of philosophers but by the designs of engineers, and by the money of financiers. Admittedly, this is largely counter-intuitive. It seems unreasonable that social and political problems can magically be solved by throwing devices at them. I suspect the reason that this apparent paradox holds is that people will generally optimize their own condition subject to constraints, and the constraints are always a lack in some way or other of resources. Technology tends to free resources, thus loosening the constraints and providing a higher level of `potential' for most individuals, which they will happily take. The previous paragraph wasn't all that good an explanation of the phenomenon. The interested reader is referred to Smith[1776], Friedman[1957] `Capitalism and Freedom', or Friedman and Friedman `Free to Choose' [1979]. These references won't tell you a great deal about technology, but emphasize the failure of `humanists' or `social engineers' to do anything very productive in terms of ameliorating the human condition. One wishes that Prime Minister Trudeau could read... ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.