Progress is Counterintuitive
Why it’s so easy to turn the public against progress
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For billions of people on this planet, life is better than ever. We are better educated, living longer, wealthier, and more free than at any time in human history. Yet critics of progress and their followers would have you believe exactly the opposite. It is easy to understand why so many are being misled; the factors of progress are deeply counterintuitive. Human progress defies our own intuition, and this is exploited by critics and pundits for their own personal agendas.
Appeals to Misleading Narratives
Life was better in the good old days, they say. It may defy our perception, but we cannot trust our own memories on this issue. When critics appeal to the past and the idyllic concept of the “good old days,” it is an appeal to a false version of reality. Our brains have a built-in mechanism that suppresses negative memories over time. Thus, the past will almost always be remembered more fondly than it probably deserves.
