Monday, October 3, 2016

Quote of the Day: progress

Sean Illing: What would you consider the most dangerous idea in human history?

Tyler Cowen: The idea of progress. ... Well, we're all for progress. It's easy to say the most dangerous idea is evil or racism or genocide or murder, but those ideas tend to persist only when they're packaged with some notion of progress. Progress, for all of its good, brings us new technologies and threats against which we can't deter, environmental problems, biodiversity loss, and so on. That we cannot avoid believing in progress may also prove to be our undoing.