Fortschritt und die Zufallszeitmaschine

Schönes Gedankenexperiment von Kevin Kelly:

Here is a thought experiment. I give you a ride in a time machine. It has only one lever. You can choose to go forward in time, or backwards. All trips are one-way. Whenever you arrive, you arrive as a newborn baby. Where you land is random, and so are your parents. You might be born rich or poor, male or female, dark or light, healthy or sick, wanted or unwanted.

Your only choice is whether you choose to be thrust forward in time, spending your new life in some random future in some random place, or thrust into the past, in some random time and random place. I have not met anyone yet who would point the lever to the past.

Seine Überlegungen dahinter:

The denial of progress is directly linked to ignorance of the past. There are romantic notions of the past that are not based on evidence; some of these lovely visions of the past are not untrue; it’s just that they are select, rare, privileged slivers that disregard the actual state of most humans for most times in most places, which any serious inquiry into global history will reveal. Today there is still huge discrepancy between the well-off of the world and the bulk mass of most humans in most places. But the point of the time machine thought experiment is that virtually everyone would rather be at the bottom today than at the bottom 200+ years ago. Indeed, those most eager to point their time machine ride into the future are those who have the least today, which is the bulk, or most of humanity. We would rather inhabit a random future role than a random past role because progress (on average) is real.

Kann ich nur unterschreiben.