[smackay]

Technologists' very existence is based on the idea of improvement, and, as a result, making the lives of others better. Compared to other approaches, nothing has delivered quite on the same scale, though it's not without its costs.

[vasco]

Yep, and there's no stopping technological progress. Whoever thinks things will get worse is just being what internet investing lingo calls "gay bears" - waiting for the doom that can justify their constant state of depression and existential dread.

In fact people will get upset if you don't agree with them that the world is going to shit (and prove they are smart by predicting it).

[hooverd]

Mostly. Sometimes people will do what's good for them, externalities be damned. I like leaded gasoline as an example. It wasn't an oopsie. We know it was bad from the day it was introduced and lead producers fought to keep it known as safe.

[js8]

I am not sure about this, but it depends on definition of "technologist". Is Gates or Musk a "technologist"?

I think that social democratic movement in 20th century, and also Chinese communist government, made many people's lives better, by improving their material conditions. It often involved technology, true, but the technology is not much if it's not applied en masse. (Communist government of my home country, Czechoslovakia, had famously huge success in eradicating polio.)

And I am not convinced that free market dispersal of technology is more efficient in providing it en masse than government-directed dispersal. For a striking example, watch the ending of "scientific horror story" from Angela Collier: https://youtu.be/zS7sJJB7BUI?si=rrBJPb6bHASNrPEY&t=2991