I find it sad that while technological progress is seen almost as a given by virtually everyone, moral progress is often not even an aspiration
Just to push back a little, I think if the U.S. did now what they did to Germany and Japan in WW2 it would be unconscionable. They are getting a lot of flak for bombing a school. But I think it’s fair to say there were a lot of schools in Dresden and Hiroshima.
This isn’t to excuse anything but to say there has been progress even if it’s not as fast as we’d like.
As far as the technology angle, the precision we have now and information we have now allow much more narrow targeting, but at the same time allows us to scrutinize military actions more.
It doesn't seem like moral progress actually exists or even can exist given human nature. In every time period and era there are people killing each other, amongother crimes. It is fallacious to think that we have a monotonically increasing meter of moral progress, that we are somehow better than our ancestors. Reality shows that we are exactly the same, as the parent says.
I have no control over the morality of others.
Whereas I have direct control over how I use technology.
Our current incentives system is absolutely amoral, there's no financial/economic benefit for being moral, it's the opposite: being moral is penalised since you'd be disadvantaged competing with others who don't care about it.
I completely agree with you, moral progress should be incentivised somehow...