alt Hacker NewsSo we shouldn’t worry about regressing? This is also true of science, hygiene, human rights, and about a dozen other things we would be alarmed to lose, even if they were only around for people living in a “massively privileged position in time”
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Languages evolve. Words are borrowed from other languages, their meanings change, and so do their spellings.
"Entrée" refers to the starter in French, whereas in the US, it refers to the main dish.
"A date" in the sense of a romantic encounter, originates from the English use of "date" in the sense of a calendar date. The word was then borrowed back into French, this time with its English meaning (and is pronounced the same way as in English).
"Connoisseur" is spelled "connaisseur" in modern French, while English kept the old spelling.
"Con" used to be a vulgar term for the vagina in French. Today, it is mainly used as an insult to describe someone as stupid.
>So we shouldn’t worry about regressing?
The question is what can you do about it without becoming an insane authoritarian in the process and probably making things worse?
Progression or regression is not a "you" or an "I" thing, it's a "we" thing. Constant progression isn't much different from constant acceleration, you can't keep producing more energy forever, you eventually hit limits. In societies these limits much more quickly than the limits of the universe. Even maintaining status quo requires energy, so who are you going to get to spend that energy? And at the same time as all of this you still have all the base desires of the human animal. Greed and lust and selfishness isn't going away. The newer generations that didn't experience the terrible times isn't born with the defenses against terrible times like the old generations do, and over time the systems that are needed to protect against bad things fall apart because not enough people understand the costs behind them.
This cycle is as old as humanity itself. I don't think human intelligence is going to get us out of the trap unless we're talking world population scale manipulation or editing of humans.