> All of your objections are nitpicking about small, localized setbacks

Small wars are still wars. No, we don't have any global conflicts with well-naturalized two-sides like the Axis and Allies of World War II, yeah, true enough. But that's not because war is done or distasteful: it's because global hegemonic capitalism now rules all of those societies and makes certain such wars don't happen between the countries that matter. Which is why we have the "police actions" in Vietnam and Korea, why we had Operation Iraqi Freedom, why we nearly went to war with South America over the price of bananas, etc. The colonial powers have essentially unionized and now use the bludgeon of the military might of America to keep poorer indebted nations in line, and if they fail to capitulate, a reason will be manufactured to unseat the power in that place, more often than not by force, more often than not with heavy civilian casualties and economic destruction, the rebuilding of which in turn will be financed by the West afterward so the poorer countries never have a ghost of a chance in hell of standing on their own two feet and making their own fucking decisions about their resources and people.

That is not due to technical progress. Technical progress is, if anything, jeopardizing that balance because the information now is much harder to contain about how absolutely fucked everyone in the global south is at basically all times.

> As far as I can tell, we agree that while the world isn't perfect, and some technologies do more harm than good, "technological progress" is a net positive.

I would absolutely cosign that, if said technological progress wasn't extremely concentrated in the wealthy nations on this planet, while the other ones are making do scrapping our old ships wearing tennis shoes and smoking the cigarettes we export them.

> I don't think you want to go back to a 50% child mortality rate, even if it somehow convinced Republicans to drop their crusade against abortions.

No I want Republicans to govern on conservative principles, not mindless culture war bullshit. And I'd also like the Democrats to stop governing on conservative principles because their opposition in the states is a toddler eating glue and screaming about pizza places on the floor of the fucking Senate.

> I don't think you prefer World War 2 to the Ukraine war.

All war is terrible, the scale is irrelevant.

> I certainly don't think you want to reinstate monarchy and fascism across Europe.

A lot of fascist-leaning voters in Europe might do it anyway though.

> If I'm wrong, then go ahead and tell me what decade you want to rewind to - what progress are you willing to give up?

I want the progress. I just don't want it hoarded by a particular society on our planet. We ALL deserve progress. We ALL deserve to earn a living commensurate with our skills, and we ALL deserve to be supported, housed, and fed, and we already have the resources to do the vast, vast majority of it. We simply lack the will to confront larger issues in how those resources are organized and distributed, and the fundamental inequities that we reinforce every single day. Largely, because a ton of people currently have a lot more than they need, and a small amount of people have a downright unethical amount, and the latter group has tricked the former group into thinking they can join the latter group if they only work hard enough, while also robbing them blind.

> If I'm not wrong, then... how does this at all lead to "hence being pissed about AI"? What's so uniquely evil about AI that we should give up the gains there, and assume it's a net evil in the long term, compared to everything else we've done?

It's not uniquely evil at all. It's banal evil. It's the same evil that exists everywhere else: tech industries insert themselves into economies that they don't understand, they create something that "saves" work compared to existing solutions (usually by cutting all kinds of regulatory and human corners), sell that with VC money, crush a functioning industry underneath it, then raise the prices so it's no cheaper at all anymore (maybe even more expensive) and now, half the money made from cab services goes to a rich asshole in California who has never in his life driven a cab. It's just that, over, and over, and over. That's all silicon valley does now.