How to Think about Progress

Nick Agar is Professor of Ethics at the University of Waikato. His principal focus has been on the ethical implications of technological change. Agar’s most recent books are Dialogues on Human Enhancement (Routledge, 2024) and How to be Human in the Digital Economy (MIT Press, 2019). His 2004 book Liberal Eugenics (Wiley-Blackwell) has been widely cited and discussed. His 2010 and 2013 books on the enhancement debate, Humanity's End and Truly Human Enhancement, both with MIT Press, address reasons for doubt about the radical enhancement of our capacities. The doubts expressed in this book can be viewed as continuations of this reasoning about human enhancement technologies.Stuart Whatley is Senior Editor at the influential international media organization Project Syndicate, where he oversees PS Quarterly and regularly edits many of the world’s leading thinkers, including multiple Nobel laureate economists. His writing on technology and related topics has appeared at CNN and in Unherd, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, The Hedgehog Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Baffler, The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, The American Prospect, Free Inquiry, and other outlets.Dan Weijers is Senior Lecturer at the University of Waikato (New Zealand). He researches wellbeing and the ethics of new technologies. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of wellbeing. His wellbeing policy advice has been commissioned by the New Zealand Treasury, the City Government of Dubai, and a High-Level Meeting of the United Nations.

• Preface.- Introduction.- The Rise of the Futurists.- The Horizon Bias.- The End of Disease.- Onward, to Mars.- But, What about Exponential Progress.- The Hand-off.- Waiting for the Techno Rapture.