“The Narrowing Circle § The Fukuyama Thesis”, Gwern2012-04-24

Modern ethics excludes as many beings as it includes.

Western liberal socialist capitalism is the attractor state for industrialized humanity for the foreseeable future, and that barring existential risks etc, we will see a long-term trend (possibly very noisy in the short-term) towards that; alternative systems of economics & governance may have sporadic successes but fundamentally have no broad allegiance among the intelligentsia and richer countries; and that most criticisms of the Fukuyama thesis are based on misunderstandings, pop-culture simplifications, ignorance, reasoning from anecdotes, and ignoring long-term trends in favor of some brief regressions.

• Problems
  • Pareidolia
  • Observer Bias
    • Matters of Fact
• Narrowings
  • Religion
    • Religions of Convenience
    • Animals
  • Infanticide
  • Judicial Torture
  • Ancestors
    • Property Rights
  • Descendants
• Conclusion
• External Links
• Appendix
  • The Fukuyama Thesis
  • Islamic Waqfs
  • The Discovery of France
  • The Dark Side of the Enlightenment
  • The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker