Estimating Technical Progress

Overestimating the potential upside of every new sign of tech progress is as common as downplaying the downsides. It's easy to let our imaginations run wild with how any new development is going to change everything practically overnight. The unforeseen technical roadblocks that inevitably spring up are only one reason for this consistent miscalculation. Human nature is simply out of sync with the nature of technological development. We see progress as linear, a straight line of improvement. ...

 Marxism and Freudianism are Not Science

The difficulties connected with my criterion of demarcation (D) are important, but must not be exaggerated. It is vague, since it is a methodological rule, and since the demarcation between science and nonscience is vague. But it is more than sharp enough to make a distinction between many physical theories on the one hand, and metaphysical theories, such as ' psychoanalysis, or Marxism (in its present form), on the other. This is, of course, one of my main theses; and nobody who has not unde...