And having a clearer vision of utopia will likely motivate people to work on the problems
I don’t fully buy his argument, but I think The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society is an interesting book. It argues against the practical utility of utopian theorizing. Briefly, the argument is roughly that the “fitness landscape” of possible worlds is rugged such that highly similar (in some slightly fuzzy sense) worlds are of radically different social value and we’re likely to miss when aiming at some distant, utopian target; thus, we should just do local hill climbing.
I don’t fully buy his argument, but I think The Tyranny of the Ideal: Justice in a Diverse Society is an interesting book. It argues against the practical utility of utopian theorizing. Briefly, the argument is roughly that the “fitness landscape” of possible worlds is rugged such that highly similar (in some slightly fuzzy sense) worlds are of radically different social value and we’re likely to miss when aiming at some distant, utopian target; thus, we should just do local hill climbing.
Wait what? Global optima being likely very far away from local optima should be more reason to search widely, not less.