What would moral/social progress actually look like?
This is a big and difficult question, but here are some pointers to relevant concepts and resources:
Moral circle expansion (MCE) - MCE is “the attempt to expand the perceived boundaries of the category of moral patients.” For instance, this could involve increasing the moral concern in the wider public (or, more targeted, among societal decision-makers) for non-human animals or future people. Arguably, MCE could help reduce the risk of societies committing further atrocities like factory farming and also increase the resources spent on existential risk mitigation (as there is a greater concern for the welfare of future people).
Improving institutional decision-making—this covers a very broad range of interventions, including, for instance, voting reform. The case for it is that “Improving the quality of decision-making in important institutions could improve our ability to solve almost all other problems. It could also help society’s ability to identify “unknown unknowns” – problems we haven’t even thought of yet – and to mitigate all global catastrophic risks”.
Global priorities research (GPR) - arguably, a key priority for GPR is to provide answers to the above question. For instance, this might involve rigorously investigating the plausibility of longtermism in the light of objections (such as the epistemic objection).
The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe—a very interesting paper arguing “for believing that our society is unknowingly guilty of serious, large-scale wrongdoing.”. The paper ends by making two suggestions relevant to the above question: “The article then discusses what our society should do in light of the likelihood that we are doing something seriously wrong: we should regard intellectual progress, of the sort that will allow us to find and correct our moral mistakes as soon as possible, as an urgent moral priority rather than as a mere luxury; and we should also consider it important to save resources and cultivate flexibility, so that when the time comes to change our policies we will be able to do so quickly and smoothly.”
Regarding your question:
This is a big and difficult question, but here are some pointers to relevant concepts and resources:
Moral circle expansion (MCE) - MCE is “the attempt to expand the perceived boundaries of the category of moral patients.” For instance, this could involve increasing the moral concern in the wider public (or, more targeted, among societal decision-makers) for non-human animals or future people. Arguably, MCE could help reduce the risk of societies committing further atrocities like factory farming and also increase the resources spent on existential risk mitigation (as there is a greater concern for the welfare of future people).
Improving institutional decision-making—this covers a very broad range of interventions, including, for instance, voting reform. The case for it is that “Improving the quality of decision-making in important institutions could improve our ability to solve almost all other problems. It could also help society’s ability to identify “unknown unknowns” – problems we haven’t even thought of yet – and to mitigate all global catastrophic risks”.
See also this list of resources on differential progress (and in particular, Differential Intellectual Progress as a Positive-Sum Project)
Global priorities research (GPR) - arguably, a key priority for GPR is to provide answers to the above question. For instance, this might involve rigorously investigating the plausibility of longtermism in the light of objections (such as the epistemic objection).
The Possibility of an Ongoing Moral Catastrophe—a very interesting paper arguing “for believing that our society is unknowingly guilty of serious, large-scale wrongdoing.”. The paper ends by making two suggestions relevant to the above question: “The article then discusses what our society should do in light of the likelihood that we are doing something seriously wrong: we should regard intellectual progress, of the sort that will allow us to find and correct our moral mistakes as soon as possible, as an urgent moral priority rather than as a mere luxury; and we should also consider it important to save resources and cultivate flexibility, so that when the time comes to change our policies we will be able to do so quickly and smoothly.”