Classes on utilitarianism rarely include encouragements to keep up with the latest in science and technology, or study it specifically. But they definitely should. Our society is in the midst of a technology-dominated era, where new inventions have a much bigger impact on human welfare than newly elected politicians.

Our minds are programmed to overfocus on politics, and underfocus on technology. The reason why is that our ancestors evolved in an environment where the political scene was constantly changing while technology stayed roughly static. Today, both areas change rapidly, but technology has a greater impact.

The classical example (it should be, anyway), is the Haber-Bosch process, the chemical process by which we manufacture fertilizer from nitrogen in the atmosphere. Without it, billions of people would never have been born, because food would be more expensive and scarce. Starvation would be rampant and fewer people would choose to have children. The agricultural industry would be reliant upon acquiring natural nitrate deposits, such as Argentinian guano, to provide fertilizer for food. If it weren’t for the Haber-Bosch process, these nitrate deposits would probably have run out some time ago.

If we suppose that these billions of people are leading lives worth living, then the invention of the Haber-Bosch process was an act of tremendous positive utility, for which two central individuals, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, deserve credit. Logic might dictate that these two men should be household names, but they aren’t, because we take their innovations for granted. But if the Haber-Bosch process suddenly stopped working, millions of people would starve, or be dependent on their governments to pick up the huge check for the acquisition of alternative fertilizers.

Today, only a minority of philosophers are techno-literate. They can say, “we should be utilitarian” in the abstract, but are they well-qualified to make the actual decisions about which technologies to advocate and which to ignore? We might optimistically assume that this is automatically taken care of by the market, and while the market is a much better economic optimizer than many human decision-making agencies, it is short-sighted. A consumer buying a product from a certain company is typically not buying it to contribute to future research that will bring economic benefit - they are only focused on the product at hand. Vocal activism from scientists, philosophers, and policy-makers is necessary to accelerate development of beneficial technologies.

Some politicians are on the right track when they say that the right way to address global warming is through technology. Changing consumption behavior on the personal level is radically harder than simply introducing a new technology that is inherently more efficient or less environmentally destructive. But the politics is more emotionally engaging, so we overfocus on that.

To get past the politics and become capable of debating the technology on a finer level, utilitarians should take the time to read up on it.