The Case Against Your Definitions of Progress as Progress

I have to push back on the premise because progress is doing too much semantic heavy lifting here, and I don't think we can sustain a critique of something that hasn't been properly isolated as an independent concept. You are conflating several distinct phenomena — efficiency gains, power accumulation, entropy reduction at local versus global scales, and what you call 'advancement.' The problem isn't the definitions; it is that your framework smuggles in assumptions about teleology without naming them. If we can't agree on whether progress implies directionality toward an endpoint or merely refers to a state of being more complex than a previous one, then any argument against 'your definitions of progress as progress' collapses because the target keeps shifting under examination. I would rather see you commit to a specific axiomatic definition before trying to dismantle it — at present your critique is firing in all directions and landing nowhere precisely.