Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org)
jasoncrawford
The future of humanity is in management
Links and short notes, 2025-01-26: Atlas Shrugged and the irreplaceable founder, pumping stations and civic pride, and thoughts on the eve of AGI
Links and short notes, 2025-01-20
How sci-fi can have drama without dystopia or doomerism
Links and short notes, 2025-01-13
The Roots of Progress 2024 in review
Links and short notes, 2024-12-27: Clinical trial abundance, grid-scale fusion, permitting vs. compliance, crossword mania, and more
A progress policy agenda
Links and short notes, 2024-12-16
Biological risk from the mirror world
Roots of Progress is hiring an event manager
Progress Conference reflections and 2025 plans (we’re hiring!)
Links and short notes, 2024-11-21: CP Snow on industrial literacy, cost-minus contracting, and more
Big tech transitions are slow (with implications for AI)
Some recent grants, contests, events, job openings, etc.
How to choose what to work on
A review of Seeing Like a State in six tweets
The Cosmos Institute launches
The antibodies argument always made the most sense to me. But note that this is an argument for some breast milk, not an all-breast-milk diet—that is, it’s not an argument against formula, just an argument against an all-formula diet. I mention this because when we were in the hospital with our kid, they were pushing against formula very hard.
Also, it’s not an argument for literal feeding at the breast, as opposed to pumping and then bottle-feeding with the breast milk, which is easier for some people.
Emily Oster covers breastfeeding in Chapter 4 of Cribsheet, more extensively than in the 538 article you linked to. IIRC, she notes that there is evidence of benefit for the mother in terms of reduced breast cancer risk (no idea why that would be, though).
(But in general, I agree that Oster is too quick to say “it doesn’t matter” about things that we don’t have rigorous evidence for, rather than trying to make an informed decision about the best course of action based on what data and theories we do have. Other than that minor criticism, though, I am a big fan of her work.)
I would say both immigration and crime are relevant to progress!