Introductions thread (please introduce yourself)
Add a comment below and introduce yourself to the other members of the Forum.
About one paragraph is ideal. You might say what you do, how you got interested in progress, or your favorite books/essays on progress.
Feel free to link to your blog or social media.
I’m Daniel Golliher, the founder of Maximum New York; my goal is to change New York City (and state) politics/law so that it can grow quickly and build things again—housing and transit chiefly, but not exclusively. Allowing NYC to grow again would have profound impacts around the country and world, and its growth drove immense progress in the past. We can have that again.
I also work to make sure people understand how functional our current governmental system actually is. One of the keystones to MNY is my class, The Foundations of New York. Most people are stuck in a cold-start trap with regard to learning about effective political work, and I fix that by providing a rigorous introduction to NYC government, law, and politics. My goal is to bring more minds online to work in the political arena. MNY is about a year old, but already has some great results.
You can find me on Twitter here—looking forward to meeting more of you.
Hey team Progress Forum; Tony Morley here. I’m a part-time progress studies writer and communicator since 2018, with published work for Big Think, Free Think, The Progress Network, Quillette, Human Progress, and more. My principal vocation is in renewable energy project management, although I work within the progress space as much as I possibly can.
I’m currently working on the world’s first children’s book on human progress, “Human Progress for Beginners,” which will, after two painful years, (hopefully) be hitting the press in Q4 2023. I also dump a heap of progress news into the “Human Progress Facebook Group” and an experimental concept, “The Progress Dashboard.” I’m working toward trying to contribute more substantially to the movement, but unsurprisingly, it’s a work in progress.
You can follow my work @tonymmorley on Twitter. 📈
Hello,
My name is Lap Gong Leong. Before discovering Progress Studies, I was an aimless student at Borough of Manhattan Community College. One day, I stumbled upon Jason Crawford’s blog through Eli Dourado’s Twitter feed. Jason’s alluring and descriptive writing style converted me to the Progress Studies creed. Unlike Effective Altruism, liberalism, and conservatism, Progress Studies is a distinctively optimistic and genuine belief system. It is compatible with different ideologies and focused on improving the present and the future. For what it’s worth, it also makes for great fiction.
I am currently working on a manuscript, but will hopefully write more stories about technological change and increasing productivity.
If anyone wants to collaborate, you can write to me at leonglapgong@gmail.com
Hi! CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Warp News and chairman of Warp Institute, with the mission to make the future come sooner, aka speed up progress.
We are a community of 50 000+ forward-looking, optimistic people worldwide. I’m based in Sweden, and my two co-founders in North Carolina.
Blog The Angry Optimist.
Twitter, Linkedin
I’m Jason Crawford, author of The Roots of Progress, where I write about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. I’ve written about everything from iron & steel to Haber-Bosch to smallpox to nuclear power to the bicycle. I’ve also written why progress studies is a moral imperative, why we need a new philosophy of progress, and why our society needs industrial literacy.
I’ve been interviewed as a spokesman for the progress movement in Vox and BBC, and I’ve done lots of podcast interviews as well.
I’m turning The Roots of Progress into a nonprofit that will support progress writers like myself. In 2023 we’ll be launching a “career accelerator” fellowship for progress writers.
You can subscribe to my email newsletter or follow @jasoncrawford on Twitter.
Hey all, I’m Seth. I am a developer and informatics researcher in biotech. I’m interested in the notions of Progress more abstractly, in thinking about how we define it in multiple dimensions, e.g. beyond economic metrics. I admit having a bit of a “fearful” mindset with Progress and growth, namely what happens if we don’t keep advancing, what if life is basically the same for decades or centuries, how we overcome productivity plateaus, and other more philosophical notions. I’m also interested in the more concrete forms of what the advancements are that constitute Progress, and how we get more of that.
I’m located near Boston and engage with other Progress-minded folks occasionally (although we meet up rather infrequently). Happy to be here!
Hey folks, I’m Erik. I heard about Progress Studies through an interest in economic history. I’ve always been very interested in the Industrial Revolution, why development occurs or why it doesn’t, and what we could do to accelerate the rate of technological progress. Progress Studies appealed to me because it’s a group of people very interested in those same questions through a modern lens—what works and what doesn’t to increase industrial and technological advancement in the modern day?
As some might guess from my earlier comment, my background is in economics. My day job is in business intelligence, I also have a startup project related to zoning/real estate I’m working on the side. I’m based out of the Philly area, I encourage all other Philly area folks to join the community group! Once we have a few people, let’s find an evening we can do a happy hour or something. Looking forward to connecting with different people!
Hi everyone! I’m Richard, an applied computational scientist working at a scale-up technology company in London. My main expertise is in machine learning, particularly predictive modelling. I’m particularly interested in “Progress-minded approaches to other issues of the day (climate change, poverty/inequality, war, etc.)” as listed in the FAQ relevant topics. On a more tediously technical level I’m keen to learn more about the models and processes that lead to reliable progress in science and technology, and how these can be applied in different contexts. Looking forward to arguing (politely) with you all!
I’m Nuño Sempere, a researcher at the Quantified Uncertainty Research Institute, where I work on refining broadly utilitarian estimation methods. I have a blog here—where I post my research but also offer cancellation insurance or talk abou the joys of programming a browser in C—and a forecasting newsletter here. I learnt about this place through EA (effective altruism), which I’ve become a bit disillusioned about.
I’m Karthik, a second year PhD in economics at Berkeley. My current work is at the intersection of development, climate change and international trade. I would like to work on growth/innovation, but I haven’t had any particular insights there yet :)
I wouldn’t say I’m totally sold on progress as my #1 priority; I have attachments that make me focus more on catch-up than expanding the frontier. But I’m certainly convinced that it’s important.
In keeping with that, my recommendation is Technology and Underdevelopment, by Frances Stewart. Even if you aren’t interested in development, it has a very lucid discussion of what technology is and what improving a production process really means. It challenged a lot of assumptions for me.
I’m Alexander. I’m a software engineer who loves economics. I don’t have an official credential as my major was in computing, but I enjoy reading economics, and do it almost daily. It’s my favourite nonfiction genre. I’ve read and enjoyed Cowen, Stiglitz, Caplan, Hanson, Banerjee and Duflo, etc. I’ve taken one economics class under Borland, who’s done some work on economic progress, such as showing that learning-by-doing plays a role in the evolution of countries to greater specialisation in production (Yang and Borland 1991).
Some of my favourite economics books include Stubborn Attachments by Cowen, Creating a Learning Society by Stiglitz and Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo. I find myself more interested in cutting-edge growth than catch-up growth, and would like to understand how cutting-edge growth works, and how we can sustain it.
I’m interested in shaping my career to have marginally more impact on economic progress than I currently do. I plan to do that by working on building a new vertical rather than working in a competitive space with many slightly differentiated alternatives. More competitive markets, with many firms, are likely to be less innovative.
Hello everyone, I am a little late on this so this may go unread.
Anyway, my name is Zachary. I graduated university recently with a degree in mathematical economics, and I now work in data analytics for a luxury retail firm. My long-term career interests revolve around computational science, probably in a field related to economic development/urban science. I’m now working towards these goals by taking further courses in information science and mathematics—although I have a long way to go!
Last year, I was taking a course on historical economic growth, and learned about the core concepts that helped our kind escape the Malthusian trap and achieve accelerating economic growth. It quickly became apparent to me that we should aim as a species to continue achieving this rapid growth, while also remaining cognizant to growth that aligns well with liberal values. Through ourworldindata.com and other forums like EA/LW, I became aware of Jason and the wider movement focusing on Progress Studies, and instantly became interested. Now that I have (slightly) more free time in my life, I’m excited to learn and contribute as much as I can!
Hi everyone. I’m Gary Sheng.
If I were to boil down who I am into one sentence, it’s that I am an US-based technologist and civic entrepreneur dedicated to building and evangelizing tools, systems, and movements that accelerate human and planetary flourishing.
I co-founded Civics Unplugged and Dream DAO, which train Gen Z civic innovators. I was honored as Forbes 30 Under 30 for this work.
I am currently focused on supporting Gitcoin DAO and various projects related to leveling up America with foundational technology.
I don’t know if there was one moment that got me into the “progress” space, but I’m obsessed with the idea of the US breaking free from the grips of doomerism and stagnation and achieving a new Golden Age. We have the most talent and resources in the world. If we can’t do it, that doesn’t bode well for humanity.
Connect with me on Twitter at https://twitter.com/garysheng.
Hi Progress Team,
My name is Vito, i discovered Progress Studies through reading some articles online that linked to the movement and saw Jasons amazing blog and work and now forum on this crucial topic.
I come from a startup background having built 2 businesses & exited my recent. I’m now writing and rewriting my thoughts of the startup journey with elements relavant to progress studies which i hope are valuable to share.
If progress is not studied or understood, then i believe we will not know how to reach our full human potential.
I’m in Sydney, Australia, if your ever down under i’d be glad to give you a tour :)
Thankyou for having me!
Cheers
Hi everyone. My name is Coleman. I’m a software engineer for a genetic testing company. I’m based in San Diego, California. I guess I could say my hobby is what Jason might call the philosophy of progress. I’ve been a big fan of Jason’s writing for a while now (my favorites are the review of Where’s My Flying Car and We Need a New Philosophy of Progress). I’m a big fan of Balaji Srinivasan’s thinking, too.
I have been kind of obsessed for a while now with the question of how we accelerate technological progress. I like trying to imagine a better future and how we would get there. I have been writing little posts on this kind of thing for the last year, about. I’m actually very interested in trying to do something like what Jason’s done in becoming an influential progress intellectual so am looking forward to learning more about the progress writer fellowship. Really excited to be here!
I’m Lev, at least that’s what I go by online. Most of my interests that I will be writing about have to do with AI, consciousness, brain technology, and space travel. I care about these things in terms of progress, and I want to promote the philosophical grounding that progress requires.
Hello! I’m Alex K. Chen (http://twitter.com/InquilineKea, https://linktr.ee/simfish , http://quora.com/Alex-K-Chen). I’m everywhere. I’m a singular individual and “interesting things happen around me” (esp b/c I always have an eye directed towards progress, even though I am super fine-grained and keep track of SO many things that it gives me ADHD [this is not a bad thing however!}) I am the living embodiment of “Why Greatness Cannot be Planned”/open-ended reinforcement learning/maximum-entropy reinforcement learning.
I have lots of access to new/early-stage people (including TKS’ers, Atlas Fellows, Interact Fellows, old Quora crowd) and might be the ideal inter-generational connector.
http://forum.longevitybase.org. I also know more than almost anyone in how to slow down rate of aging (which I also think is integral to progress studies, as people take WAY longer to “grow up” than ever before) [I know https://twitter.com/bkavoussi also got into longevity as of late]
Hello, I’m Page Baldwin, historian and software designer, in that order. I studied history in undergraduate and graduate levels, but am now paid to design software for the contruction and manufacturing industries. I’m an amateur at most things, interested in all things, and look forward to learning from all of you.
Sebastian I am. An entrepreneur, pedagogue, and two-time poetaster. I started a hybrid school which meets in person three days per week. My original training was in liberal arts, specifically classical languages and philosophy, which give me a rich repository of historical examples and uses of the subjunctive should the need arise. I moved into education after college, going to Finland to study and compare educational systems. I discovered game theory and economics and the history of math and science in 2016. I became Cowen-pilled in 2018.
I have written on education, pedagogy, curriculum, AI, and deliberate practice. I have a keen interest in talent and fostering individual development, I am also passionate about the intersection of “our way of thinking” and aesthetics.
https://mobile.twitter.com/GrandBastion https://sebastiangarren.com/
I edit a lot of people’s work in my free time. Right now I am giving feedback and editing a colleague’s history textbook likely to be published in 2025.
My current big project is to get a website off the ground which offers a progress studies philosophy of education. I will share the beta version by February.
I have long been involved in the rationalist community under the name JohnBuridan—some of my essays are there.
Hello, I’m Kassandra Dick, a freelance writer from Canada. Progress is the only viable option for humanity and I’m all about surviving and thriving. I love the work and writings of Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler, as well as Yaron Brook, Ayn Rand, Alex Epstein and David Eagleman. You can find my work and my poetry here: https://kassandra-dick.medium.com/
Hello everyone, I am Isaac, a CompE and math double major at UMBC. I am interested in working on medical devices and am interested in starting a for-profit startup. This startup would hopefully work on both direct impact and allow money for donations (see here).
I am also considering a PhD or Masters in Biomedical engineering, computer engineering, or electrical engineering.
Hi! I’m Jonathan Mazumdar, currently co-founder of Growth Teams, a new nonprofit that supports developing countries achieve catch-up growth.
For some time I’ve been interested in the history and economics of innovation and economic growth. One of the books that really ignited my interest in progress-related topics was Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson; I’m a big fan of all his work.
I’m drawn to progress studies due to the intrinsic satisfaction that comes from knowing the true origin of things, and the lessons that may be relevant both for frontier growth in high-income countries and for catch-up growth in developing countries.
I’m based in Kigali and fairly infrequently on Twitter @jmazda.
Hi all, I’m Nathaniel. I’m a data scientist and health policy researcher in DC.
As I’ve published more in the academic literature, applied for research funding, and subjected myself to pre-publication peer review, I’ve seen just how suboptimal these mechanisms for doing science are. Reading about the surprisingly shallow history of scientific publication has helped me to feel like I have some agency in changing how it’s done. My main interests within progress studies are thus around meta-science and exploring new ways of prioritizing and rewarding research.