Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org)
jasoncrawford
Karma: 514
What areas of research or technology are most underrated by the broader research world, and why?
Thanks for this, Lev. Some things I’d like to understand deeper if you were to write about this more:
What are the remaining challenges of BCI? (vs. what has been solved already?)
What are the most promising approaches? How do they differ and what are their pros/cons?
Do we need scientific discoveries to make this work, or is this science known and it’s mostly engineering?
You talk here mostly about motor output; what about sensory input?
What is the legal framework around this? Does existing regulation even handle this? Will that be a problem?
Sounds interesting, thanks for announcing this here!
I hope we get more attempts to bridge economics research and the broader public, like this and New Things Under the Sun.
Congrats, Tony!
Thanks Thomas! There is a community section of this forum where you can create local groups and meetups / other events. Please post there and let me know, I’ll help spread the word.
Your work seems like a spiritual successor to Simon’s Ultimate Resource, sounding some of the same themes for a new generation. What are the biggest or most interesting updates since Ultimate Resource was published? And/or what did you find in your research for the book that surprised you?
I have heard it claimed that Julian Simon got a bit lucky in his bet with Paul Ehrlich, and that if a different basket of metals or other commodities had been chosen, he might have lost. Is that true? What do we make of that?
Thanks, I appreciate the pushback. Let me push back in turn:
Water in streams can’t be counted on to be clean, which is why we have water filtration plants. Also it often isn’t found where we want it, and so we have to transport it to our homes, farms, etc.
Berries have to be collected, and wild sources quickly run out. We also have to identify which berries are safe to eat. And in general all plants have evolved through human selection to be more productive, tastier, etc.
Air… is pretty usable as is, true.
I suppose there might be a very small number of resources we could consider almost fully natural. Air perhaps. Gravity? But we generally don’t think of these things as “resources” at all.
What is the roadmap, as far as we can see it, to the kind of nanotech envisioned in J. Storrs Hall’s books (Where Is My Flying Car? and earlier Nanofuture)? What are the big unsolved problems? What are the most promising approaches or near-term goals?
Interesting. Have you heard of the Catawba Digital Economic Zone? It’s basically this specifically for crypto projects.
Are you familiar with the charter cities movement?
What do you think about the question of “ideas getting harder to find”? What do you think of the discussion of this topic in the progress community—is there something people are misunderstanding or getting wrong about the issue?
In the economics of innovation, what are the big questions where there now is a relatively settled consensus? And what are the big open questions that the field is currently debating?
Thanks Kent, can you say something about this book?
Amazing story, and fantastic post, thanks!
Thanks for the detailed thoughts!
Yes, we did start fighting infectious disease long before the germ theory. Most notably, the first immunization techniques, against smallpox, long predated the theory. Also there were sanitation reforms that helped significantly. But these methods were limited: e.g., no vaccines for any disease other than smallpox were created, and water sanitation did not include chlorination. Indeed, sometimes sanitation efforts backfired, as when Edwin Chadwick tried to clean up the stench of London by building sewers to drain all cesspools into the Thames, and ended up polluting the supply of drinking water. Progress was much more rapid and consistent after the germ theory.
Thanks Sam! Your comment about biologists thinking the cure for cancer doesn’t exist spurred these thoughts: Can we “cure” cancer?
Welcome, Heike! Very excited to be working with you.
I meant more on the question of financial incentives for metrics. Basically, charging healthy people less / charging more for risk factors. Are you allowed to do this? I think some amount of this is allowed in some jurisdictions, but are there crucial limitations on it?
Are there any restrictions on what insurance companies are allowed to do with this kind of info? Health insurance is highly regulated too.
It looks like the next major technological wave will be AI. How might this change Foresight’s plans or focus areas? Would you focus more on AI? Or, can AI help us with nanotech, longevity, etc. (and how exactly)?