Founder, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org)
jasoncrawford
Karma: 513
So many of the regulatory/policy barriers to progress seem so daunting. Using the “Important, Tractable, Neglected” heuristic, what are the top opportunities to unblock progress? Put another way perhaps, if you were writing a priority list for an organization like the Institute for Progress or Balsa Research, what would you go after?
There are two magic buttons, as follows, but you can only press one. Which would be better for progress and why?
We instantly get the ideal legal/regulatory/policy environment for progress, across the board (this button does not affect science or R&D)
We instantly get huge scientific/R&D breakthroughs: cure for cancer and aging, nanotech that works, fusion that works, benevolent AI (this button does not affect anything social, so all these things would face today’s regulatory environment)
If you were to draft a set of cause areas for the progress studies movement, what would be high on the list?
I agree that “one technology plowing ahead much further than the rest” is unlikely, but I don’t think that’s the issue.
To return to your seat belt example: seat belts were invented and widely deployed only after cars had been around for decades. Car technology got way ahead of car safety technology. That’s the sort of pattern I think we should reduce in the future.
I like the Deutsch quote and agree.
I think “slow” vs. “fast” is just the wrong way to conceptualize the decision/tradeoff. We should be thinking about how to steer progress and how to sequence it. “Pedal to the metal” or “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” is not safe, but merely slowing down doesn’t really help. We should, for example:
take whatever time is necessary (but no more than that) to do appropriate, useful safety testing on new technologies
invest in inventing safety measures, ideally in the first version of new technologies
think about what types of technologies are more likely to “favor offense” vs. “favor defense” and use that to guide our research
None of these are a simple “slow down,” except in the sense that clinical trials “slow down” drug development.
But it’s a non sequitur to say “it would have saved lives for seat belts to have been invented earlier, therefore all technology and inventions should progress as fast as possible for maximum safety.” Not all inventions are like seat belts.
I think these are good ideas and I too would like to see more of the kinds of things you list above.
I’d love for this Forum to serve as the first draft of a lot of this stuff. For instance, if people want to write up specific cause areas, or lists of cause areas, so we can all start discussing them, that would be great. We could create a new tag “Cause Areas” so that they are organized in one place and easy to find.
Interesting exercise: what would Our World in Data look like as a column in that chart?
Don’t know anything about Seaborg in particular. Floating nuclear is an interesting idea. I don’t know enough about the technical issues to know whether it’s practical; I’ve been told that the motion of the waves creates engineering problems. I also think the legal issues may be problematic. If you’re offshore, you might avoid the US NRC, but now you’re probably under the jurisdiction of the UN or something, which is probably worse. There’s really no way to escape regulation if you’re doing nuclear—you just have to find reasonable regulators.
In academia, you’ve said that “The incentive is to build a brick … not to build a building.” If the balance is off here, how could we reform academic incentives to get more buildings?
Are you more of a hedgehog or a fox? (In Isaiah Berlin / Archilochus terminology: “A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one big thing.”)
Are you more of a bird or a frog? (In Freeman Dyson terminology: “Birds fly high in the air and survey broad vistas … out to the far horizon. They delight in concepts that unify our thinking and bring together diverse problems from different parts of the landscape. Frogs live in the mud below and see only the flowers that grow nearby. They delight in the details of particular objects, and they solve problems one at a time.”)
Some ~12 years after the book, what are your thoughts on the Great Stagnation? (Asking more about the phenomenon of stagnation and less for thoughts on the book itself.) How has this played out? Have your predictions held up? What will stagnation look like going forward?
Very interesting topic. How widespread is the “pull” idea? When I first read about it in an essay from you a while ago, I thought it was kind of a niche view, but I’ve been reading Robert Allen’s The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective and he seems to have the same view, so maybe not so niche?
Interesting thread, but I draw a somewhat different conclusion: in the long run, we need a heat-management system for the Earth (and eventually, other planets). Managing CO2 is good but insufficient.
There are also some replies contesting the original claims, e.g.: https://twitter.com/EnergyJvd/status/1608898973313699840
A lot of (most?) progress studies work is being done outside academia, or on the border of academia, not in proper journals and peer-reviewed publications. My own work is for a general audience. Anton Howes left academia to write for a general audience. Eli Dourado is at a think tank that is affiliated with a university, but he writes for a general audience. Brian Potter came from industry and writes for a general audience. Etc.
See this answer in my AMA about how people can contribute: https://progressforum.org/posts/ew6LJbcoLm8PjJLbX/ama-jason-crawford-the-roots-of-progress?commentId=ibns2uXfbyHXrdkay
Yes, any major improvement in a fundamental area—not only in communication, or more broadly in information technology, but also in energy, manufacturing, materials, or transportation—will have ripple effects throughout the entire economy.
Efficiency is a dimension of progress, but it is only one dimension. Sometimes we make progress by improving the power, speed, or throughput of our machines or processes. Not all improvements are efficiency improvements. But over time, higher efficiency is one of the big trends of industrial progress.
I agree that anything that leads us off a cliff, that is, leads us to some disaster for humanity, is not progress.
But the problem with the concept of “sustainability” is: what are you trying to sustain? Our goal should be sustained progress, sustained economic growth, sustained improvements in human well-being—not sustaining indefinitely the use of some particular technology, which is in fact stagnation, the opposite of progress.
We have sustainable progress not by using “sustainable” resources, but by switching to new, much more abundant resources when old ones are running out—as we switched from whale oil to petroleum, or from ivory to plastic, or from manure to synthetic fertilizer. More here: Unsustainable
See also: A dialogue on growth, progress, and “sustainability”; Reframing “sustainability”
I think the main statement of Allen’s argument is his book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Here’s a summary article he wrote: “Why was the Industrial Revolution British?” You could also check out Scott Alexander’s review of his book Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction.
In the first book mentioned above, Allen states: “I do not ignore supply-side developments like the growth of scientific knowledge or the spread of scientific culture. However, I emphasize other factors increasing the supply of technology that have not received their due…” But when his argument gets condensed, the factors other than the ones he focuses on (high wages and cheap energy) tend to get dropped.
As to your first point, I didn’t say “all discussion”, just “too much”…
I think the Earth–Mars communication problem is definitely solvable, and it makes sense that the solution would be built on top of existing web standards. But I think new solutions and new standards/protocols would need to be developed, and it would be less than straightforward—it will require real engineering. And no matter what the solution, the overall user experience will be different.
Cross-post that essay here as a linkpost!
Policy barriers aside, speaking strictly from considerations of technology and economics, what is the ideal near-term future for energy? Nuclear, geothermal, solar? Maybe even solar-powered fuel synthesis like Terraform Industries is doing? Or what combination of the above?