My list now includes:
Sulfur Dioxide
Clean Air Act
Montreal Protocol
Lead Paint
Lead in Gasoline
Public Radio
Mandatory 8th grade education
Secondhand Smoke
Public Transit Subsidy
Automobile Emissions Standards
Fishing Quota System Australia
Bees and Orchards
Cattle Ranchers and Crop Farmers
—
Climate Change
Space Debris
Traffic Congestion
Violent Crime
Assuming the Data is Correct: legal Marijuana
Consumers, in the “consumerism” worldview exist only to receive goods. It’s a primarily self-centered orientation to the world, and that’s why people sneer the word with such a moralizing tone.
Imagine the opposite of consumerism is producerism. Producing time-saving conveniences, building stuff, retaining walls and, heck, even trivial trinkets. Producing is a “nice thing to do.” An active life working and valuing the things you wished you valued while helping others in the small, tedious ways that the economy rewards a person for.
But a “consumerist” is a distracted, binge-watching, GrubHub couch potato perhaps sporting a part-time BS job. People are afraid of living in a “distraction/hedonistic/morally corrupt/selfish society”. And part of the reason this objection to society comes up so much is that (probably mistakenly) they think the following:
many jobs are BS 2a) much of what people purchase is not actually valuable, only perceived as such. 2b) much of what we buy, our best selves would not.
much of what society nudges us towards (in music, in carbon emissions, in social values) is not in our own or our collective best interests.
How much pressure is currently being applied to Congress to break some of the bottlenecks on energy abundance? How much more is needed?
What’s your theory of management going in to Speculative Technologies?
What advances in material science would have to occur for it to be as exciting to investors and average people as software? i.e. is the world of bits going to remain the dominant arena of novel creations for the next century?
I resonate with this. The issue is that culture is particular, but the type of progress the progress studies is generally committed to is civilizational (tech and institutions) not cultural (art and meaning). A community dedicated to progress would instantly become significantly more narrow if it committed to some particular vision of what is valuable and meaningful. While I am fairly committed to a particular vision of how to integrate civilization and culture to create a meaningful life, I wouldn’t want the Progress Forum to commit to a particular view of, say, family values or the status of rituals in society.
Your video is still a broad tent view of meaning. Yet, I’d like to hear how one can actually engage in the project you describe without becoming partisan some particular view of what makes a meaningful life.
Hi Jason, Matt is certainly one the substackers I sometimes most regret not having a sub to!
What is the relationship between public policy and the imagination?
What formative things between the ages of 14 and 24 made you who you are today?
One reason I hear for pessimism is not merely Clive Thompson’s point that dystopian scenarios are easy to imagine, but that we’ve already created dystopias. It’s NOT merely imagination. We’ve already dropped atomic weapons, created murderous totalitarian governments, and starved millions of people to death through blithe mismanagement. As proof of concept such things have already happened, they could be scaled, and if they happen again, they will be bigger and badder. It’s hard for most people to imagine unknown future good things that outweigh “knowable” future horrors.
P.S. can I get a deep dive on whether the 20th century is rightly called “the bloodiest century”? It seems obviously so. But I would like to see the data sliced several different ways.
Are current US rates of growth and disruption enough to keep protectionist interest groups from outpacing innovation (#MancurOlson)? Comparing your 2003 work and present work, it seems, at least to me, that your sense of how culture works has changed, namely the extent to which culture and individuals are elastic. What’s your current view here?
This is great. I’m all for it. To reveal my enthusiasm I am going to throw out some timelines, ideas, and numbers here to keep your creative juices flowing. Feel free to disagree and quibble.
Creating a core team of 3-6 people. Putting in place a methodology and data collection plan. 500 hours.
Visiting all 10 locations with team plus tech crew and equipment. 1 week of work at each location. Cost: $80,000 − 120,000
Editing and post-production: 500 hours.
additional costs: various salaries contracts. Total: $100,000???
Do it twice.
I think I’d definitely want enough data for a basic VR “take a walk in this area” product (for if such things ever become ‘a thing’). I’d also scan the area, assuming permission like an archaeological site to make 3-d reconstructions of it simple. Collecting information on professions and income would also be helpful in the ten year comparison.
Some random thoughts.
Interesting thought about the market here. It seems though that the Atlantic and Vox have a pretty good bead on that. Between Derek Thompson etc. and Kelsey Piper etc. I think one thing we can do is augment their efforts and contribute to those already established and successful platforms, as well as Works in Progress.
I am not aware of the financial situation of any of these outlets, but I don’t see a market hole for another one. This might be good advice though for other current operations like Warp News.
I think that’s a little too reductionist. CACE: CHANGE ANYTHING CHANGE EVERYTHING. It is certainly true, but trivially true. The question is more like how much does a change in literacy result in a change in technology, rather than are the two related. Basically everything is related within the topics of science, innovation, and the intellectual life.
I take Gary’s point to be relative. Were communication advancements necessary, while obviously not sufficient, prerequisites for the energy revolutions which followed? Can we make a causal diagram which flows from advances in communication in the 17th century and 18th century to advances in technology?
Personally I’d be extremely surprised if it were the case even a diminished form, but it’s a very interesting hypothesis to try and disprove.
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.
I appreciate this. Let me provide a thought on how to respond to a certain type of critique: the small market of young people who can get engaged in this. I think some people, especially young people, who are not naturally tech people have an aversion to thinking they can or should do anything tech related. Part of the issue is that what motivates them is not the underlying tech but aesthetically great consumer products. Art, music, shows, video games, sports, outdoors, religion, and most importantly friends and people. So how do we motivate these natural affections into innovation, which is far less a natural activity?
One way is provide not merely a vision of tech like this, which appeals to fixing problems, optimism, true patriotism, and analytic thinking, but also to have some vision of a personally meaningful life. Now that’s hard, since everyone has their own ideo of what a good life consists in. But in each context and subculture the “progress studies foundational tech” view will have to adapt a message to fit the terminal goals of the audience.
I’m working on such a framing for education that provides a broader view of how tech fits into a good life. (Website should be up next month). The tradeoff is that I commit to more value assumptions that others might not share. But to bring others into a view, you need to put some meat on the bones. The structure of the idea must be embodied in a culture… And culture is always somewhat particular.
What I like about your post is how particular you get. That packs a powerful punch.
One possible story is wider-spread literacy, (cheap paper, cheap printing) followed by obsessive note-taking, letter writing, and proto-bureaucratic thinking. I’m reading the history of the Jesuits right now, and it is clear that the entire endeavor is printing press + cheap paper = new social movement. Could we think of “science” and “practical tinkering” as two of these new social movements which yielded a lot of return?
I think there is a couple of ways perhaps to get at studying the size of medical school problem, supposing it exists.
We could measure the opportunity cost of careers with similar matriculating student profiles to med school students.
We could also study the careers of accepted students who don’t wind up going.
Using Germany vs US as comparison groups maybe a little bit tricky given the differences in education systems. But I’m sure there’s already some decent solutions to that problem worked out in other papers.
I work on secondary school startups, college and career counseling, and academic development. So day to day I’m trying to provide signals to help direct the flow of our students towards better things.
I have been thinking about this claim as of late: does medical school steal lock up too much top talent in the US? Your evidence for the case in Germany is interesting. One thing about the medical profession is that it is always clear what the next step to take is. While becoming a founder or even an electrical engineer the number of options remains open for a very long time. So it is possible that the medical field is also dulling our wits.
I think your test score data is good. I wish you also had data about what fields A* students matriculate into. Is there any way to find that? We could compare it with the US data on A* students to see the size of the effect. Of course the two education systems are different enough that this may be difficult.
I ran this by one of our friends who is in radiology and he seems to think it plausible.
I want to research this more and chat more!
Style suggestion. You could put the penultimate paragraph before the preceding one and delete the final paragraph. That will decrease the preachiness factor at the end and the repetition of ideas in the last and third to last paragraph. Plus going straight from we need serious people to the paragraph about those people is what your structure is asking for.