What’s your theory of management going in to Speculative Technologies?
SebastianG
Karma: 44
[Question] Solved and Unsolved Externality problems?
We Are Not Gods: The Geographic Critique of Impartial Progress
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?
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?
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 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’d say the donation legibility is a concern here. The best progress-related institutions aren’t set up in a way where low dollar denominated donations make obvious helpful marginally valuable improvements. When I donate five hundred dollars to vaccines acquisition and distribution in Angola, that’s believably a marginal difference that matters.
Under what models of progress does a marginal $500 provide a lot of value? I think in the context of microgrants to young people and young ideas, it is great! But I’m having trouble for something like New Science.
Maybe the marginal 500 dollars should be spent on youtube advertising for channels that are PS aligned? I can find that somewhat believable.… particularly because I have my eye on a certain Nigerian youtuber who is criminally undersubscribed.
Thanks for sharing your story. Although there are a lot of disability advocacy groups, progress studies is in a unique position in that it can detail technologies that enable people to live rich lives who otherwise would not be able to.
I would love a follow up article on the technologies that are most essential for your wife’s life and how they work both in the technical and socio-cultural sense.
What should science cost?
Content and Method of Classical Tutoring
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.
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.
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 formative things between the ages of 14 and 24 made you who you are today?
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.
How much pressure is currently being applied to Congress to break some of the bottlenecks on energy abundance? How much more is needed?