At what point will The Roots of Progress start advocating for certain “interventions” to keep human progress going? Are there interventions you’re currently advocating for already?
Maybe when I have some interventions I’m more sure of! (And/or if some powerful person or agency was directly asking me for input.)
Epistemically, before I can recommend interventions I need to really understand causation, and before I can explain or hypothesize causation, I need to get clear on the specific timeline of events. And in terms of personal motivation, I’m much more interested in the detailed history of progress than in arguing policy with people.
But, yes, eventually the whole point of progress studies is to figure out how to make more (and better) progress, so it should end up in some sort of intervention at some level.
If I had to recommend something now, I would at least point to a few areas of leverage:
Promote the idea of progress. Teach its history, in schools and universities. Promote it in art, especially more optimistic sci-fi. Journalists should become industrially literate, and it should be reflected in their stories. Celebrate major achievements. Etc.
Roll back over-burdensome regulation. As just one example, there’s a big spotlight shining on the FDA right now and its role in delaying the covid vaccines. For another, see Eli Dourado on environmental review.
Decentralize funding for science & research. I fear that the dominance of the federal government (in the US at least) in research funding, and the reliance on committee-based peer review, has led to too much consensus and groupthink and not enough room for contrarians and for ideas that challenge dominant paradigms. See Donald Braben’s Scientific Freedom (recently re-printed by Stripe Press).
At what point will The Roots of Progress start advocating for certain “interventions” to keep human progress going? Are there interventions you’re currently advocating for already?
Maybe when I have some interventions I’m more sure of! (And/or if some powerful person or agency was directly asking me for input.)
Epistemically, before I can recommend interventions I need to really understand causation, and before I can explain or hypothesize causation, I need to get clear on the specific timeline of events. And in terms of personal motivation, I’m much more interested in the detailed history of progress than in arguing policy with people.
But, yes, eventually the whole point of progress studies is to figure out how to make more (and better) progress, so it should end up in some sort of intervention at some level.
If I had to recommend something now, I would at least point to a few areas of leverage:
Promote the idea of progress. Teach its history, in schools and universities. Promote it in art, especially more optimistic sci-fi. Journalists should become industrially literate, and it should be reflected in their stories. Celebrate major achievements. Etc.
Roll back over-burdensome regulation. As just one example, there’s a big spotlight shining on the FDA right now and its role in delaying the covid vaccines. For another, see Eli Dourado on environmental review.
Decentralize funding for science & research. I fear that the dominance of the federal government (in the US at least) in research funding, and the reliance on committee-based peer review, has led to too much consensus and groupthink and not enough room for contrarians and for ideas that challenge dominant paradigms. See Donald Braben’s Scientific Freedom (recently re-printed by Stripe Press).
See also my review of Where Is My Flying Car?, which I am very sympathetic with: https://rootsofprogress.org/where-is-my-flying-car