Author, The Roots of Progress (rootsofprogress.org). Part-time tech consultant, Our World in Data. Former software engineering manager and tech startup founder.
jasoncrawford(Jason Crawford)
Karma: 3,084
The Roots of Progress events in Austin, November 4–6
I think the relationship between the philosophy of progress and actual progress is reciprocal. When people believe in progress, they do more of it; and when they see it working, they believe in it.
Note that the idea of progress arguably began around the time of Bacon, which was more than a century before the Industrial Revolution.
Didn’t the philosophy of progress fade when technological innovation started producing dangers and destructions that were more obvious and dramatic and story-friendly, and hit people where they live on a daily basis?
Yes, but. Historical events like this pose a challenge to existing ideas—they don’t determine how people will interpret them or what new ideas will come along to answer the challenge. Every challenge is a crossroads. I think we took the wrong fork in the mid-20th century, and I want us to get back on track.
Can we really ignite a new philosophy of progress without a concomitant explosion in dramatic, everyday technical innovations that impact ordinary people’s daily lives with the same force that the positive innovations of the 19th century produced?
Again, I think this will be reciprocal. If the coming decades see Mars settlements and affordable supersonic passenger travel and CRISPR gene therapies and an mRNA cure for cancer and fusion energy and effective longevity treatments… that will help people believe in progress again. But also, helping spread the idea that progress is real and we can make it happen could help inspire people to build the future.
Rather than increasing the rate at which we create innovations on par with AlphaFold, might a new philosophy of progress just cause more people to be excited about AlphaFold?
Excitement about things translates into money and talent going into them, which causes more of them to happen.
In the shadow of the Great War
To be clear, you’re quoting a sentence from a paragraph that I described as “one possible narrative”, in a section where I described two opposing narratives and then explored which aspects of each seemed to be supported by this story.
I do think that safety measures could have begun earlier. See my reply to jpsmith: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DQKgYhEYP86PLW7tZ/how-factories-were-made-safe?commentId=wAPgdiJNHsYewmrzi
I think of “externality” as roughly equivalent to “you hurt someone and you didn’t have to pay for it.” If a workplace is neglectful of safety, and the worker gets hurt, and the employer doesn’t have to pay, that seems like an externality?
I don’t think it would have significantly slowed things down. I think the costs to employers went from like a fraction of a percent of payroll to a few percent. It was a big relative increase, but still a fairly small cost overall. But it was just big enough to make them say “we should have a safety department.”
I’m not sure if there was a specific more-radical proposal on the table, or if that was just a general concern of the businesses. If there was one, I haven’t encountered it.
Again, the labor unions actually were originally for the less-radical proposal of simply reforming the tort system (taking away some employer protections) without going all the way to a no-fault system.
The workers themselves seem mostly focused on pay, hours, and other more tangible things.
Did you read all the way to the end? I feel this was addressed in the last few paragraphs.
(Incidentally, many if not most businesses were in favor of the workers’ comp law, even though they knew it would raise their costs. In part that was because they thought it would improve labor relations, although it also may have been because they thought some reform was inevitable and they wanted something moderate to pass before something radical came along. Re labor unions, many of them were actually against workers’ comp at first, although Samuel Gompers of the AFL then changed his mind and became for it.)
I think there is a clear line. If you take the job at 20 hours/day, you know what you’ve signed up for. You didn’t sign up to be injured in an accident. The liability for that needs to fall somewhere.
(You could argue that workers signed up for certain risks, and this is exactly what employers used to argue in many cases. And I’m not 100% sure that’s wrong. So I am still slightly ambivalent about this.)
How factories were made safe
Wanted: Chief of Staff for The Roots of Progress
I don’t think the data is cherry-picked, but you could argue with some of his statistical analysis. He lays it all out pretty clearly though, so the book is valuable to read even if you disagree in the end.
He covers violent crime (which would include bar fights) as well.
I haven’t covered it yet, but Works in Progress magazine did something on ozone: https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/how-we-fixed-the-ozone-layer/
I’ve recently been studying the history of factory accident rates and factory safety, hope to have something on this soon.
Sure, a crucial question is whether (and to what extent, and in what way) progress in science, technology, industry, and the economy leads to human well-being. That is at the core of what any philosophy of progress should address
I think the starting point is to examine the moral progress that’s been made so far in history, and try to figure out how it happens. The best stuff I’ve read on this so far is from Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature and parts of Enlightenment Now).
We need understanding, yes. As to whether we need optimism, that depends what kind of optimism you’re talking about. I’ve distinguished between descriptive and prescriptive optimism: https://rootsofprogress.org/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-optimism
Descriptive optimism is contingent: it’s an assessment about the world (or a part of it), and so it’s only warranted when it’s true. There are many aspects of the world that I am descriptively pessimistic about.
But prescriptive optimism is an attitude, a choice. It says that we’re going to work hard to solve problems and make the world and our lives better, no matter what, whether the prospects seem rosy or bleak. And I think we need more prescriptive optimism.
Thanks!
It’s true in the past, that many scientists and engineers were independently wealthy (and yes, often though not always through inheritance). Others had patrons or got jobs as assistants to other scientists. More here: https://rootsofprogress.org/funding-models-for-science-and-innovation
Today there’s a set of institutions to support science and a whole career path based on them. What remaining important work is there that’s not being rewarded? I don’t know off the top of my head. My guess is that it’s something that most people don’t think about and that doesn’t have a prominent role in society—like science itself in the 17th/18th centuries.
On your second point, I agree that improving intellectual efficiency is an important part of progress. But I think that pretty much all of information technology, from the first writing system to the Internet, has been part of that effort.
But there are two kinds of “vision of the future”. One is a descriptive/predictive vision: where are we going, what direction are we headed? That kind of vision ought to be accurate.
The other is a prescriptive/aspirational vision: what should we work towards? What would be ideal? That’s the kind I meant when I said “hold up a positive vision of the future”.
More: https://rootsofprogress.org/descriptive-vs-prescriptive-optimism
Problems do have to be solved case-by-case, but your basic premises and values—philosophy—guides what kind of solutions you will seek, how you evaluate them, and what you will accept.
For instance, to address climate change, how do you feel about seeking abundant, cheap, clean energy via nuclear/solar/geothermal? Carbon capture? Geoengineering? Degrowth? Those are very different approaches.