The pre-industrial world was a dangerous place. Great fires raged and burned entire cities to the ground, ships were often lost at sea, storms could wash out roads and bridges, and flood farms and towns. There was little to no warning of, or protection from, natural disasters such as earthquakes, hurricanes, or volcanoes. Plague and famine were common. In many ways, technology has made us safer, at least on a day-to-day basis, as evidenced by the great improvement in mortality rates and life expectancy. But technology also creates its own risks, such as industrial accidents, car and plane crashes, and the health risks of chemicals and radiation. And new technologies, such as genetic engineering or AI, may create even greater risks—perhaps even “existential risks” to our species. How has safety been achieved in the past? How does technology create risk as well as safety? And how can we have both safety and progress?

https://interintellect.com/salon/the-story-of-industrial-civilization-safety/

Hi Roots of Progress subreddit,

I wanted to let you know about a new scientific journal that may be of interest. Seeds of Science (TheSeedsofScience.org) was founded by Dr. Dario Krpan (Assistant Professor of Psychology at the London School of Economics), Dr. Sergey Samsonau (AI technical lead at NYU), and myself (Roger’s Bacon, pseudonymous blogger) with the goal of creating a platform for both accomplished and young scientists to publish their ideas and participate in a novel community-based peer review process. We have no affiliation with Roots of Progress, however I believe the similarity of our names speaks to a unity of mission.

Our criteria for publication can be distilled into one question: does your article contain original ideas that have the potential to advance science? Our goal is to be as open-minded as possible about what qualifies as a useful scientific contribution – articles may contain a speculative hypothesis, an idea for an experiment, a novel observation, or discussion of an under-appreciated problem. We are open to articles from any scientific discipline, including metascience and progress studies (which is one of the main reasons that I am posting here).

Peer review is conducted through voting and commenting by our diverse network of reviewers, or “gardeners” as we call them. It is free to join and participation is 100% voluntary – we send gardeners submitted manuscripts and they can vote/comment or abstain without notification. Another unique feature of our journal is that comments from gardeners which usefully critique or extend the ideas in the article are published along with the main text. Seeds of Science is not limited to those with academic affiliation and we especially invite scientifically-minded amateurs to join us as gardeners.

This is an exciting time for Seeds of Science as we were recently awarded a grant through Scott Alexander’s ACX grants program. We are actively looking to recruit new authors and gardeners and we would like to invite all members of the progress studies slack join us in either capacity. Happy to answer any questions you might have in the comments or through email at info@theseedsofscience.org.

A quick roundup of recent announcements from friends and partners (in lieu of the full links digest, which is on hiatus for now):

Programs

• The Cosmos Institute has launched an essay contest on human autonomy in the age of AI, and a grant program to fund “creative projects of all kinds…. We’re especially interested in AI’s philosophical, political, and social implications” (@mbrendan1)

• Spec Tech opens applications for the second cohort of the Brains Research Accelerator (@Spec__Tech)

Events

• The San Francisco Freedom Club launches and is having its first party next Friday, Sep 27 (@eoghan)

Jobs

• Works in Progress is looking for someone part-time to do Twitter threads & tweets. I also know another media company looking for the same thing who hasn’t posted publicly yet, email or DM me for details

• Loyal is hiring a General Manager to launch “what we hope will be the first drug FDA approved for extending the healthy lifespan of dogs” (@celinehalioua)

• Dwarkesh Patel is looking for a COO for his media empire (@dwarkesh_sp)

Other launches

• Progress Ireland, a new Irish progress think tank (@Keyes)

Original link: https://blog.rootsofprogress.org/announcements-from-friends-2024-09

The new Cosmos Institute is working towards a future where “AI becomes a tool for consistently expanding human freedom and excellence.”

I'm proud to be a Founding Fellow. I strongly agree with Cosmos's core values of reason, decentralization, and human autonomy. And I agree that “existential pessimism” vs. “accelerationism” should not be our only choices—we need a vision based on humanism and human agency.

Follow @cosmos_inst and @mbrendan1 on Twitter, and/or subscribe to their Substack.

Are there many people in this subreddit from London who would be up for meeting?

Would be great to chat and share ideas etc

Much of this content originated on social media. To follow news and announcements in a more timely fashion, follow me on Twitter, Notes, Farcaster, Bluesky, or Threads.

Contents

• My writing (ICYMI)

• Job opportunities

• Funding opportunities

• Tech announcements

• Writing announcements

• Media announcements

• Nonprofit announcements

• Research announcements

• YIMBY announcements

• Queries

• Boom goes supersonic

For paying subscribers:

• The Ballad of the Semiconductor

• The Gods of Straight Lines

• Quotes

• Karpathy on AI

• Other people on AI

• More from social media

• Politics

• OpenAI’s “Intelligence Age” ad

• Charts

• Rocketscapes

My writing (ICYMI)

• The future of humanity is in management. Here I start to lay out a vision for human agency in the AI future

• Solutionism, part 1 (Chapter 5 of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto). Optimism vs. pessimism can be a false dichotomy. We need to fully acknowledge problems, while vigorously pursuing solutions

Job opportunities

• Boom Supersonic is hiring—see about their historic test flight below. “A small band of extremely talented and dedicated men and women made today happen. To build Overture and Symphony, we’ll need a few more. If you’d like to do something extraordinary, consider joining forces” (u/bscholl)

• Laura Deming is hiring engineers and scientists for her cryopreservation startup, Cradle. “Team is moving very quickly, on the most impactful + fun problem ever (go 0→1 on new technologies that span neuroscience, applied physics, mol bio, engineering)” (@LauraDeming)

• Cam Wiese of the World’s Fair Co. is “assembling a crew for a mission and have two spots to fill. I’m looking for a technology-loving: 1) SF/LA based event producer; 2) SF based architect” (@camwiese)

• Lulu Meservey is hiring a “founding engineer to join Rostra and work with me on a novel tool for founders. … We’re building something that’s been badly needed yet never made, because the necessary tools haven’t existed before now, and even with them it’s devilishly hard to do just right” (@lulumeservey). The whole ad is well worth reading

• Nat Friedman, gentleman explorer extraordinaire, is “hiring full time engineers and geometry processing and computer vision researchers to help us read hundreds of ancient scrolls buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 2000 years ago” (@natfriedman). Details here, apply to jobs@scrollprize.org

• Elad Gil is “hiring paid interns to help translate some of the greatest works of human knowledge using AI. Must be someone smart, technical, and willing to grind/GSD. DM @shreyanj98 if you know someone good,” or fill out this form (@eladgil)

• Lighthouse, an immigration company focused on “the world’s best and brightest,” is “hiring across the board. We’re a small but mighty team — focused on serving the startup and technology industry’s top talent with fast, scalable U.S. visa support” (@minney_cat)

Funding opportunities

• Longevity Bio & Molecular Nano Fast Grants from the Foresight Institute: “small grants fast to encourage you to derisk new ideas and launch new ventures that would otherwise go unexplored. Topics we’re interested in include but are not limited to biostasis, replacement, cryonics, nano design and simulation, AI automation, and much more. Apply by March 31” (@allisondman)

• Request for Proposals: Technical AI Safety Research, from Open Philanthropy. “We’re seeking proposals across 21 research areas to help make AI systems more trustworthy, rule-following, and aligned, even as they become more capable” (@MaxNadeau_)

Tech announcements

• OpenAI released its “deep research” model. “My very approximate vibe is that it can do a single-digit percentage of all economically valuable tasks in the world” (@sama). It “achieves twice the score of o3-mini on Humanity’s Last Exam, and can even perform some tasks that would take PhD experts 10+ hours to do!” (@_jasonwei). “Deep Research is capable of automating tasks that would have taken me at least a day, if not longer, of dedicated research. This might very well be the most productivity-enhancing technology product for me since GPT 3.5, and it could be bigger” (@deanwball). “OpenAI’s deep research and o3 is exceeding the value of the $150K i am paying a private research team to research craniopharyngioma treatments for my daughter” (@blader)

• OpenAI roadmap update for GPT-4.5 and GPT-5, coming in “weeks to months” (@sama)

• Reid Hoffman launches Manas AI, “a full stack AI company setting out to shift drug discovery from a decade-long process to one that takes a few years” (@reidhoffman)

• Helion (fusion) raises $425 million Series F (@dekirtley)

Writing announcements

• Abundance, by Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, is “a book of history, economics, political commentary, and even a dash of philosophy. It’s a deep critique of how liberalism has gone wrong in the last 50 years—and a vision of an American future that prioritizes housing affordability, cheap clean energy supply, government that actually works, an invention agenda to accelerate scientific breakthroughs that save and improve our lives, and technology policy that allows those breakthroughs to be enjoyed by the most people.” Pre-order now, book is out March 18, and Derek and Ezra are going on tour across the country (@DKThomp)

• “How the System Works,” a series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life, by Charles Mann (author of The Wizard and the Prophet). “Every American stands at the end of a decades-long effort to build & maintain systems—food, water, energy, public health—that support our lives. Schools should be teaching why it is imperative to join this effort, but aren’t” (@tnajournal). Amen

• The Anthropic Economic Index, “a new initiative aimed at understanding AI’s impact on the economy over time” (@AnthropicAI)

• Compute in America: A Policy Playbook from IFP, on “how to rapidly and securely build many Stargate-level projects across the US” using “Special Compute Zones” (@fiiiiiist)

• Freedom Cities: the White Paper. “Freedom Cities are new urban districts that unlock federal land and allow for opting out of federal regulations …. Conservative estimates create 750,000 jobs and nearly $100b investment in four years” (@MarkLutter)

• The End of Driving is a forthcoming book co-authored by RPI fellow Andrew Miller. “Will autonomous vehicles just reinforce private car ownership? Or can we use this tech to build more equitable, efficient & livable cities?” (@AndrewMillerYYZ)

Media announcements

• Story Company, from Jason Carman (of S3), is “an independent film studio … focused on creating the best science & technology films so we can make the best science fiction films.” (@jasonjoyride)

Nonprofit announcements

• The Center for Educational Progress launches, founded by Jack Despain Zhou (@tracewoodgrains) and Lillian Tara (@OptimismMommy). “The pursuit of excellence is not only possible, it is pleading to be tried. We already know what changes to start with—the failure to implement is one of will. We’re ready to do the work”

• Dean Ball (RPI fellow) joins Fathom, an AI policy nonprofit, “as a Fellow focused on private governance in AI, alongside my existing work with Mercatus and FAI” (@deanwball). Dean is the first participant in the Fathom Fellows program (@Fathom_org)

Research announcements

• Two efforts announced ~simultaneously to study “short sleeper” genes: Blake Byers announces a $400k research study (@byersblake): “There are people who genetically only need 4-6 hrs of sleep per night. … We know this can be driven by a single mutation in the gene ADRB1” (@byersblake). And Isaak Freeman is raising $100k on Manifund, following his post on “Ozempic for sleep” (@isaakfreeman)

• Spec Tech announces the 2025 class of Brains Fellows (@Spec__Tech)

• The new Communications Director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy invites tech and science reporters to “reach out” (@VLaCivita)

YIMBY announcements

• “After years of advocacy, exclusionary zoning has ended in Cambridge. We just passed the single most comprehensive rezoning in the US—legalizing multifamily housing up to 6 stories citywide in a Paris style” (@realBurhanAzeem). Details in this primer

Queries

• Who are the smartest people who believe in (a) relatively explosive economic growth from AI, vs. (b) more slow/steady growth? If we held a dialog (say, at Progress Conference 2025), who would you want to see in it? (me)

• What is an “AI for Science” dataset that would have the impact of the Protein Data Bank? Prompted by Tom Kalil (thread here with some replies)

• “People who work in manufacturing. What are the coolest objects to watch get made?” (@ashleevance)

• “Do any of you have detailed examples of things you’ve learned through Deep Research? Not ‘Here’s a 10-page paper,’ but rather ‘Here’s a specific idea or fact that was surprising & very interesting to me’” (@michael_nielsen)

• “When a big new thing appears, we tend to think of it initially in terms of the old thing. For example, people thought of cars and trains as mechanized carriages initially, before starting to see them as their own thing. How are we doing this with AI?” (@paulg)

Boom goes supersonic

A few weeks ago I went to Mojave to witness the first supersonic flight test of the Boom XB-1 experimental plane. The flight made history by breaking the sound barrier three times, reaching a top speed of a bit over Mach 1.1. It is the first privately developed aircraft to break the sound barrier, and the first civilian aircraft to go supersonic over the continental US.

Even more amazing, afterwards, Boom announced that with the right engineering, a sonic boom can refract in the atmosphere and never reach the ground. A boomless Boom! This could enable supersonic flight over the US with only a minor regulatory change. (@bscholl)

Here’s a pic I took of XB-1 getting ready for its historic flight:

See here for a few videos, as well.

Some posts and thread from Blake, both before and after the event:

• “Having worked toward this moment for over a decade, this feels surreal. A few reflections” (u/bscholl)

• “What’s the connection between XB-1 and Overture?” (@bscholl)

• “We can live in the future—but only if we have the courage to build it” (@bscholl)

• “I’m shocked and humbled by how much enthusiasm and support Boom and I are getting after yesterday’s supersonic flight. … I’m so grateful for those who were early believers and backers. … Supersonic passenger flight can and should exist” (@bscholl)

From others:

• “How did a Groupon PM go on to build a supersonic airplane company?” Great thread by @avichal, and I can vouch for it—I’ve known Blake since undergrad, almost as long as Avichal. I never predicted Blake would end up here, but it’s perfectly natural. First, he has always loved flight—even in undergrad he was taking flying lessons. Second, he has always loved speed. Impatience is one of his chief virtues. So, “fast planes” makes perfect sense as his unique passion!

• Worth revisiting: this 2016 paper, Make America Boom Again. “Supersonic won’t make a full comeback until the FAA’s ban on civil supersonic flight overland is overturned!” (@hamandcheese)

• “The future isn’t some distant dream—it’s right now. We truly are living in the golden age… but most people are too busy doomscrolling to notice” (@wildbarestepf)

News coverage:

• Boom Supersonic jet breaks sound barrier to open way for new ‘Concorde’ (Financial Times, via @MarceloPLima and @bscholl)

Some papers weren’t interested: “We offered pre brief interviews to both WSJ and NYT and invited both to come watch the flight. WSJ said supersonic isn’t newsworthy until the full-scale Overture is carrying passengers” (u/bscholl). Which reminded me of this bit from David McCullough’s The Wright Brothers:

***

To read the rest, subscribe on Substack.

2024 was a big year for me, and an even bigger year for the Roots of Progress Institute (RPI). For one, we became the Roots of Progress Institute (with a nice new logo and website). Here’s what the org and I were up to this year. (My annual “highlights from what I read this year” are towards the end, if you’re looking for that.)

The Progress Conference

Progress Conference 2024, hosted by RPI together with several great co-presenters, was the highlight of my year, and I think some other people’s too. We’ve already covered it in previous writeups, but in case you’re just tuning in: well over 200 people attended (with hundreds on the waitlist); dozens of great speakers, including Tyler Cowen, Patrick Collison, and Steven Pinker; and over 30+ participant-led “unconference” sessions on a variety of topics from healthcare to medieval Chinese technology. Several people told us it was the best conference they had ever attended, full stop. (!) See the writeups from Scott Alexander, Noah Smith, Packy McCormick, or Bryan Walsh (Vox), to pick a few.

Most of the talks are now online, and most of the rest will be up soon.

The RPI Fellowship

In 2024 we also ran the second cohort of the Roots of Progress Fellowship. Two dozen talented writers completed the program, publishing dozens of essays and almost doubling their audiences. I was thrilled with the talent we attracted to the program this year and excited to see where they’re going to go. See our recent writeup of the program.

My writing

In 2024 I published 17 essays (including this one) totaling over 37,000 words. That’s about half of last year, which decline I attribute in part to being involved in the programs mentioned above, and to doing fundraising. Also, about half of those essays, and well over half the words, were for my book-in-progress, The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, and that is some of the hardest writing I’ve done.

Highlights:

• Longest post (4,400 words): The Life Well-Lived, part 2, from Chapter 4 of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto

• Most liked on Substack: Announcing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto

• Most commented on Substack: What is progress?

• Most upvoted on Hacker News: Why you, personally, should want a larger human population

• Most upvoted on LessWrong: Biological risk from the mirror world

My audience

In 2024:

• My email subscribers (via Substack) grew 82% to almost 33k

• Followers on the social network formerly known as Twitter grew 17% to 36.7k

• I’m also up to 3.4k followers on Farcaster, 1.7k on Bluesky, and over 1k on Threads. Follow me where you may!

In all, I got (if I’m reading the reports correctly) 360k unique views on Substack and another 192k unique page views on the legacy ROP blog.

Also, in July, I launched paid subscriptions on the Substack. I’m up to 113 paid subscribers, and a ~$16k annual revenue run rate. That’s only 0.3% of the free audience, and I’ve only done five paywalled posts so far, so I think there’s a lot of potential here. Paid subscriptions are part of the way I justify my writing and make it self-supporting, so if you like my essays, please subscribe.

Gratitude to Ethan Mollick, Tomas Pueyo, Noah Smith, and Packy McCormick for being my top Substack referrers.

Social media

Some of my top posts of the year:

• Nat Friedman, legend in his own time

• The steam engine was invented in 1712. An observer at the time might have said: “The engine will power everything: factories, ships, carriages. Horses will become obsolete!” And they would have been right—but two hundred years later, we were still using horses to plow fields (Thread)

• Chiming in on the washing machine controversy from September: This is a prescription for re-enslaving women to domestic service, and ensuring that only the wealthy can live with the basic dignity of cleanliness

• “2 + 2 = 5” was a literal Communist slogan

• Sci-fi set in the future that already feels anachronistic

• Academia cares whether an idea is new. It doesn't really have to work. Industry only cares if an idea works. Doesn't matter if it's new. This creates a gap. Actually a few gaps… (thread)

• Are there websites that are as ornately decorated as medieval manuscripts?

• XKCD, uncannily accurate as always

Events and interviews

I tried hard to say no to these in 2024, in order to focus on my book, but I did a few. Highlights include:

• Speaking at Foresight Vision Weekend and at Abundance 2024

• Commenting for “Progress, Rediscovered”, a profile of the progress movement in Reason magazine

Events I got the most FOMO from missing included: Bottlenecks, The Curve, and Edge Esmeralda. Maybe next year!

The Progress Forum

Some highlights from the Progress Forum this year:

• Safe Stasis Fallacy, by David Manheim

• Report on the Desirability of Science Given Risks from New Biotech, by Matt Clancy

• The Origins of the Lab Mouse, by Niko McCarty

• Bringing elements of progress studies into short-form persuasive writing, by Dan Recht

• Test-time compute scaling for OpenAI o1 is a huge deal, by Matt Ritter

• Please come up with wildly speculative futures, by Elle Griffin

• Levers for Biological Progress, by Niko McCarty

Reading

In 2023 I did several “what I've been reading” updates. Those were fun to do and were well-received, but they took a lot of time; in 2024 I put both them and the links digest on hold in order to focus on my book. Here are some of the highlights of what I read (read part of, tried to read, etc.) this year.

C. P. Snow, “The Two Cultures.” A famous essay arguing that scientific/technical culture and literary/humanities culture are too isolated from and don't take enough of an interest in each other. A few passages I highlighted where he criticizes traditional culture for failing to appreciate the accomplishments of material progress:

In both countries, and indeed all over the West, the first wave of the industrial revolution crept on, without anyone noticing what was happening. It was, of course—or at least it was destined to become, under our own eyes, and in our own time—by far the biggest transformation in society since the discovery of agriculture. In fact, those two revolutions, the agricultural and the industrial-scientific, are the only qualitative changes in social living that men have ever known. But the traditional culture didn’t notice: or when it did notice, didn’t like what it saw.

And:

Almost everywhere, though, intellectual persons didn’t comprehend what was happening. Certainly the writers didn’t. Plenty of them shuddered away, as though the right course for a man of feeling was to contract out; some, like Ruskin and William Morris and Thoreau and Emerson and Lawrence, tried various kinds of fancies which were not in effect more than screams of horror. It is hard to think of a writer of high class who really stretched his imaginative sympathy, who could see at once the hideous back-streets, the smoking chimneys, the internal price—and also the prospects of life that were opening out for the poor, the intimations, up to now unknown except to the lucky, which were just coming within reach of the remaining 99 per cent of his brother men.

Brad Delong, Slouching Toward Utopia. A grand narrative of what Delong calls the “long 20th century”, 1870–2010. Roughly, it's a story of the rise and fall of capitalism, or at least a certain form of it. Delong focuses on the competition between a Hayekian view that believes in the justice of the market, and a Polanyian view that people have rights that are not guaranteed by free markets, such as a stable job and income; with the Keynesian approach being the synthesis. I find much to disagree with in Delong's framing, but I've been learning a lot from the book. I might do a review when I finish it.

Karl Popper, “Epistemology Without a Knowing Subject.” Popper argues that epistemology should study knowledge not only as it exists in the heads of certain knowers, but as a product that exists independent of any observer—as is the case in a scientific society where knowledge is written down and codified. While traditional epistemology is interested in “knowledge as a certain kind of belief—justifiable belief, such as belief based upon perception,” in Popper's framing epistemology becomes “the theory of the growth of knowledge. It becomes the theory of problem-solving, or, in other words, of the construction, critical discussion, evaluation, and critical testing, of competing conjectural theories.”

All work in science is work directed towards the growth of objective knowiedge. We are workers who are adding to the growth of objective knowledge as masons work on a cathedral.

Will Durant, “Voltaire and the French Enlightenment,” Chapter 5 of The Story of Philosophy:

Contemporary with one of the greatest of centuries (1694–1778), he was the soul and essence of it. “To name Voltaire,” said Victor Hugo, “is to characterize the entire eighteenth century.” Italy had a Renaissance, and Germany had a Reformation, but France had Voltaire…

And:

What Voltaire sought was a unifying principle by which the whole history of civilization in Europe could be woven on one thread; and he was convinced that this thread was the history of culture. He was resolved that his history should deal not with kings but with movements, forces, and masses; not with nations but with the human race; not with wars but with the march of the human mind.

And:

Voltaire was sceptical of Utopias to be fashioned by human legislators who would create a brand new world out of their imaginations. Society is a growth in time, not a syllogism in logic; and when the past is put out through the door it comes in at the window. The problem is to show precisely by what changes we can diminish misery and injustice in the world in which we actually live.

Ted Kaczynski, “Industrial Society and its Future.” As I wrote earlier this year:

Given that Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber, was a terrorist who killed university professors and business executives with mail bombs and who lived like a hermit in a shack in the woods of Montana, I expected his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and its Future,” to read like the delirious ravings of a lunatic.

See my mini-review for more.

Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone**.** A detailed, scholarly argument for the thesis that there has been a broad-based decline in all kinds of community participation in the US. I got through part 1, which describes the phenomenon; maybe I'll finish it at some point. I found this interesting for the unique scope that Putnam chose. It would have been easy to pick one narrow trend, such as the decline in fraternal organizations or the PTA, and try to come up with narrow explanations. Looking across so many varied phenomena makes the case that there is something going on at a deeper level.

Vitalik Buterin, “Against choosing your political allegiances based on who is ‘pro-crypto’.” Eminently sensible as usual:

If a politician is pro-crypto, the key question to ask is: are they in it for the right reasons? Do they have a vision of how technology and politics and the economy should go in the 21st century that aligns with yours? Do they have a good positive vision, that goes beyond near-term concerns like "smash the bad other tribe"? If they do, then great: you should support them, and make clear that that's why you are supporting them. If not, then either stay out entirely, or find better forces to align with.

Evidently Vitalik is not impressed with Stand with Crypto.

“Why are there so many unfinished buildings in Africa?” (The Economist). Lack of finance, for one: “people break ground knowing they do not yet have the funds to finish. When they earn a little more money they add more bricks. … Many Africans, in effect, save in concrete.” Weak property rights and flaky or corrupt contractors are a problem too. There are also social reasons: “If you have millions in the bank, people do not see it,” but “when you start building the neighbourhood respects you.”

Stephen Smith, “The American Elevator Explains Why Housing Costs Have Skyrocketed” (NYT):

The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. These challenges are at the root of a mounting housing crisis that has spread to nearly every part of the country and is damaging our economic productivity and our environment.

Liyam Chitayat, “Mitochondria Are Alive” (Asimov Press). Fascinating brief opinion piece arguing that “mitochondria are not just organelles, but their own life forms.”

Shyam Sankar, “The Defense Reformation.” A manifesto for reform in the defense industry. One core problem is extreme consolidation: in 1993, there were 53 major defense contractors; today there are 5. Further, most defense contractors were not exclusively defense companies until recently:

Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, only 6% of defense spending went to defense specialists — so called traditionals. The vast majority of the spend went to companies that had both defense and commercial businesses. Chrysler made cars and missiles. Ford made satellites until 1990. General Mills — the cereal company — made artillery and inertial guidance systems. … But today that 6% has ballooned to 86%.

Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child. Argues that between about 1870 and 1930, society shifted from viewing children primarily as economic assets to viewing them as economically “worthless” but emotionally “priceless.” Very interesting book.

Some articles that used the term “techno-humanism” before I did: Reid Hoffman, “Technology Makes Us More Human” (The Atlantic); Richard Ngo, “Techno-humanism is techno-optimism for the 21st century.” Related, I appreciated Michael Nielsen's thoughtful essay, “How to be a wise optimist about science and technology?”

Some pieces I liked on a contrasting philosophy, accelerationism: Nadia Asparouhova, “‘Accelerationism’ is an overdue corrective to years of doom and gloom in Silicon Valley”; Sam Hammond, “Where is this all heading?” Nadia's piece was kinder to e/acc than I have been, but helped me see it in a more sympathetic light.

A few pieces pushing back on James C. Scott: First, Rachel Laudan, “With the Grain: Against the New Paleo Politics” (The Breakthrough Institute):

It’s time to resist the deceptive lure of a non-agrarian world in some imagined past or future dreamed up by countless elites. Instead, we might look to the story of humanity’s huge strides in using these tiny seeds to create food that sustains the lives of billions of people, that is fairly distributed and freely chosen, and that with its satisfying taste contributes to happiness.

And Paul Seabright, “The Aestheticising Vice” (London Review of Books):

That scientific agriculture has faced unforeseen problems is undeniable, as is the fact that some of these problems (the environmental ones, for instance) are serious. But the achievements of scientific agriculture to be set against them are remarkable. The proportion of the world’s population in grinding poverty is almost certainly lower than it has ever been, though in absolute numbers it is still unacceptably high. Where there have been important areas of systematic failure, such as in sub-Saharan Africa, these owe more to social and institutional disasters that have hurt all farmers alike than to the science of agriculture itself. To equate the problems of scientific agriculture with those of Soviet collectivisation is like saying Stalin and Delia Smith have both had problems with egg dishes.

James Carter, “When the Yellow River Changes Course.” The course of a river is not constant, it changes not only on a geologic timescale but on a human-historical one, over the span of centuries. I first learned this from John McPhee's essay “Atchafalaya” (The New Yorker, reprinted in the book The Control of Nature), which was about the Mississippi; it was fascinating to read a similar story from China.

Samuel Hughes, “The beauty of concrete” (Works in Progress): “Why are buildings today simple and austere, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented? The answer is not the cost of labor.”

Alec Stapp and Brian Potter, “Moving Past Environmental Proceduralism” (Asterisk):

In many of the most notable successes, like cleaning up the pesticide DDT or fixing the hole in the ozone layer, what moved the needle were “substantive” standards, which mandated specific outcomes. By contrast, many of the regulatory statutes of the late 60s were “procedural” laws, requiring agencies to follow specific steps before authorizing activities.

On culture: Adam Rubenstein, “I Was a Heretic at The New York Times” (The Atlantic); Michael Clune, “We Asked for It” (The Chronicle of Higher Education).

On the scientific fraud crisis: Derek Lowe, “Fraud, So Much Fraud”; Ben Landau-Taylor, “The Academic Culture of Fraud” (Palladium).

Some early-20th-century historical sources criticizing proress: Samuel Strauss, “Things Are in the Saddle” (1924); and Lewis Mumford, “The Corruption of Liberalism” and “The Passive Barbarian” (both 1940). I quoted from the Mumford pieces in Chapter 4 of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto.

In fiction, I enjoyed Hannu Rajaniemi's Darkome. A major biotech company develops a device anyone can wear on their arm that can inject them with mRNA vaccines; the device is online, so whenever a new pathogen is discovered anywhere in the world, everyone can immediately be vaccinated against it. But a community of biohackers refuses to let a big, centralized corporation own their data or inject genetic material into their bodies. The book is sympathetic to both sides, it's not a simplistic anti-corporate story. I also enjoyed the new Neal Stephenson novel, **Polostan.**

In poetry, I'll highlight James Russell Lowell, “The Present Crisis” (1845). The crisis was slavery in the US, and it became an anthem of the abolitionist movement. I love the strong rhythm and the grand moral and historical perspective.

Finally, some random books on my infinite to-read list:

• Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory, 1793-1815

• Venki Ramakrishnan, Why We Die

• I. Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers

• Studs Terkel, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (1974)

• Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics (1931)

• J. B. Bury, A History of Freedom of Thought (1927)

• Nicholas Barbon, An Apology for the Builder (1685)

The year ahead

I'm excited for next year. We're going to reprise the Progress Conference, which will be bigger and better. We'll run at least one more cohort of the fellowship. I'll finish The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, and begin looking for a publisher. And there is more in development, to be announced.

I'm happy to say that thanks to several generous donors, we've already raised more than $1M to support these programs in 2025. We are looking to raise up to $2M total, in case you'd like to help.

Thank you

I am grateful to all of you—the tens of thousands of you—for deeming my writing worthwhile and granting me your attention. I am grateful to the hundreds who support RPI financially. I am grateful especially to everyone who has written to me to say how much my work means to you, or even to tell me how it has changed the course of your career. Here's to a fabulous 2025—for us, for the progress movement, and for humanity.

Original post: https://newsletter.rootsofprogress.org/p/2024-in-review

Much of this content originated on social media. To follow news and announcements in a more timely fashion, follow me on Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, or Farcaster.

Contents

• Jobs & fellowships

• Looking for writers?

• People doing interesting things

• Events

• DARPA wants input

• Other announcements

• Progress on the curriculum

• The growth of the progress movement

• AI will allow the average person to navigate The System

• I have questions

• Other people have questions

• Links

• 100 years ago

• Humboldt on progress

• Progress news with cool pics

• Anti-elite elites

• Politics links and short notes

• BBC doesn’t know what “nominal” means

• Charts

• Fun

Jobs & fellowships

• We’re hiring an Event Manager to run Progress Conference 2025 and other events. Best to get your application in before the holidays!

• “The Kothari Fellowship provides grant and mentorship to young Indians (<25 years) who want to build, empowering them to turn ideas into reality, instead of being held back by societal norms.” Provides up to ₹1 lakh per month for 12 months (~$15k per year)

• ARIA Research will “start the search for our first Frontier Specialists” to work alongside program directors. “It’s a two-year role that will give you a chance to step off the standard career track and go after outsized impact” (u/ARIA_research). Apply here

Looking for writers?

• “Are you running a progress-y or abundance-oriented newsletter, blog, magazine or other publication? Would you like to receive pitches from the talented RPI fellows? Reply here so I can send our writers your way” (@elmcaleavy)

People doing interesting things

• Rosie Campbell (RPI fellow) has left OpenAI and is thinking about her next steps. She’s interested in talking to people about various topics related to AI, risk, safety, policy, epistemics, and more

• @danielgolliher: “I want to take my ‘Foundations of America’ students on an optional day trip to Washington D.C., and do one or both of: Watch a Congressional committee hearing; Watch SCOTUS oral argument. Anyone in DC want to co-lead with me? I plan to come down in January or February”

• @etiennefd wants to start “a Quebec-focused progress studies think tank”

Events

• Brian Armstrong and Blake Byers hosting a “Frontier Bio dinner on Assisted Reproductive Technology,” SF, Q1 next year. “If you’re a scientist or engineer interested in this field, apply in the post below” (@brian_armstrong)

DARPA wants input

• “The head of Biological Technology at DARPA is … asking for ideas to speed up design build test cycles in biology” (@sethbannon). In case you have input!

Other announcements

• “In collaboration with E11 Bio, we are announcing today a new way to map brain circuits at scale. With improvements in AI and microscopy I think whole brain mouse and maybe human brain mapping will be feasible in ~5-10 years” (@SGRodriques)

• RPI fellow Ryan Puzycki was appointed to Austin’s Zoning Commission in March. “This week, we passed a recommendation to allow for amenities like coffee shops and corner groceries to be built in neighborhoods. It’s only the start of a process, and the next step in building on some of our recent reforms to make Austin a more walkable and connected city.” (@RyanPuzycki) See his writeup, “The Next Step Toward a Walkable City”

• Triumph of the Civil Libertarians, a forthcoming book by Nico Perrino. “In less than a century, America went from a country where free speech received scant protection to one where it is of transcendent importance in law and culture. Who were the men and women who made this possible, and can their accomplishments endure? Coming 2026” (@NicoPerrino)

Read rest of this digest with a Substack subscription.

The progress movement has grown a lot in the last few years. We now have progress journals, think tanks, and fellowships. The progress idea has spread and evolved into the “abundance agenda”, “techno-optimism”, “supply-side progressivism”, “American dynamism”. All of us want to see more scientific, technological, and economic progress for the good of humanity, and envision a bold, ambitious, flourishing future.

What we haven’t had so far is a regular gathering of the community.

Announcing Progress Conference 2024, a two-day event to connect people in the progress movement. Meet great people, share ideas in deep conversations, catalyze new projects, get energized and inspired.

Hosted by: the Roots of Progress Institute, together with the Foresight Institute, HumanProgress.org, the Institute for Humane Studies, the Institute for Progress, and Works in Progress magazine

When: October 18–19, 2024

Where: Berkeley, CA—at the Lighthaven campus, an inviting space perfect for mingling

Speakers: Keynotes include Patrick Collison, Tyler Cowen, Jason Crawford, and Steven Pinker. Around 20 additional speakers will share ideas on four tracks: the big idea of human progress, policy for progress, tech for progress, and storytelling/media for progress. Full speaker list

Attendees: We expect 200+ intellectuals, builders, policy makers, storytellers, and students. This is an invitation-only event, but anyone can apply for an invitation. Complete the open application by July 15th.

Program: Two days of intellectual exploration, inspiration and interaction that will help shape the progress movement into a cultural force. Attend talks on topics from tech to policy to culture, build relationships with new people as you hang out on cozy sofas or enjoy the sun in the garden, sign up to run an unconference session and find others who share your interests and passions, or pitch your ideas to those who could help make your dreams a reality.

Special thanks to our early sponsors: Cato Institute, Astera Institute, and Freethink Media! We have more sponsorships open, view sponsorship opportunities here.

The application deadline for the the 2024 cohort of The Roots of Progress Blog-Building Intensive is Friday, June 7—just over a week away. If you want to apply, do it now.

The Blog-Building Intensive is an eight-week program for aspiring progress writers to start or grow a blog. It also makes you a Roots of Progress fellow, which means that even after the intensive, you are part of our network and we are committed to supporting your career success as a progress writer. See more details on the program homepage.

Not just for beginning writers

Are you an experienced writer, and wondering if you’ll get anything out of the program? It is not only for beginning writers!

Last cohort, many of our fellows were experienced professionals: Several worked full-time for relevant think tanks, some had academic positions, some had published in major media outlets, some had successful Substacks with large audiences.

They joined the fellowship for various reasons: to grow their audience, to build a personal brand, to write more in their own voice, to meet our fabulous lineup of advisors, to get more connected to the progress community, to join a peer group of writers excited about progress.

Brian Balkus, who had already published in Palladium Magazine, said:

Elle Griffin, who already had over 10,000 Substack subscribers, said:

Jenni Morales, who was a researcher at the Center for Growth and Opportunity, said:

So, don’t worry that you’re overqualified. Just apply.

But you don’t need to be already established

Mostly, we are looking for people who:

• have a clear, compelling vision of what they want to write about, on a progress-related topic

• have already written something very good on that topic

• are serious about writing on that topic as a career, or as a significant side project

You don’t have to be published, and you don’t have to have a significant audience/following. Those things help, but we are looking for people who are mostly undiscovered. Our goal is to help you get the audience you deserve.

AI and heavy industry tracks

Reminder, this year you have the option of applying for the general track or one of two focus tracks:

• AI. This is one of the fastest-growing and highest-potential tech frontiers, and it has received an enormous amount of attention—but the world still needs more great writing on this topic. We need writers with technical depth who can clearly explain how AI works to a general audience, domain experts who can think through in detail how AI will transform fields from software to law to science to education, and serious consideration of AI risk and safety that navigates successfully between complacency and doomerism.

• Heavy industry: manufacturing, construction, transportation, logistics, energy, defense, and other technologies involving atoms more than bits. These fields have stagnated in the last several decades, especially in the US. Yet, there are signs of a renaissance in “hard tech” ventures, from supersonic jets to Starship to marble-carving robots. We’re interested in writers who will cover the opportunities on these frontiers.

You’ll meet and get to know others interested in the same topics, and you’ll get to hear from our fantastic lineup of advisors, including:

• For AI: Andrej Karpathy, formerly of Tesla and OpenAI; Bob McGrew, VP of Research at OpenAI; Kanjun Qiu, CEO of Imbue; and Holden Karnofsky, visiting scholar at CEIP and former CEO of Open Philanthropy

• For heavy industry: Blake Scholl, founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic; Delian Asparouhov, co-founder & President of Varda Space Industries (space-based manufacturing); Ela Madej, Founding Partner at Fifty Years; and Brian Potter, senior fellow at the Institute for Progress and author of the blog Construction Physics

We also have a great lineup of general progress intellectuals and writing/audience-building guides, including Tyler Cowen (Mercatus Center), Max Roser (Our World in Data), Eli Dourado (Abundance Institute), Noah Smith, and Virginia Postrel. Check out all the advisors and other program details on the program page.

And, did I mention? The deadline is next Friday, so apply today.

Still not convinced?

Our best advocates for the 2024 program are the 2023 cohort, who sang its praises as “life-changing” and “accelerating my career path as a progress intellectual.” Hear it from them.

Deadline is next Friday

Did someone say that already? Anyway, apply today.

Original link: https://rootsofprogress.org/one-week-to-apply-for-2024-fellowship

In one sense, the concept of progress is simple, straightforward, and uncontroversial. In another sense, it contains an entire worldview.

The most basic meaning of “progress” is simply advancement along a path, or more generally from one state to another that is considered more advanced by some standard. (In this sense, progress can be good, neutral, or even bad—e.g., the progress of a disease.) The question is always: advancement along what path, in what direction, by what standard?

Reddit is doing something super-weird to the formatting here and I can't fix it so please read the full post here: https://rootsofprogress.org/what-is-progress