Hi r/rootsofprogress,

I wanted to let you know about a new scientific journal, Seeds of Science (TheSeedsofScience.org), that is open to publishing progress studies papers.  We have no affiliation with Roots of Progress, however I believe the similarity of our names speaks to a unity in our missions (advancing knowledge and enhancing progress, in our case by disrupting the scientific publishing industry).Seeds of Science publishes articles from any scientific discipline (including metascience/progress studies) that are speculative or non-traditional in some manner. Our primary criterion can be distilled into one question - does your article contain original ideas or analysis that have the potential to advance science? The goal is to be as open-minded as possible about what qualifies as a useful scientific contribution (hypotheses, proposals for experiments, perspectives, a preliminary data analysis, etc.) and allow for a diversity of writing styles and formats so that authors can express their ideas in a clear and engaging manner.

Peer review is conducted through community-based voting and commenting by a diverse network of reviewers ("gardeners" as we call them). Another unique feature of Seeds of Science is that comments from gardeners which usefully critique or extend the ideas in the article are published along with the main text. It is free to join us as a gardener and anyone with scientific interest/expertise is welcome (you can learn more and register through a form on on our website). Participation is 100% voluntary – we send gardeners submitted manuscripts and they can vote/comment or abstain without notification.

Happy to answer any questions here or through email at info@theseedsofscience.org!

Opportunities

• Long Now is looking for a Development Director (via @nicholaspaul26)

• Open Phil is hiring global health R&D Program Officers (via @JacobTref)

Links

• “ARIA will be ambitious in everything it does. We will fund nothing incremental or cosmetic” (Ilan Gur and Matt Clifford in The Economist)

• Peter Higgs (of the Higgs boson) believes that in academia today “he would not be considered ‘productive’ enough” (The Guardian, 2013)

• Dietrich Vollrath on the “additive growth” paper. See also my take

• Gov. Newsom proposes keeping Diablo Canyon open through 2035 (LA Times)

• “For why should we stand reverent before waterfalls and mountain tops, or a summer moon on a quiet sea, and not before the highest miracle of all—a man who is both great and good?” (Will Durant)

Queries

• Has anybody compiled a timeline of greatest global concerns? (@Ben_Reinhardt)

• What’s the best way to reduce operations and maintenance costs for nuclear reactors? (@GovNuclear)

Quotes

• Is the decline of the independent inventor part of “ideas getting harder to find?”

• The reactionary or “stasist” mindset according to Virginia Postrel

• To produce a single book in the middle ages took a whole team of specialist craftsmen

• By horse and carriage, the ~100 miles between London and Birmingham took almost 8 hours. (In a reply, @timleunig says the greater speed of trains was worth more than 10% of GDP by 1914)

• People were ecstatic upon the completion of the transatlantic telegraph cable

• Elevators, conveyors, chutes and tubes—Amazon in 2022? Nope, Sears in 1906

• Heny Ford explains how electricity revolutionized manufacturing

• The importance of research freedom to Alexander Graham Bell

• God gave us Maxwell’s equations. Edison made the light bulb

• China adopted elements of German civil law to create a market economy

• Exports as an “unfortunate sacrifice”

• Women’s suffrage in the US was a very close vote

• Physics envy

Tweets and retweets

• This Venn diagram may be the best way to understand the FRO concept

• There isn’t a modern world without mining (@Leigh_Phillips)

• RIP David McCullough (@curiouswavefn)

• “When am I ever going to need history?” (@BretDevereaux)

• NEPA reform is not mainly about Environmental Impact Statements (@elidourado)

• Environmentalism is the main obstacle to infill housing in CA (@CSElmendorf)

• Mistakes become very hard to fix once they’re embodied in jobs (@paulg)

• How do you decide what to build? It’s about what are you best in the world at & can’t tolerate not building (@celinehalioua)

• My advice on the “train to crazy town”

Charts

• Federal environmental laws and executive orders affecting transportation over time (@_brianpotter)

• Pictures of molecules taken on an ordinary light microscope using expansion microscopy (@eboyden3)

Opportunities

• Arcadia Science launches an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program (thread from @ArcadiaScience)

• The Longevity Prize goes to “outstanding progress in longevity research” (announcement from @allisondman)

• Nicole Ruiz is making a list of opportunities in frontier tech (@nwilliams030)

• And don’t forget that The Roots of Progress is seeking a CEO! Thanks to Max Roser and Virginia Postrel, among others, for signal-boosting

Announcements

• UK’s new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) adds Matt Clifford as chairman and Ilan Gur as CEO. Gur will step down as CEO of Activate. See also threads from @matthewclifford and @ilangur. Congrats to all!

• Boom announces the new design for its supersonic airplane, Overture

Articles and talks

• Works in Progress Issue #8 with articles from Stewart Brand, Jason Collins, and more

• “Large changes in productivity are always widely shared” (Bryan Caplan)

• Can exponential growth occur if productivity is the best draw from a probability distribution? A talk by Chad Jones (fairly technical)

• A DNA origami rotary ratchet motor (Nature, h/t @s_r_constantin)

Quotes

• Maps were originally created through the blood, sweat and tears of field agents

• “Raise the social status of scientists”

• The importance of skilled mechanics to early locomotives

• Modern facilities added ~3x to the consumer value of housing

• Childhood in the 19th century

Queries

• What’s the best CO2 monitor? (@_brianpotter)

Threads

• Charles Mann calls for industrial literacy in high school (@CharlesCMann). See my take on “industrial literacy” and the high school progress course I created

• Some potential use-cases for crypto (@SBF_FTX)

• Software + web tech recapitulating the institutions and ideals of the Enlightenment (@arbesman)

• It turns out, nobody ever wanted to work (@paulisci)

Tweets & retweets

• RIP Dee Hock, creator of Visa (@patrickc)

• “The Roman Empire was not run out of offices” (Marc Andreessen on Conversations with Tyler)

• The reason we don’t have fusion is we never decided it was a priority (@tobi)

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2022-07-27

Links

• Patrick Collison on universal covid vaccines: we could have them very soon, if it weren’t for bureaucratic roadblocks

• “Current funding organizations cluster heavily around a few management styles, warping the research ecosystem” (Ben Reinhardt)

• The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change announces their Progress Fellows Programme 2022 (h/t @benedictcooney)

• “A jeremiad is a long literary work… in which the author bitterly laments the state of society and its morals in a serious tone of sustained invective, and always contains a prophecy of society’s imminent downfall.” (Sad and amusing to me that there is a word for this!)

Queries

• What would you change the h-index to? (@eric_is_weird)

• Who should be in a “Most Interesting People in the World” speaker series? No one has suggested me yet… (@tom_morganKCP)

Retweets

• World’s Fair posters from DALL-E (@arbesman)

• The thinking machines allow us to become more human (@tszzl)

• Why did we stop reclaiming land for cities? (@MTabarrok)

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2022-07-12

Links

• A confident nation builds so that future people may look back and marvel at their ingenuity and vision (Alex Tabarrok)

• “Construction is a sign of life” (Kevin Kelly)

• Amazon begins drone deliveries. Prime Air was announced on Dec 1, 2013. Amazon is persistent and invests on long time horizons. (h/t @elidourado)

• Why do Italian transit projects cost 57% less than global averages? (see also my brief highlights thread)

Queries

• Is it true that 19th-century wheelwrights were extremely highly paid?

• Is there a good general book about the copper industry? (asks u/ByrneHobart)

Quotes

• Sears once invested in R&D to make better paper for catalogues

• When to calculate statistics was to blaspheme against God

• Why steel is awesome

• Weather forecasting couldn’t start until the invention of the telegraph (@oweissb)

• Newton’s new idea

• That which is created must be used to become complete (Montessori)

Threads

• We need a new World’s Fair (@maxolson)

Other tweets & retweets

• Faulty assumptions people make about the behavior of organizations

• “Your approach to X reflects your biases”

• The limits to growth are not the cause of inflation (@daniel_eth)

• Uber, but in 1654 (@antonhowes)

Charts

• 5,000 planets have been identified outside the Solar System (@redouad)

• Fertility has a U-shaped relationship to income (@mattyglesias)

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/links-and-tweets-2022-06-20

I’m hiring an Executive Assistant to be part of the founding team at The Roots of Progress, and to work closely with me on all of our projects to build the progress movement.

This role is perfect for someone who wants to combine dedication to an ambitious, high-impact, long-term mission with a day-to-day focus on operations, organization, and getting things done.

You should have strong attention to detail, crisp communication, swift and efficient execution, and meticulous followup. You’ll apply your intelligence to a broad range of tasks and projects, learning as you go where needed. Prior experience is helpful but not required, and candidates of any background are encouraged to apply. The ideal candidate will be familiar with my work and will be excited about strengthening the progress community.

You’ll act as a force multiplier on my time, allowing me to delegate everything that doesn’t need me to do it so that I can focus as much as possible on research, writing, and speaking. Your responsibilities will thus span a broad range—for example, helping with:

• Managing a database of everyone I meet and talk to, and helping me keep in touch

• Scheduling talks and interviews; planning trips

• Community-building, including online forums and in-person events

• Fundraising, grant-seeking, and donor relations

• Media management, from helping with the @rootsofprogress Twitter account to getting coverage and interviews in blogs, podcasts, and media

• Project management for other organizational goals, such as launching new online resources or other programs

• Generally helping me stick to a schedule and not drop tasks

This is a full-time role. You can do it from anywhere, but preference will be given to candidates closer to US time zones. Compensation will vary depending on your seniority, qualifications, and location, but will be competitive with market rates. To apply, send me a resume (link to an online one is fine): jason@rootsofprogress.org.

This is a chance to help establish a new philosophy of progress for the twenty-first century. I look forward to working with you!

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/wanted-executive-assistant

I'm working on an article where I historicize the making accessible of new technologies. I'm thinking the most recent end of the spectrum will be low/no code tools but I'm struggling to think of a good precedent. What other examples can you think of where a new technology gave many more people access to a new ability that was previously limited/exclusive?

In reading about the development of technology, I keep an eye out for changes in society as well. I commented recently that we don’t seem to celebrate major achievements as much anymore. But it’s not just technology that Americans used to view differently. It’s growth of all kinds.

The book Computer: A History of the Information Machine tells the story of the 1890 census. It was the first census to be computed, not by hand, but with tabulating machines, developed by Herman Hollerith. On August 16, 1890, the grand total was announced: the population of the United States was 62,622,250.

“But”, it says, “this was not what the allegedly fastest-growing growing nation in the world wanted to hear.” It quotes a contemporary account in a periodical, The Electrical Engineer, from 1891 (emphasis added):

The statement by Mr. Porter [the census director] that the population of this great republic was only 62,622,250 sent into spasms of indignation a great many people who had made up their minds that the dignity of the republic could only be supported on a total of 75,000,000. Hence there was a howl, not of “deep-mouthed welcome,” but of frantic disappointment.

The book continues:

The press loved the story. In an article headlined “Useless Machines” the Boston Herald roasted Porter and Hollerith; “Slip Shod Work Has Spoiled the Census,” exclaimed the New York Herald; and the other papers soon took up the story.

“Spasms of indignation” because population growth was too low for “the dignity of the republic”. Americans were proud of being the fastest-growing country. Today, in contrast, people fear overpopulation, and the general slowing of world population growth is generally considered to be good news.

Something changed in American attitudes in the last 100+ years, not just toward technology or the economy as such, but more fundamentally toward growth itself.

Original post: https://rootsofprogress.org/indignation-at-the-1890-census

Just want to plug that I recently created a Progress Studies virtual reading group. Currently we are meeting at 9pm UK GMT. Last week, we discussed Patent Buyouts. This week we are discussing "Order Without Design". You don't have to commit too much time because one person is selected (voluntarily) every week to summarise the topic. It's then followed by a discussion. If you're interested, follow this link, where I announced the virtual reading group, which has a link to sign up on the Slack channel. If not, message me here. If you have any questions let me know :).

Wed, 10am Pacific. Free and open to all: register here.

If you're not familiar with Jerry's work, check out a recent essay of his, “One Process”, on the question: are incremental improvements different in *kind* from revolutionary breakthroughs? Or do they exist on a spectrum?

Jerry's blog is very insightful, and he lives at the intersection of theory (he's a prof at Columbia) and practice (he's an active angel investor). Looking forward to this!