Friday 29 November 2019

"We still need a lot of progress... Progress itself is understudied... We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study. We suggest inaugurating the discipline of 'Progress Studies'.” #QotD


"We still need a lot of progress. We haven’t yet cured all diseases; we don’t yet know how to solve climate change; we’re still a very long way from enabling most of the world’s population to live as comfortably as the wealthiest people do today; we don’t yet understand how best to predict or mitigate all kinds of natural disasters; we aren’t yet able to travel as cheaply and quickly as we’d like; we could be far better than we are at educating young people. The list of opportunities for improvement is still extremely long...
    "Progress itself is understudied. By 'progress,' we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries. For a number of reasons, there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study. We suggest inaugurating the discipline of 'Progress Studies'.”
~ Tyler Cowen & Patrick Collison, from their article 'We Need a New Science of Progress'
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