Progress Movement and Studies

Mars Colony

Progress: How do we better understand and increase progress?

The progress movement aims to identify the drivers of progress and persuade people to invest in efforts that could significantly increase progress.

By collaborating and understanding the foundations of progress and ways to enhance it, we can make substantial advancements in technology and science. This is how successful founders and scientists operate, and it is what progress as a movement could enable us to achieve collectively.

Progress is essential for improving our lives and the lives of others. It is our moral obligation to study and understand progress so that we can continue to make progress and improve the world.

However, progress is not guaranteed and is under threat. We need to share the story of progress, counter attacks against it, and advocate for progress as a crucial goal for humanity.

“Coordinate people to solve problems, both technological and political, that usually would be intractable but for an unusual coordination of talent and capital.”
“All founders do this coordination to some degree: they identify a problem that people have been unable to solve and coordinate resources to solve it. Especially good founders like Elon Musk are able to coordinate talent and capital to solve problems further afield, by coordinating even more talent and more capital.”
“Progress as a movement and network could do some of the founder’s work for them, like getting all the engineers and VCs that want to work on flying cars in one place. We could convince people to raise their ambitions and career trajectories, identify far-afield, important problems, and then get people invested in actually solving them. In fact, this is sort of like what EA looks like at the moment.”
“The political case may be even more interesting. There’s a number of political and societal problems that aren’t being solved despite everyone agreeing that they are big problems. Just like tech, it will take talent, capital, and an organizing force to solve these problems. So we could also do things like get all the people and donors that want to fix housing or transit together.”

How do we move the needle on progress?

In order to improve human welfare we should focus on improving progress areas that have gone up in relative price, like health, housing, energy, and transportation/logistics.

Health

A radical rethinking of health is necessary for individual and societal betterment. We need to be much more aggressive on improving health productivity in order to improve the health of both individuals and society as a whole. We need to empower consumers, disintermediate the medical establishment, and focus more on public health and aging research.

Decentralized Diagnostics: IoT devices for real-time health monitoring, cutting out traditional medical apparatuses.
AI-Driven Health: Use AI to predict and pre-emptively treat diseases.
Genetic Engineering: CRISPR and gene drives for tailored treatments.
Telemedicine 2.0: AI doctors available 24/7 globally.
Cognitive Augmentation: Nootropics and neural mods for higher societal intelligence.

Housing

Tackling housing affordability and availability with tech solutions. Zoning, permitting, parking requirements, and other land-use regulations are preventing the free market from providing housing that is more affordable in high-rent cities. City governments should liberalize land use regulations and incentivize density by replacing today’s property taxes with land value taxes. Additionally, the cost of construction could be reduced through the use of technology, such as robotics, new materials, and 3D printing.

Zoning 2.0: Dynamic, AI-optimized zoning to replace bureaucratic quagmires.
Prefab Skyscrapers: Print high-rises in weeks, not years.
Underground Cities: Use advanced boring technology for subterranean development.
Orbital Living: Space-based residential modules. A radical solution for earth-based housing problems.

Energy

Aiming for an abundance of clean, virtually free energy. Energy is an important part of the economy, accounting for about 12 percent of GDP. The goal for energy progress is to electrify all the things and produce unlimited clean energy too cheap to meter. Achieving this goal requires increasing investments into ambitious energy research and development (such as fusion energy), transition to electric cars, producing more clean energy, and increasing the efficiency of energy use.

We don’t want to ration our energy consumption, but rather make make energy “too cheap to meter” to create new possibilities for humanity. A sustainable world is not enough, as it would put an upper bound on humanity’s physical capabilities.

“The great slowdown began when we started rationing energy. Restarting progress means getting energy that is so abundant that it’s almost free.” - Making energy too cheap to meter by Ben Reinhardt
Nanotech Solar: A quantum leap in solar efficiency.
Grid-Scale Energy Storage: Achieve weeks of backup with next-gen batteries.
Fusion: Forget “20 years away,” aim for a working reactor this decade.
Wireless Energy: Eliminate cables, make energy omnipresent.
Space-Based Solar: Collect solar energy in orbit, beam it down.

Transportation, Logistics, Infrastructure

Going beyond high-speed rail and autonomous cars.

Hyperloop & Vacuum Trains: Sub-hour transit between major cities.
Global Drone Network: For immediate deliveries and emergency medical supplies.
Antigravity Tech: Radical new tech for cargo and human movement.
Smart Infrastructure: AI-optimized traffic systems, self-repairing roads.
Quantum Logistics: Leapfrogging traditional shipping with quantum entanglement.

Regulatory Reform

Radical innovation needs a regulatory environment to match. If we want to see progress, we need to invest in health, housing, energy, and transportation. These are all highly regulated sectors of the economy, and we need to address regulatory obstacles in order to make progress. Additionally, we need to focus on new companies operating in regulated spaces so that regulators feel a sense of urgency to reform.

Regulatory Sandboxes: Encourage innovation in controlled environments.
Policy Prediction Markets: Utilize crowd wisdom for better regulatory decisions.
AI-Enhanced Regulation: Use AI to dynamically update and enforce rules, reducing bureaucracy.
Regulatory Prizes: Financial incentives for companies to meet and exceed future regulation now.

We don’t want just sustainable, we want limitless. Let’s shift from a mindset of rationing to one of endless possibilities, fuelled by innovation that’s just as boundless.

Organizing framework for Progress by Jasmine Wang

What would studying progress entail, and require? Three questions seem fundamental:

History and causes: How do we make progress?
Definition and measurement: What sort of world(s) should we be we building towards?
Drawbacks of progress: What are the risks incurred by progress? How do we make differential progress?

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Moral imperative for progress

Growth is good. It has alleviated human misery, improved human happiness and opportunity, and lengthened human lives. Wealthier societies are more stable, offer better living standards, produce better medicines, and ensure greater autonomy, greater fulfillment, and more sources of fun. If we want to continue on our trends of growth, every individual must become more concerned with the welfare of those around us.

Vaclav Smil argues that progress is not inevitable, but is instead contingent and often involves setbacks. He discusses different dimensions of progress, including economic, social, technological, and environmental progress, and explores growth in nature and society. A passionate advocate of quantitative analysis, Smil uses statistics to illustrate salient features of growth in all its terrestrial forms. He highlights some worrying cases of declining growth rates, including the decline of agricultural yields, and concludes that progress is ultimately a value judgment that we must make based on our own priorities and values.

Tyler Cowens book “Stubborn Attachments”
Growth by Vaclav Smil: Summary & Notes

Progress

Understanding stagnation and where we should rather desire progress?

Peter Thiel’s view on progress and stagnation in his own words, sourced from a number of his interviews and articles.

Technological progress has slowed down in recent years, failing to meet the lofty expectations of the past. This is due to a number of factors, including the increasing cost of energy, over-finanzialiation, and the intransparency of the FDA. As a result, we have seen a regression to older technologies, such as coal, and a decline in the number of new blockbuster drugs.

In short, the idea that the future would be radically different than the present has not come to fruition, at least not yet. Centralization is once again the trend, though there is still potential for decentralization.

Despite scientific and technological progress, economic growth has been limited or nonexistent in the last few decades. This has been attributed to factors such as the oil crisis of the 1970s, globalization, and increased competition for limited resources.

In the last 50 years, there has been a lot of progress in information technology, but not as much in other areas.

People are overestimating the progress of AI. The most transformative change that is often discussed is self-driving cars, which would only replace 1% of the workforce at most. There is also a lack of ambition in the discussion of AI, if the most transformative change we can imagine is self-driving cars, then we are not thinking big enough.

“Why are certain things getting so much more expensive?”

Inflation

The chart illustrates the impact of innovation on the prices of various sectors in the economy. Sectors with technological advancement are represented by blue lines, indicating decreased prices and improved quality. In contrast, red lines represent heavily regulated sectors such as healthcare and education, where innovation is limited, and prices are increasing. These sectors are controlled by monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, with formal government regulations, price fixing, and other barriers to change. The chart suggests that the lack of technological innovation in the red sectors allows these monopolies to lobby the government to maintain their profits. Consequently, technological change is essential in reducing prices and improving the quality of goods and services.

Understanding the potential causes of progress and stagnation

Overregulation, dysfunctional governance, and short-sighted venture capital are to blame for the Great Stagnation. Science has become politicized which has caused a decline in the quality of research.

Our culture is also one of the reasons for our stagnation. It’s a failure of imagination that is biased against technological progress. There is a absence of positive visions for the future with more dystopian than utopian movies.

Indefinite optimists believe that the future will be better, but don’t have a concrete plan for how to make it better. Indefinite pessimists believe that the future will be worse, but don’t have a concrete plan for how to prevent it from getting worse.

Our current culture is one of acceptance and denial, where people are not motivated to change the status quo. Our expectations are self-fulfilling; if we think something is impossible, it likely will be. To build a better future, we need to convince people that change is possible and get them to work on it.

“Thiel issues the challenge to think bigger, be a definite optimist, and be determined to shape the future to your vision, even if in a small way, make a plan, and do the work. Even if the universe is too big for most of us to make a dent in it, this approach has to be better than capitulating to indefinite cynicism about the future.”

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Human imitation can lead to both great innovation and insanity. Being original is difficult to achieve, and requires being comfortable being in the minority.

Risk is often seen as something that is out of our control and down to chance or luck. However not all risks are the same - some are worth taking, while others are not. For example, starting a startup or joining a scientific project has less downside than people expect.

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The current dominant narrative surrounding scientific and technological progress is one of indefinite pessimism. We need to change our narrative to one of definite optimism in order to enable progress. We can change our attitude towards progress through media and concrete optimistic startups and research projects that serve as role models for a better future (eg. SpaceX, Moon Landing etc.).

The Great Stagnation?

What caused the Great Stagnation? What flatlined the Henry Adams Curve? Hall blames a number of political and cultural factors in “Wheres my flying car?”, including centralized funding, the burden of regulation, and the anti-technology counterculture. He argues that these factors have diverted human capital away from productive pursuits and into activities that do not contribute to technological progress.

Declining Biomedical R&D Productivity: Eroom’s Law:

Eroom’s Law is the observation that the cost of developing a new drug has been increasing at an exponential rate since the 1950s. The average cost of developing a new drug was $320 million in 2010, up from $80 million in 1980. The new version of the law, which includes the cost of clinical trials, puts the average cost at $2.6 billion. The law has been used to explain the high cost of prescription drugs and the lack of innovation in the pharmaceutical industry.

Erooms Law

markov.bio/biomedical-progress/
Potential Solutions: Predictive validity in drug discovery by Jack Scannell
“Successful drug discovery is like finding oases of safety and efficacy in chemical and biological deserts. Screens in disease models, and other decision tools used in drug research and development (R&D), point towards oases when they score therapeutic candidates in a way that correlates with clinical utility in humans. Otherwise, they probably lead in the wrong direction. This line of thought can be quantified by using decision theory, in which ‘predictive validity’ is the correlation coefficient between the output of a decision tool and clinical utility across therapeutic candidates. Analyses based on this approach reveal that the detectability of good candidates is extremely sensitive to predictive validity, because the deserts are big and oases small. Both history and decision theory suggest that predictive validity is under-managed in drug R&D, not least because it is so hard to measure before projects succeed or fail later in the process. This article explains the influence of predictive validity on R&D productivity and discusses methods to evaluate and improve it, with the aim of supporting the application of more effective decision tools and catalysing investment in their creation.” -Jack Scanell et al.
Why is progress in biology so slow? by Sam Rodriques
“Biology is complex, and the goal of biomedical research is to cure disease. However, most people don’t take it seriously. To achieve success in curing disease like how AI has had success in other fields, three main components need to be addressed: speed, knowledge, and talent.
1. Speed involves regulatory work to enable faster experiments to be done on humans.
2. Knowledge involves eliminating the phenomenon where a biologist discovers something that has already been known for years. In addition, the biomedical literature needs to be more reliable.
3. Talent requires creating a career path for top biology researchers so they can continue to do research instead of becoming managers. Finally, use machine learning to predict drug safety, and then work with regulators to enable drugs that are predicted with high confidence to be safe, bioavailable, and to have good PK/PD etc. to be tested directly in human patients without other preclinical trials.”

Aviation

The top speeds that aircraft can reach have not increased in recent years, but we might briefly surpass the “Great Stagnation” in the aerospace industry due to the resurgence in aerospace technology development, driven by advances in materials and computing, the public’s and venture capitals increased willingness to accept technical risks, and the emergence of a new Great Power Competition as well as many upstarts with ambitious initiatives such asBoom Supersonic.

“High-Speed Flight” by Liz Stein is a great review of the fundamental physics, history, enabling technologies and current market landscape underlying today’s high-speed flight renaissance.
Why aviation innovation matters by Eli Dourado

Construction

Construction has become more expensive and slower. The cost of land, labor, and materials has been on a steady rise inflation-adjusted. This can be seen in the increase in the cost of new residential construction, especially in urban areas.

Potential solutions to make construction faster and more affordable

invest in new construction tech, automation, prefab/modular construction methods and more.
automate as much of the construction process as possible.
encouraging the use of alternative materials that are cheaper and easier to obtain.
streamlining the permitting and approval process.
investing in infrastructure that will make construction sites more accessible.

Energy

The stagnation in energy progress is the biggest cause for concern, as the underlying driver of almost any progress (contributing as a big cost factor in everything from food, construction to compute). We need to improve energy r&d dramatically into bold new energy technologies towards decreasing cost and increasing sustainability and energy density. Nuclear power is the best option for meeting this need today, due to its high energy density and low cost (ideally fusion and other technologies soon).

The slow growth of sustainable energies and stagnation of nuclear power adoption is one sign of stagnation in energy progress.

Potential solutions

more investment into energy research and development such as fusion, geothermal or new energy storage solutions.
increase energy efficiency to make the most of our current energy sources.

Nanotech

Nanotechnology is the study and application of technologies that operate at the nanoscale, which is the scale of atoms and molecules. Despite its potential, however, nanotechnology has not progressed as quickly as expected due to complex challenges and underfunding. To accelerate progress, we need to increase funding and support for nanotechnology research and development (R&D) and create an enabling environment for nanotechnology development. This could include initiatives that provide funding for R&D and support the development of nanotechnology infrastructure, as well as promoting collaboration and partnerships between different stakeholders.

Foresights Nanotech: Molecular Machines Group

Potential reasons for stagnation

1. Centralized funding

Centralized funding for research is often detrimental to innovation. He cites the example of nanotechnology, which he claims was killed by a storm of academic politics that followed the implementation of the National Nanotech Initiative. According to Hall, the initiative created a pot of money that attracted researchers from adjacent fields who rebranded their work as nanotech and attacked the original vision for the technology. As a result, the funding and credibility for true nanotech evaporated. Hall argues that centralized funding of an intellectual elite makes it easier for cadres, cliques, and the politically skilled to gain control of a field, and they by their nature are resistant to new, outside, non-Ptolemaic ideas. He concludes that the increasing centralization and bureaucratization of science and research funding is a major culprit in the slowdown of recent technological innovation.

2. Over-regulation

The burden of regulation in the US is a major obstacle to innovation, especially in the area of nuclear power. This burden is a result of the country’s tort system, which consumes about two percent of GDP. This system has a major negative impact on the economy, preventing the country’s most talented and motivated people from developing and manufacturing new products and technologies.

3. Counter-culture rejecting technology

The counterculture is a movement that arose in the late 1960s and was characterized by its rejection of traditional values and institutions. The counterculture saw technology and progress as threats to the natural world and sought to change society through activism. Science fiction played a role in shaping the counterculture’s view of the future, with many works of the genre depicting dystopian worlds. The reasons for the rise of the counterculture are complex, but may include a desire for self-actualization and a reaction to the closing of the frontier.

Is increased progress increasing existential risks?

“It is not safe stagnation and risky growth that we must choose between; rather, it is stagnation that is risky and it is growth that leads to safety”

“Faster economic growth could initially increase risk, as feared. But it will also help us get past this time of perils more quickly. When people are poor, they can’t focus on much beyond ensuring their own livelihoods. But as people grow richer, they start caring more about things like the environment and protecting against risks to life. And so, as economic growth makes people richer, they will invest more in safety, protecting against existential catastrophes. As technological innovation and our growing wealth has allowed us to conquer past threats to human life like smallpox, so can faster economic growth, in the long run, increase the overall chances of humanity’s survival.”

Securing posterity by Leopold Aschenbrenner

Some actions to advance progress

studying software (machine learning), natural sciences (from math, physics to chemistry and biology), policy etc.
start, join and fund ambitious startups and research projects
angel invest in deep tech and science startups (similar to Fifty Years, Cantos, Lux and others)
study history of progress, research breakthroughs, and find patterns that led to dramatic progress
work on creating a better understanding of complex systems and how they work (including unintended consequences)
advance the institutions and models to make progress, such as better policy and new research models
work on creating a better communication of scientific findings to the public, and work on public understanding of complex scientific issues
advocate for science funding, and work on improving the efficiency of research spending
work on creating better incentives for scientists and researchers to achieve breakthroughs
work on developing new technologies that can help solve major global challenges (e.g. green energy, artificial intelligence, biotechnology etc.)
donate to organisations across progress studies itself (The Roots of Progress), applied metascience (like PARPA, Convergent Research, Good Science Project), new scientific institutes (New Science), policy (The Institute for Progress and the Center for Growth and Opportunity).

Some metrics to maximize?

Life + Flourishing

Survival/Flourishing Odds: x-risk mitigation, ai safety, nuclear safety etc.
% of Population in Abundance: Gauge universal access to basic needs.
Max QALYs + Lives Saved/$: Target longevity, cost-effective poverty alleviation.
Max Wealth per Capita (median, avg..): tech, scientific and technological progress.
Elevate Life Satisfaction: well-being metrics / everyone self-actualized / maslow pyramid ascended.

R&D, Intelligence, Energy, Climate etc.

Maximize R&D ROI: Optimize research impact.
Max TeraFLOP/$: computational efficiency, semi r&d.
Max Utility-Adjusted Computational Intelligence: Capturing computational power/efficiecy, generalization ability, and task utility to humanity.
Max Energy/$: energy R&D (incl fusion)
Max CO2 Capture/$: Accelerate carbon capture projects.

Space + Beyond

Max KG to Orbit/$: space launch efficiency.
Max Energy + Resources in Galaxy Captured/Harvested: From Dyson spheres for energy collection to asteroid mining.

What else?

Some ambitious ideas

inspired by You Should Be Working On Hardware by Casey Handmers

Energy Supply & Applications

Synthetic Fuels: Develop next-gen synthetic fuels, maybe by Quantum Energy Harvesting.
Polysilicon Production: Replace the Siemens process with a more advanced method.
Solar Arrays: Flexible silicon solar arrays costing <$30k/MW.
Nuclear Applications: Beyond “hot rock, boil water,” explore exotic matter energy storage.
Weather Control & Geoengineering: Include satellites for targeted weather modulation.
Carbon Capture: Accelerated weathering and carbon conversion plants.
Fusion & Room Temperature Superconductors: The endgame for energy.

Ecological Restoration

Low-Impact Metal Production: Pair with low-carbon synthetic liquid fuels.
River-Scale Desalination: Make it efficient and low-cost.
Restoration Projects: Aral Sea, Owens Lake, plus AI-driven ecological management.

Health & Longevity

Immortality: Invest in AI-Driven Drug Discovery and Personalized Genomic Repair.
Artificial Wombs: Perhaps a stepping stone to more advanced biological engineering.

Transport

Electric Power Trains: For cars, small planes, and eventually space planes.
VTOL & Drones: More efficient, quieter, and paired with better AI.
Electric Flight: From long-range to solar to supersonic.
Zeppelins & Electric Boats: Niche but useful, can be zero-carbon.

Manufacturing

Atomic-level Technologies: 3D printing, deep-crust mining, and recycling.
Compact Manufacturing: Full-stack production with fewer human inputs.
Housing: Solve the shortage with AI-driven design and prefab tech.
Programmable Matter: For next-level manufacturing and utility.

Space Exploration

Starship & Moon/Mars Applications: Life support, fuel, heavy machinery, etc.
Terraforming & Propulsion: From nuclear to antimatter, also include warp drive if possible.
Resource Mining: Air, water, rock miners working in tandem with autonomous robots.
Space Energy: Solar farms and maybe Dyson Sphere Prototypes.

Computing & Robotics

Advanced AI: Aim for non-human consciousness.
Brain-Machine Interface: Augment human capabilities for direct interaction with tech.
Microbots: Brownian dust or autonomous dynamic lift transoceanic gliders.
ASICs & Neuromorphic Chips: To speed up computation and enable smarter AIs.

X-Risks & Governance

Sensor Networks: For pandemic prediction and mitigation.
Asteroid Deflection: Proof-of-concept missions.
AGI Governance: Develop models for managing trillion AIs with legal personhood.

build methodical frameworks similar to effective altruism (cause prioritization: scale, underfunded and solvable), to maximise progress per dollar spent (could for example be venture/policy investment into radical new energy research or artificial general intelligence).

Approaches to model bottlenecks for progress

Roadmapping bottlenecks to progress, and solving fixing

Outcome Graphs

The Outcomes Graph is a knowledge base that logs market and scientific research findings and points to the optimum path toward applying science to societal outcomes. The system is designed to recognise the important nodes and relationships in order to characterise outcomes with precision and granularity.

The Outcomes graph is a tool for representing the state of the applied knowledge frontier, gauging critical pathways and bottlenecks, and finding opportunities to move the frontier forward through venture creation.
The Outcomes graph is a way of representing knowledge that is composed of nodes (outcomes) and the relationships between them. These relationships can be logical (e.g. a constraint enables a solution) or dynamic (e.g. the AND/OR operators between outcomes).

Have evidenced discussions: We want to know the state of the relevant pieces of knowledge that inform our arguments, how strong this evidence is, what data supports it, and what other pieces of knowledge the data could be related to.

The Outcomes graph can be used to identify optimal paths to achieving high-impact ventures, by understanding the Necessity and Sufficiency of outcomes.
The Outcomes graph can also be used to discover opportunities for combinatorial innovation, by identifying possible combinations of knowledge that have a high probability of achieving outcomes across completely unrelated knowledge silos.

Changing public goods funding mechanism

A lot of scientific and technological progress stems from what is public good science available to all of humanity, in many cases with intermediary value capture for the people patenting invention. Improving and changing the way public goods are funded could be one potential solution towards advancing progress:

See this page for more resources on Public Goods

Tech Trees

“While Civilization is just a game, the framework of tech trees can be helpful for thinking about scientific progress in the real world. Every technology can be seen through the lens of the foundational research that made it possible and the future discoveries it enables. However, there is one major difference between the game and reality: In the game, you can scroll to the end of the tech tree to decide whether going down a particular branch will pay dividends in the future. In the real world, the future is unknown, so it’s up to us to imagine new technologies.” – zackchiang.com/spatial-technologies-of-the-future/

foresight.org/tech-tree/

Efforts to advance progress: Startups, Research, Policy, Tools, Funding etc.

Artificial General Intelligence, advancing progress in everything from autonomous cars to drug discovery.
Energy too cheap to meter: there is a strong case that slowdown in progress was caused by a slow down in energy production, meaning we need more ambitious projects in energy, such as Helion (Fusion Energy), Breakthrough Energy Ventures etc.
Focused Research Organizations (FROs), Private Advanced Research Projects (PARPA), such as Rejuvenome
Better tools funding mechanisms, infrastructure and institutions to make progress in applied research.
Contributing to open source a lot of open source tools, programming languages etc. are key drivers of progress
Funding more research in important fields, especially those with biggest impact per dollar of research like energy, artificial intelligence etc.
SpaceX making space colonization possible (eg. Mars) by making rocket payload much more affordable through re-usability and other improvements
Aligned AI: Organizations like the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) working to ensure any future AI systems are safe and beneficial to humans.
Advancing progress in biotechnology to enable breakthroughs in areas such as regenerative medicine, cancer treatment etc.
Progress in understanding the brain, such as the BRAIN Initiative, to enable advances in areas such as brain-computer interfaces, understanding mental illnesses etc.
Advancing the development of nanotechnology and new materials, such as graphene or metamaterials, to enable advances in areas such as energy storage, optical technologies, medical nanotechnology etc.
Robotics and artificial intelligence to enable advances in manufacturing, logistics, agriculture etc.

Challenges to overcome to advance progress

Limited access to education and knowledge: One of the key bottlenecks to massive human technological and scientific progress is the limited access that many people have to education and knowledge. In order to make significant advances in technology and science, people need to be able to learn, explore, and experiment. By increasing access to education and knowledge, we can empower more people to contribute to technological and scientific progress. – Investing in education and knowledge: To increase access to education and knowledge, we need to invest in initiatives that can increase access to high-quality education and knowledge. This could include initiatives that provide access to educational materials and resources, as well as initiatives that support the development of educational infrastructure, such as schools and libraries.
Limited access to resources: A third key bottleneck is the limited access that many people and organizations have to the resources they need to make technological and scientific progress. This includes access to funding, equipment, and infrastructure, as well as access to networks and expertise. By increasing access to resources, we can enable more people and organizations to contribute to technological and scientific progress. – Supporting access to resources: To increase access to resources, we need to support initiatives that can provide people and organizations with the resources they need to make technological and scientific progress. This could include initiatives that provide access to funding, equipment, and infrastructure, as well as
Misaligned incentives: Finally, one of the key bottlenecks to massive human technological and scientific progress is the misalignment of incentives. – To overcome these bottlenecks, we need to take a holistic, systems-level approach. This will require coordinated action from multiple stakeholders, including governments, organizations, and individuals.

Resources: Read more

Books

Courses/Communities

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Appendix

2021 Bottlenecks in Science and Technology Workshop by Jose Ricon

Our world has many problems that seem insurmountable, but with the right dedication and focus, anything is possible. Finding bottlenecks is not easy, its easy to say it’s due to over-regulation. At its sometimes easy to find a clear cause for any given bottleneck, making one wonder if it’s rather something upstream.

Something counts as a distinct bottleneck if it could be reasonably solved by a single project that includes all its “upstream” bottlenecks. Once bottlenecks are identified, doing something about them is a completely different issue. Some great efforts that go beyond problem finding and move into problem-solving include Fast Grants, a funding mechanism that supported scientists doing urgently needed research to address COVID-19, from clinical trials of repurposed drugs to the development of rapid tests. Another example is the concept of Focused Research Organizations, with two working examples focusing on connectomics and the study of non-model microbes. Focused Research Organizations are non-profit entities that are organized to pursue a given goal rather than blue skies research, akin to “mini Manhattan projects”.

The goal of this workshop was to help catalyze a network of like-minded individuals around the idea of bottleneck analysis in order to make progress on seemingly insurmountable problems.

Jeremy Nixon collected ideas for new institutions that might have incredibly beneficial counterfactual impact.

Still no great stagnation by José Ricon

Great stagnation is a misguided term insofar as it seems to nudge us towards thinking that everything is stagnating, when in reality, some things may be progressing while others are not. It could be that the science engine is running fine, but the transmission link between that and the rest of the economy has broken down.

“as far as we could see from public data, improvements in various technologies do not seem to be slowing down”

Great stagnation is a nebulous concept that is hard to define, and it is better to focus on specific problems in order to make progress.

Population growth and potential decline

This century, the world’s population is expected to stop growing for the first time in modern history. The main reason for this decrease is that global fertility rates are falling. The world’s population is projected to reach 10.9 billion by 2100. This is a big change from the current annual growth rate of 1-2%.

World population growth