- Tony Blair and Chris Yiu write on the need for progress.
- “The Baker Hypothesis” a new (NBER) economics working paper by Chari, Henry, and Reyes. They find that in emerging and developing economies, the average rate of real GDP growth is higher after countries adopt ‘free-market policies’ such as: inflation stabilisation, trade liberalisation, greater openness to foreign investment, and (possibly) more privatisation of industries.
- A collection of talks and articles by Peter Thiel on progress and stagnation. This is actually from last month but I think it’s pretty interesting and thought to put it in this time.
- 80,000 hours released a new article on “how to use your career to help reduce existential risk”.
- “Why haven’t we celebrated any major achievements lately?” by Jason Crawford. “In reading stories of progress, one thing that has struck me was the wild, enthusiastic celebrations that accompanied some of them in the past… somehow it’s hard for me to imagine similar jubilation happening today”
- When can fiction change the world? by Timothy Underwood. “As part of this I did some thinking about when fiction seemed to exert an influence on public policy, and then I looked for academic research on the subject, and I think there are people… who will find this write up about the subject interesting and useful.”
There have also been a few podcasts over the last couple of weeks. - Village Global’s Venture Stories podcast with Jason Crawford. They discuss: “the key aspects of human progress; the history of progress over time; whether we’ve traded off progress for safety; why the idea of progress is relatively new; what the nature of science fiction writing tells us about our vision for progress; why progress happens differently in different domains; how to think about safety with respect to new technologies; the impacts of slowing population growth.”
- Jason Crawford appears on the AEI podcast with James Pethokoukis. They “discuss the history of technological and moral progress. And they explore how policymakers can promote further innovation and development in the future.”
- The Torch of Progress podcast episode 10 with Dr Laura Mazer. They talk about the past and future of progress in surgery.
- The Conservative Curious podcast with Dr Anton Howes. “We discuss the improving mentality, what we can learn from Britain’s 300-year period of technological advancement, why innovators should also be cultural entrepreneurs and how paranoia can spark innovation.”
If you think I’ve missed something, please let me know.
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