Why we need a Progress Studies Forum
[Update 12th December 21: get in touch if you would like to help. I originally wrote this post (in <5 minutes) because I was uncertain about it being a good idea.] Progress Studies as a social movement has been growing fairly quickly. I think that the creation of a Progress Studies Forum could help to…
Crowdfunding Science
Stumbled upon a website/concept that I hadn’t heard of before but is quite intriguing. The website domain is: https://experiment.com/. It allows academics to crowdfund their scientific projects. Their aim is to ‘democratise science’. To date is has raised approximately $9 million for academic projects and has led to 20 published academic papers. I can see…
A List of Progress Studies Reading Lists
I’ve been putting together a progress studies reading list for myself, drawing upon reading lists found on the internet. I’ve also seen people repeatedly asking for reading lists and being pointed in different directions. So, I thought it may be helpful to some to collect the various progress studies (related) reading lists I’ve come across…
Happy Smallpox Eradication Day!
Before going further, briefly pause to ask yourself, how many people were killed by Smallpox? The answer, is approximately 500 million. On December 9th, 1979, Smallpox was eradicated. Celebrating Smallpox eradication day is a great reminder of human ingenuity (although, some celebrate it in May). It’s also a reminder that often people who do a…
Progress Studies Assorted Links 3
A new book on Progress Studies has recently been released, “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know” by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy. I wrote a short review/summary here. Another new Progress Studies related book was recently published, “Open: The Story of Human Progress” by Johan Norberg. Quick caveat, the book has been released in…
Book Review/Summary: “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know” by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy
This post will review/summarise a new book on progress that was recently released, “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know” by Ronald Bailey and Marian Tupy. It is a nice coffee table book and a really short but interesting quick read. They begin the book with an interesting poll conducted by YouGov in 2016…
A silver lining: do we have more trees now than in 1982?
A very commonly held opinion is that the number of trees in the world are decreasing over time. Indeed, that’s the opinion I held until recently. On the FAO’s website, it states: “Since 1990, it is estimated that 420 million hectares of forest have been lost through conversion to other land uses, although the rate…
Policies for Progress: Patent Buyouts
Recently I had a conversation with a reader/supporter of the blog. One of the things we talked about was a great 1998 paper, “Patent Buyouts: A Mechanism for Encouraging Innovation.” by Michael Kremer, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2019, together with Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. Like the policy I wrote about…
Progress Studies Assorted Links 2
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…
Progress Studies Assorted Links 1
I plan to send out a list of assorted links, which will signpost interesting things that I have come across recently that relate to Progress Studies. Also, quick update before the links. I’m writing a post on how AI may impact the labour market. This will be out in the next ten days (I’m in…
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