the world's oldest profession is prophesizing the end of the world every time we had something new guess what radio waves are gonna kill us the big question of progress is how much does technological and Industrial progress translate to human progress the 20th century served up some very hard lessons
in particular the world wars we also had a depression we had the rise of totalitarianism maybe actually progress was a mistake and yet obviously we have had amazing progress if you're alive right now you've won the cosmic Lottery the clothes that you wear the breakfast you ate this morning the fact that you
were able to take a hot shower then hop on a train or get in a car and take the elevator up to the 40th floor and sit behind a plate glass window in an air-conditioned room while you type on a computer all of this is a gift from our ancestors that we just that we just take
for granted and we've completely forgotten about all of the problems that have just been erased from history we didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones we left the Stone Age because we made some progress let's be very realistic about the problems we Face let's acknowledge them and yet at
the same time let's try to continue to believe in our agency to go find Solutions [Music] well hello everyone it's Jim O'Shaughnessy with yet another infinite Loops I am the luckiest guy in the world because I get the coolest guests who can have great conversations about things
I'm interested in hopefully you're interested in them too I think if you're listening you probably are today I've got Jason Crawford the founder and president of roots of progress which is a non-profit Institute trying to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century Jason welcome first
off there are dozens of us who are in favor of progress dozens it leads to my first question why why do we need all of these various institutions dedicated to something that you would think you the the mass of humanity would be in favor of welcome yeah thanks um first off great to be here
um you uh so you just asked a question that I have like a 15-minute answer for let me give you the the capsule summary and we can dive in you know wherever you want um yeah you might think okay progress well that's almost tautologically good right um I think the uh you know the thing is
that progress in our capabilities in our technology and and Industry and you know economic growth and so forth doesn't automatically mean progress in the outcomes that we care about for Humanity you know human well-being and so the big question of progress is um well how much do uh does progress and
capabilities actually lead to better outcomes um how much does does technological and Industrial progress translate to human progress now my capsule sort of summary of you know the answer of like why is it that this is such a controversial thing is well you know at the opening of the 20th century
let's say this was um not too controversial um the you know 1900 or so was a very optimistic time um because of you know really how much had been accomplished in in even just the preceding few decades kids um and many people were extremely optimistic about technology and the progress of Science and even they
believed the progress of morality and society and they saw all those things as going together and in short um the 20th century served up some very hard lessons and shattered some very naive Illusions um in particular the world wars uh you know but we also had a depression we had
the rise of totalitarianism around the world um there are a lot of other you know concerns that people you know things are people were starting to get worried about like um uh you know chemicals and um uh problems with the environment and and so forth um uh and uh you know short story is
that in the 20th century people started to really question the very idea of progress and in particular there was a kind of reactionary movement that arose around the 60s and 70s that started saying you know maybe maybe actually progress was a mistake and um or or maybe maybe modernity you know in kind
of the form that we that we chose to pursue it was was a mistake maybe progress is the kind problem maybe we should do a little less of it or do it in a different in a very different way and uh you know I think we've never resolved that and so today even though in many ways you know people are
um uh excited about progress or or in favor of it let's say I think they um I can't quite get excited about it uh many people because there's still a lot of fear and skepticism and uncertainty and doubt around the very idea of progress and around whether you know all of this progress is heading in a in you
know to a place that we really want so lots to unpack there um first off I think kind of like I I joke that um the uh prostitution is actually the world's second oldest profession the world's oldest profession is uh prophesizing the end of the world so this is to have been part of our
human uh OS and our system and culture forever and ever and ever right so yeah you're right about 60s and 70s and the reactions to sort of specific things that were kind of looked at as progress yeah but the unintended consequences were what they were getting really upset about but you know Rousseau
um had he built his entire career around it Wordsworth as a great poem called the world is too much with us you know the world is too much with us late and soon getting and spending we lay waste our powers little we see in nature that is ours right and so one can if you want to
go back historically and put things into context and of course we have Mr lud who came and and saw these looming machines and got pissed off and and a movement was born called the luddites uh which literally you know took weapons in hand and destroyed their technology of their era is so is there some uh underlying
thing is there some part of human The Human Condition that Rebels against what others like me and you might call progress and they don't look at it that way at all yeah certainly I mean so controversy about progress is I mean I think you're pointing out has really has always been
around in fact I mean the idea of progress is more the exception rather than the rule in history it's a relatively modern phenomenon for most of History you know people believed in um either a sort of cyclic view of history that it's all just ups and downs um or even a declinist narrative where
the past was a golden age from which we have fallen you know and perhaps will continue to fall and it was really only in the modern era by which I mean you know like you know 15 1600s on that we even really had anything like the modern idea of progress um and a lot of that comes from Francis
Bacon and his contemporaries who you know who talked about this I mean bacon in particular um uh you know pointed out some of the um some of the instances of progress that had come around in his day or in you know in in recent um uh decades uh the all of the exploration that we were doing throughout the world and the new
continents that were getting discovered invention is like you know the printing press the compass gun powder silk and you know bacon pointed out hey there's there's all this stuff that has just recently been discovered how much more like this is out there and he had a whole uh you know program of let's go
study the world let's do it better Let's Do Science better than we've been doing it and let's ultimately apply this to um you know let's find useful knowledge and apply this to the Arts um and and to Industry um and that was a program that people followed for the next you know a few
hundred years and I mean in a large way we are still following today but yes at the same time I mean even before the Industrial Revolution you had I mean you quoted you you mentioned Rousseau so Rousseau has this uh Discord I think it's discourse on the Arts and Sciences
it's called 1750 in which he basically says that um our our morals and our our character has been degraded and our our overall sort of human situation has has been degraded in proportion as our Arts and Sciences have advanced and he thought the best societies were those that were least touched by learning
um and uh and by and by science and by um you know all these things that we would call advances in progress and of course he he hadn't seen anything yet um right I mean the 1750 is really before the Industrial Revolution and here he's already you know very much against even just um what you know relatively
comparatively comparatively little uh is you know Science and Arts and so forth there was in his day so this has always been around certainly um in the 1800s I mean you had Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein which is this deeply you know pessimistic view of what science can do it creates a man and
he turns out to be a monster and he's come and he's uncontrollable and he and he you know and he kills and um uh there's one uh one that's on my reading list is um I don't know how to pronounce it Erawan by Samuel Butler so Butler is the butler after whom the butlerian Jihad is
uh is named because Butler had this uh AOL I mean he wrote a number of things one of the he wrote an essay called Darwin among the machines um where he talks about in 1860 something I think he's talking about the inevitability that these machines will eventually uh you know surpass us replace us and
um you know perhaps make us into their slaves and ends by saying we just have to smash and Destroy them all now declare war on all of them and just don't let this go any further um you know you know and of course I mean this this sort of worry uh persists uh well into the modern day I mean right
now this is exactly kind of the worry about artificial intelligence um so yeah these you know these ideas um have been around forever and I think there's just a sort of ebb and flow of which ideas are kind of dominating the conversation which ideas are popular which ideas are mainstream which ideas
are influencing policy um it's never that ideas totally go away or that one side is you know is completely reduced to zero but if you look at what was happening in the late 19th century there was so much amazing stuff going on so many inventions the light bulb the um you know the the
internal combustion engine um so you know the automobile in the early 20th century the airplane all sorts of stuff in chemistry um uh you know the entire electrical industry the telephone um in early 20th century we got radio um there was just you know just an enormous amount of stuff going on not to
mention um you know the germ Theory which was uh you know create starting to um even in the late 19th and early 20th century create um some real benefits in terms of Public Health um better Water Sanitation new vaccines food handling all kinds of things all this stuff is going on and I think it was
um I mean it was progress was so apparent to people it was so clear that so much good was being done and um and and that and it was it making people's lives better and it was giving them all sorts of amazing new inventions literally coming into their homes with light bulbs in the refrigerator in the
washing machine and and you know all sorts of things like that um that I think the conversation you know again people were just super optimistic and I mean frankly in some ways naively optimistic they thought that um all of this technological Improvement would go hand in hand with
moral and social Improvement and even that we were on a path to World Peace because of the increase of trade and uh and the growth of the economy and better communication technology like the Telegraph and so forth um and of course the 20th century did not bring World Peace it brought World War
um and so that again that was part of this sort of shattering of the illusion I think the world wars in particular dealt a blow to the optimists and it was a staggering Blow from which they had a lot of difficulty recovering and so it really brought a lot of much more fatalistic and and defeatist thinking to
the fore um as early as the 1930s so even before World War II but just after World War one and you know I guess depression and and starting to see the rise of totalitarianism yeah historians like Carl Becker um writing about progress and saying that the idea of progress has been
discredited and the doctrine has been refuted and uh you know and he's kind of plaintively asking what's left what can we say on behalf of the human race you know may we still in whatever different fashion believe in the progress of mankind that's uh something he wrote in a in a lecture in
the 1930s so um so I think that was really uh you know that was was really what happened this kind of there's this shifting tide um of people feeling better or worse about progress um that that sort of goes back and forth both in in response to events and also you know historical events but also
crucially in response to people's interpretation of those events and so it's a combination of the history and also which commentators which historians and philosophers and and journalists and other intellectuals sort of step forward to explain and to interpret that history and what's the you know what do they say
about it what what sense do they make of it what meaning do they give to it so I think that's what we saw in the 20th century wow and you know just to uh comment on a few things you touched on uh Rousseau uh if you haven't read Rousseau listeners and viewers give them a whirl because
um as you point out uh Rousseau maybe if or in another time I could see him as the head of a Taliban unit somewhere right yeah because uh he he he was pretty hardcore uh in his uh anger uh about uh what we call progress Etc and uh that's very interesting uh Shelley's Frankenstein I have a slightly different
take on it uh yes it was incredibly pessimistic but it was one of the first novels to say that man could create life didn't need the Gods and if you look historically at stories human Stories the subtitle of course is the modern Prometheus yes of course I know uh but that's the that's the
element of um the book that I was interested in right so kind of like pessimistic yes but look we are Prometheans and look at what we can do now um bacon uh you're hitting on like all of my favorite people uh the O'Shaughnessy fellowships were originally going to be called the
Atlantean fellowships because I took my inspiration from Bacon's uh Utopia Utopia novel on Atlantis and how they sent 12 investigators out into the world to see uh What uh well let's cook it out there we need to stay uh uh on top of this um and so the um the idea also seems to me to be really
you need to look at Evolution and the evolution of human psychology to understand why this sort of precautionary principle uh and pessimism are far more appealing to what I call you know shrink wrapped human OS human operating system uh you know I believe that our operating system
is emotionally governed and I believe that the emotion that governs all the others is fear specifically fear of the unknown and that makes sense if you're a hunter-gatherer living in a very unprogressed world because the world was a very very dangerous place for most humans um and and we are living in a vastly
safer world because of progress and Innovation um but you know every every Innovation that you mentioned right there's a great website called the pessimist archive.org and it goes all the way back uh through history and shows the actual writing of the time and every time we had something new
guess what the the um end of the world types came out and you know radio it's a bunch of newspaper articles about how radio waves are gonna kill us and they were always done with a shot of dead birds around a radio Tire uh Tower and and so it seems to me that pessimism is easy really easy because it
it you know it is comports with our operating system so to speak governed by fear um and and yet obviously we we have had amazing progress we are like I I always say that if you're alive right now you are you've won the cosmic Lottery you live at the safety safest best time for
humans ever in history and yet it it it went wrong right and and it's gotten to the point where you have an entire Institute devoted to doing a rebranding of progress so talk to me a little bit about your the ideas around which you think will get a better foothold and get people to like go oh yeah didn't think
about that maybe we should be more open to all this progress yeah um um let me just comment briefly on kind of the safety you know issue that you raised um you know as you point out and you can see in the pessimist archive people have always been worried about the safety of
new technologies this is true even in an era when uh you know even in times and places where people generally were very positive about progress and are very excited about the future any specific thing that came along they would get worried about and somebody would push back on and somebody would try to ban it
or regulate it or um you know put some kind of you know kind of hobble on it so um yeah so so people have always been worried about um you know specific new things that come along um they're often they're not worried about the they turn out not to be worried about the thing that's actually
dangerous right so there's a lot of there's a lot of worries about okay maybe radio waves you know radio wave is going to kill us right but um there was also there's also a lot of you know when when x-rays were actually um created people were super uh you know Cavalier with them for a lot for for
well it only took a few years for them to figure out oh this is really hurting people and maybe killing people um but in that time you know a lot of a lot of damage was done because people would just use it very casually even at parties and you know it's kind of a novelty hey x-ray your hand look you can
see your skeleton we you know um didn't realize you're maybe giving yourself cancer or something um so uh yeah so the actual risks can be very hard to um predict um but I think that so so here's the paradox the level of safety that we have achieved and I mean the reduction in
mortality rates the reduction in disease reduction in accidents vehicle fatalities all this stuff is one of the great achievements of progress it's one of the triumphs of uh you know of Science and Technology um and yet at the same time I think what's happened is as the sort of Baseline mortality rate decreases and as
we especially as we decrease like infant and child mortality so now pretty much everybody can expect to live you know a a decent you know full life um not so many people just killed killed right off before they even reach adulthood now there's kind of a a background expectation of safety and every new
thing that comes along now I think has to meet that you know sort of burden of safety so I think people were actually I think people are more concerned about new technologies now in part for a good reason which is that we've already made the world so safe that we don't want to introduce you know I mean in a world
where uh you know you could accidentally con you know get typhoid fever one day and be dead a week later and that could this could happen to anybody at almost any time if you say okay and now I'm introducing an automobile and you could maybe be in an accident and be dead you know the
next day like well that was just one more thing that might kill you tomorrow in the background world of lots of things that might kill you tomorrow right and now we have so few things that might kill you like tomorrow um that if you that to introduce a you know a new one I mean is a very high
standard right so now when we're introducing like self-driving cars those are held to a much higher standard than the original cars were right in terms of in terms of safety how much testing we're doing on them how much we make sure they're they're safe before we introduce them and so you know I think
part in in part we've gone overboard with a safety mindset but I also think part of it is is an is a sort of rational reaction to um to changing circumstances um and so you would ask me a question about then uh but maybe I'll give you a chance to react to that if you want yeah no uh thank you
um I you're absolutely right about safety and we're safest now and and maybe that's a motivating factor to put the bar higher and higher and higher on safety um because you know if you know the history of innovation for example if if we had today's attitudes when electricity was being broadly adopted it
would have been shut down because electricity was really dangerous and it burned things down and there was people getting killed by touching it without knowing and all of those things so from the point of view of a rational Optimist in the Deutsche incense right I
I I am rational about the things that can go wrong in in fact I anticipate much will go wrong as we make progress that's part and parcel to making progress right and and so you know we invented fire or discovered fire A Better Way Prometheus brought us fire and was punished severely uh for it but
um you know so we discover fire awesome creates the prefrontal cortex of the modern homo sapien sapien right without cooked food we couldn't have this prefrontal this glorious prefrontal cortex which allows for a lot of progress interestingly enough but fire can also be incredibly dangerous
you know you can burn down entire Villages or if you want to be funny about it George Carlin often quipped he goes you know I wonder about the first person who it wanted to invent a flamethrower right it's like you know I want to set those people over there on fire but they're too far away I wonder
what I could invest to make that happen right but but okay so fire very dangerous very beneficial right we also afterwards created fire alarms fire departments fire men and women fire safety fire exits we mitigate it as best we could many of the problems that came along with the incredible good use of
fire most importantly we stopped building entire cities out of wood I would right exactly and that's a secondary effect of you know what this Great Fire of London that Samuel papes wrote so eloquently about maybe we shouldn't be building things out of wood right but but so
back to back to the original uh thought how would you well you're doing it so please tell me what are you focusing on highlighting to try to bring a reasonable debate because I'm also in favor by the way of discussion um you know what what we see happen well we'll talk about AI I think probably
extensively as you know I'm involved with stability AI as an investor and I'm chairman of the board big believer in uh what AI can do for Humanity uh doesn't mean I don't see the problems there will be problems and and so I think maybe I'm naive and idealistic here but I think that uh you know sunlight is the best
disinfected and that that having a good conversation from both sides is not only needed it's necessary right but what happens of course is what has already happened right you you have the the um uh Unabomber over here right and we won't name the class but there's a lot of really smart people who are making
outrageous statements about what should you mentioned the the uh the uh but but Larry and Jihad right which dune made very famous um and you know they're basically calling for that and then you have the people over here saying no everything's going to be great with with AI and it's
perfect and it's always perfect I think obviously they're they're confusing possibilities and probabilities right and when you stake out these extreme parts of the argument it it makes it very difficult to have a good progress making conversation about it that's part of your aim so tell me a bit
about what you're hoping to achieve with the Institute yeah um the mission of my nonprofit the roots of progress is to establish a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century and um I think you do that in a few ways um one by sort of actually creating the intellectual foundations of that
movement the ideas that it's going to be based on um too by building a community around those ideas and then three by um sort of getting the ideas out to a broader sort of mass audience through education and journalism and um you know art and entertainment and so forth but the foundation of it all
really is that that the first thing I mentioned which is the you know the the ideas um and so I think there are uh there are a few different areas where we really need a lot more intellectual work um one is the history of progress uh and sort of I I think the one of the biggest
reasons why people can be so ambivalent about progress at best or hostile to it at worst is um just not having this really deep and Keen sense of how much progress has been made of how much worse life used to be um we're in this situation where it's just so easy to take all of the progress
of the modern world for granted and um uh you know I mean the the the clothes that you wear the you know the breakfast you ate this morning the The Mattress you woke up on with a you know a nice foam mattress or inner spring mattress the the fact that you were able to take a hot shower you know in the
morning and then hop on a train or or a work to to work or get in a car and take the elevator up to the 40th floor and sit behind a plate glass window in an air-conditioned room room while you type on a computer to earn your living uh you know and then get home in the evening to
to relax with streaming music or movies I mean all of this is a gift from our ancestors that we just that we just take for granted and we've completely forgotten about um all of the problems that our ancestors had to deal with that are have just been erased from history you know epidemics of smallpox or cholera
um the uh you know the muck of you know manure in the city streets which you know at one point was such a problem that people were worried about how our cities were ever going to keep growing because there was there were so many horses and so much manure on the streets um the you know the if you had a
relative uh go uh travel between you know America and Europe they were on a boat for two months and you know they could easily be lost at sea and you wouldn't even hear about it right away uh or you know if you had a child and they scraped their finger on a rusty nail they could die from that right
today now today we have tetanus shots but back then um so they're all these things that we just don't even have to worry about um I mean food security right I mean the the just the incidence of famine um you know and how easy it was for famine to be induced by a drought or a
flood or a frost or blight or you know pests um so we we take all of this for granted and we are we're like fishing water with technology it surrounds us so much that we've just it receives into the background and we forget about it and so I think that the number one most basic thing that needs to be done is
just to tell this story and to and to popularize it to just remind people of How Far We've Come of how much progress we've actually made of how much worse the past um really was and how how great we have it today in in so many ways and I think that needs to begin in in in school I
mean I think really in in high school there ought to be you know courses on this stuff and University um so that's so that's number one is the history um I think another thing that we need in terms of intellectual work is uh actually attacking the problems uh especially the ones that arose in the
20th century that made people really question the idea of progress um we we can't uh deny those problems or dismiss them or try to shove them under the rug right they're real a lot of very real problems around progress safety is an issue um uh the misuse of Technology uh the
evil uses of technology for war and oppression social upheaval technological unemployment um uh pollution health hazards all of these things are real um what we need is not to be sort of fatalistic and defeatist about them but to be uh you know more solutionist to acknowledge the problems but then look
for ways to move forward usually with uh you know by solving the problems of progress with more progress which is how we've solved most of the problems of progress throughout most of history and so I think we need um you know people kind of looking at all the problems of
the modern world everything that's been blamed on progress um and looking at yeah okay let's take this problem seriously and how do we actually solve it um and then the last kind of area I'll call out is uh a positive vision of the future something constructive what's the future that we are excited to create
what's a future that we really want to live in um right now I think you know bold ambitious visions of the future have mostly been lost you know our society once dreamed of moon bases and flying cars and today I feel like the best that kind of the most optimistic Vision that
you get out of anybody in the mainstream is uh one where we manage to avoid disaster one where we stop climate change prevent pandemics you know maybe alleviate a little bit of extreme poverty uh but you know the notion that we could uh return to space or have Fusion Energy or nanotech manufacturing
or you know all of this stuff uh just feels to too many people like a kind of very abstract sci-fi you know fantasy wow Jason that's great and I want to pick up on the your last comment there the sci-fi fantasy so so I think you know if you also look at science fiction uh from the year 1900 which you cited
earlier well you know you've got H.G Wells you've got a lot of writers who are incredibly optimistic in their science fiction right for for people who don't want to go all the way back to Wells in the time machine think Star Trek in its original uh uh uh series uh of the late 1960s I believe uh very very
optimistic view of the future and then of course we got the Terminator Mad Max um at all right and you know listen I I love some of those movies too uh they they're dramatic and they're fun but they they persistently and consistently preach dystopia idea as as the result of
progress and so one of the things that we're doing at O'Shaughnessy ventures in our infinite media division is we had a contest uh you know the Netflix popular series Black Mirror right um we said well I wonder if there's anyone writing white mirror stories and the winner actually is writing an entire
book about it and we're exploring making movies of those science fiction stories that he's writing so we completely agree on the idea of telling better stories and getting people more excited um I also love your idea of something that I guess I have a blind spot on
because I love history so much and that is that you know there's maybe a big segment of society it really doesn't know about how shitty literally shitty cities were when we had horses everywhere and what they smelled like and and the the the people had to literally Wade through to go about their day
um and and so I think that that is great too and if we can tell both the historical story um better through you know stories through movies through conversations Etc I think that's great um and then tell the idea or have writers creators coming up with white mirror type stories as opposed to Black
Mirror I think that that's very very helpful um but I but I also wonder um you know how do we make like progress cool huh how do we make the vibe of progress like something cool kids want to be espousing right because I'm not paying glossian in my Outlook at all I I'm I'm very aware and cognizant of the fact
that with progress come problems and we have to be cognizant of that we have to be aware of that we have to address those problems you know bucket uh Beckett's uh try again fail again uh try again fail better you know I I'm doing I'm butchering his quote but the the idea of iteration the idea of uh
understanding that um we have to be Solutions based I love that aspect of what you're talking about um talk talk to me a little bit more about that how how do you make this cool because like everything's a Vibe right and uh how do we make especially young people today like really really uh
enamored of and desirous of pushing progress I actually think in regards to progress being cool my impression is actually that we're kind of a bit of a better position there than we were maybe a few decades ago um you know in particular so I mean before I got into writing about progress I was in the tech industry and my
backgrounds in computer science and um you know there was a time when when people under computers were just the Geeks right um you know and then somebody um what was the uh maybe there's a documentary or something somebody somebody did a a a film or a book or something called Revenge of the Nerds
yeah and it was a right it was about how oh well who you know who kind of took over the world was like Bill Gates and uh you know and jobs and Wozniak and all these guys who um had just been the computer geeks and it turned out they became some of the most you know kind of
wealthy and and powerful and influential people in society um you know and and today it had Zuckerberg and a bunch of other folks so um uh and and today we've got Elon Musk right um so I feel like I feel like maybe the um I'm not sure if progress is uncool I do think that um having more positive and specific
visions of the future would definitely help motivate people right I think um I think we need uh I think we need something Beyond just cure disease and maybe stop climate change and so forth I mean those are good goals but I think we do need a um you know a positive idea of of the kind of the amazing stuff and it
sounds like sci-fi um and and it really doesn't it's hard to talk about you know something like the potential for nanotech without sounding a little bit like you've just been reading too much sci-fi um but the fact is that and this comes back to the history sci-fi has come true our entire world
today would look like sci-fi to someone from 100 or 200 years ago and so um you know sci-fi actually happens and um and it does change the world in these crazy ways um I think I mean my hunch is that it's less about is does progress seem cool and maybe more about um does it seem uh does it seem moral does
it seem um you know like something that's actually doing good for Humanity does you know uh so so there's kind of a combination of one do we even have a a kind of a specific um thing that people might get excited about um and that's the that's the futurism aspect right and then the other is you
know but what about people who feel like um well to do good for the world uh I need to I need to not go join these tech companies because they're actually busy destroying the world and I need to maybe join the efforts that are stopping the tech companies or I need to you know do
something else entirely right um I think that's the I think we need to to funnel not only people's kind of cool energy but also their moral energy you know towards um towards making progress and so one of the things that I would uh you know one of the deepest changes that I would like
to see in society is coming to think of scientists and inventors and entrepreneurs as a moral archetype as actually sort of you know a view of kind of the Creator as a certain type of hero and that life of creation and invention and Discovery and building as actually a a noble quest to pursue
wow I love that idea um you know uh and as I was listening to you I was thinking of EO Wilson's you know we have Paleolithic emotions medieval institutions and Godlike Technologies yes oh that's not the best mix in the world um but I I love the idea of the Creator as hero um and uh you know Steve Jobs like he
made text super cool right and and and so I think that's a a a great story in and of itself I I wonder though about using morality as our lens to look through though because like that that is isn't that kind of the third why or third line of the rail that you're not supposed to
touch because that's where all the electricity is because obviously people have very very different views of what is and what is not moral and you know that could be sorted by one the religion one adheres to the society one is brought up in um you know Eastern societies are much more group oriented versus Western
societies which are much more individualistically uh oriented um so talk to me a little bit about when you're using the term moral framework what exactly do you mean yeah so you know we don't all have to uh agree on every aspect of a whole code of morality or religion or whatever in
order to um in order to solve this problem or to make progress um but I do think that if there's a um if there's a dominant view that kind of technology and Industry are essentially uh you know destroying Society then those things will be seen as immoral activities and um and I think if if people see it
in that way then um we're gonna get a lot less of technology and Industry right so it's just kind of at that simple very basic level um you know maybe we don't all have to agree that this is like some sort of moral ideal but um but definitely I think we at least we at least need some
clarity on you know is is is technology and Industry destroying the world or is it actually a tool that can make the world a better place yeah that that's that is a a great example um and you know it's interesting to me because on the one hand you've written extensively about how progress requires
not only optimism but agency and the uh difference between a prescriptive and a descriptive optimism um which I I find absolutely fascinating in your writing um but I completely agree about the Need For What I Call rational optimism um and agency and yet concurrent with that we see a culture that is
increasingly a culture which seeks to reward victimization which seeks to reward um grievance culture um and which points the finger Elsewhere for all problems it's not my fault it's those e people fill in the blank where you happen to be you're you're the the the culture is inculcating
um a defenseless victim style mentality while at the same time making it um uh giving it a sense of entitlement right so a culture that is producing entitled victimized non-egiantic people how the hell is that going to fill the needs for you know uh rational optimism with lots of agency
come on give me a harder question um I never said it would be easy yeah no I mean look um I yeah I don't know how to solve that problem I sympathize I think those broader cultural Trends are I mean I I see that too I haven't uh it's not something I feel confident to really comment on kind of where does all
that come from what does it mean but I I I sympathize with this seeing um uh a a loss of agency both the individual level and the social level right feeling like we're not in control of our lives our Destiny or our or you know the future of our society and um I mean you you you pinch you you
pointed to some of my writings about the term optimism I tend to I tend to try to avoid mostly the term optimism because I think it's uh it can mean a lot of different things and it's uh it can be a little unclear what kind of optimism you're talking about there's one kind of optimism that basically amounts to
complacency which is the the denial of problems it's kind of just you know you put on your Rose Colored Glasses you say the future looks bright um there's no problems in our path everything's we're on the right track um and no no need to worry right and um uh you know the problem with complacent
optimism is it's uh often not true there's we're sometimes we're not on the right track sometimes the problems are looming and huge um and so what I uh there was this uh there's a lot of different ways to formulate this there was there was one that was uh well pessimism of the
intellect optimism of the will right which is the idea that um okay maybe let's let's have a sort of very Steely eyed kind of you know let's let's be very realistic about the problems we Face let's acknowledge them and yet at the same time let's try to continue to believe in our agency to go find
Solutions so I wrote a whole piece on this for um MIT technology review and I called out what's one of my favorite historical examples which is this guy William Crooks Sir William Crooks who was a famous British physicist and who at the end of the 19th century um called out made out this whole big
speech calling out uh the fact that frankly the world was running out of fertilizer and was heading towards a major agricultural crisis um now you know and this sounds a lot like people uh worrying about sustainability today right in fact one way you can interpret this is to say you
know he was essentially saying that the the world's agricultural system was not sustainable um and and an important sense it was not we were running out of uh out of fertilizer it was true um and he had the numbers to prove it and back it up you know and people who called him alarmists at the time and he
sort of you know and he kind of defended himself against that he's like well you know so you call me alarmist but look I've got the facts here you can just look at the numbers we're running out of fertilizer but at the same time what did he what you know what did he say to do in response his point in and
his purpose in calling out and calling this out was um you know not like say a modern degrother to say well we need to reduce population stop eating so much um and uh you know try to do with less less farmland and less fertilizer and so forth no what he said was he called on
the chemists of the world to invent synthetic fertilizer um and in his in the same speech where he was calling out this huge problem that we were facing and in really dire language I mean he didn't pull his punches um in that same speech he pointed to ways that we might be able to solve the
problem uh and in fact he had the essence of the solution correct which was to fix nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form that could be you know that that plants could use it um now he was uh in that speech he was pointing towards um a solution that involved electricity which isn't the way we ended up going we
ended up doing what became known as the hopper bash process um but you know he had the the essence of the solution correct um we're going to do it through we're going to solve this problem Through Chemistry we're going to fix nitrogen out of the atmosphere we're gonna make
synthetic fertilizer and we're gonna and we're gonna be able to keep growing and that is exactly uh what happened within you know less than two decades after he made that speech so that to me is the essence of solutionism right you might be calling out a very dire problem in Stark and even alarmist sounding terms
and yet at the same time you are um you know you're looking for the best way to move forward with progress and growth I love that I love the essay and uh I I it's a great example because uh you know we go back to Malthus and they were also saying we're all gonna die of starvation
because we couldn't sustain population growth uh with the then applicable and knowable um agricultural methods but Malthus didn't he was a degrother right he he didn't he didn't basically say hey we got to invent uh solutions to this he created what they call the club of Rome which is sort of like the ultimate
pessimist club and and the idea that we no no to The Only Solution here is to not grow anymore and to go backwards but I I wonder if you know because it gets into David Deutsch one of my heroes the author of uh the beginning of infinity which everyone who knows me is tired of
listening to me recommend as a book um but you it requires the ability to understand that along with new inventions will become will come new problems but that we will also be able to solve them and and the challenge uh on the fertilizer is the great example of that right you here's a problem it's a real problem
here's what I suggest as a solution I think that that's great very deutschian in the idea of like yeah there's going to be a lot of problems but we're going to also be able to solve them and but standing in the way of that is the again back to human OS human operating system you know Julian Simon
wrote a book called The Ultimate resource and he was talking about human creativity and you know Deutsch has us as the only Universal explainers and um and people who are able to figure things out which I agree with but then you you know smack dab in the middle of all of that is this profound
almost inability of the majority of humans to understand that we don't know everything if you if you if you look at many of the arguments that are being made now many of them have planted axioms that we know everything there is to know and I I don't know how anyone can espouse that right if if you don't even have to
know much history to know that we don't know what it uh uh Edison say we don't know one one thousand the nothing uh I'm butchering that a little bit but the idea that we already know everything hobbles I think significantly hobbles our ability to understand that we don't that we cannot
prophesize future developments and discoveries we have a horrible track record at that um and and so I like your idea of you know a Solutions based first off identify the problem it's a real problem but then suggest some solutions right we we didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of
stones right we left the Stone Age because we made some progress um and you know and we continued to make some progress in the ancient world and then Rome fell and we had a thousand years of darkness and then we had you know the scientific method the the Gutenberg uh the beginnings maybe of a
human Colossus being built um so I this is a I'm just going to put it weirdly to you but do we deserve progress do humans deserve progress I think we deserve as much progress as we can achieve certainly um I mean um you uh so you you mentioned David Deutsch a huge fan of Deutsch and his
book beginning of infinity it's one of my top recommendations for people interested in the idea of progress um and uh one of his key ideas in that book is the notion that progress always creates more problems um we are we've never solved the last problem any new solution will create new
problems hopefully there are better problems to have usually they are um and uh and hopefully uh and usually they are problems that we can solve in turn with more progress which will create more problems and and so forth it really never ends um I think once you uh you know one key
is to learn to see that as a good thing and to the to see the fact that progress always creates new problems not as an indictment of progress but simply as the natural order of the Universe um when you stop thinking about things in terms of a static kind of view of the universe where we're trying to reach
some end State and then that's good and we're just going to stay there but you think more in Dynamic terms of we are always on a journey the journey is never ending we're always trying to improve new things are always going to come up new problems are always going to arise
we'll come up with new Solutions we'll move forward and that process of of motion that Dynamic process never ends you know then I think you can see aha it's not about avoiding the problems it's about solving them as quickly as possible when they come up and spending as little time with them you know as
possible and and making progress as fast as possible so yeah I agree obviously um but I wonder as I listen you know is this is this discussion is this debate inherently political um and and the reason I ask that is I I subscribe a bit to menken's view that people who crave power will use
Scare Tactics to um compel others to do their bidding right I I personally have no interest in having power over other people I would love to empower other people I think that that's the only way we have moved towards a better more Equitable Society but like unfortunately the base rate for
my attitude there if we just look historically ain't so great right because we have you know uh this this flaw in in our human nature protect me protect me and it gets back to the you know if I was if I want to take over a country yeah you know what I would sow fear uncertainty and doubt that's what I
would sow what does our modern media so every day fear uncertainty and doubt why do they do it because they're maximizing the objective function for Revenue right and I think and now I made an AI reference there I'm a nerd I'm sorry um but like we can maximize the objective function for human creativity
for human flourishing for a variety of things and yet you know the the the the the butch during Menken here the the uh the impulse to save humanity is almost always a false flag or the impulse and desire to rule Humanity right so enter politics I I said many times I'm actually worried
that our political system at least in this country is so far behind the understanding and the technology and everything it's like you know we make jokes about it we have the senator um who died in the plane crash sadly but you know he was an old school guy and they were this was about the internet
and and basically they've got I can't remember his name he was the senator from Alaska but uh essentially you got the the the meme the internet is a series of tubes and and so we we have institutions political institutions specifically that have the power to forbid to have the power power to ban
um you know and and I just wonder that are they so far behind being switched on about what's actually going on that the regulations that look again the reality of this situation is the tech leaders of today are going to what desire regulation why regulatory capture best way to do that is to get get there first
then tell the lawmakers oh it's really dangerous you need to have a lot of rules around us around this right and Regulatory capture is the rule of the day I think I saw something I don't know uh recently that you know the the last bill actually written by a congress Critter was like 25 years ago they're
all written by lobbyists now they're written by Private Industry and and what is there a solution to that hopefully please you keep throwing these really easy questions of me Jim I don't know you know so look let me start with a big picture you know you talk about the kind of
maybe the inherent human desire to rule others and you know so forth if not inherent then maybe a common desire to rule um but you know in the big picture I think we've made a lot of progress you know we we talk about progress and progress we usually talk kind of think about science
technology and Industry and economics um but I think we've actually made a lot of progress uh at a high level in Morality society and governance as well I agree so yeah you know the impulse to rule has has always been around used to be a lot worse in terms of what it could uh do um or or what it did on average right so
if you think just a few hundred years ago right and so in 1775 the entire world more or less was under monarchy that was our default system of government uh slavery was the rule in you know many parts of the world if not if not most of the world um you know of course women didn't have
uh you know many rights in in a lot of places if not everywhere um uh Etc right and you can kind of go on um today we have um you know representative democracies uh Democratic republics that are that is that is a model for much of the world not everywhere um slavery has been officially outlawed
everywhere in the world and it survives only in um you know some some very small places where it's overlooked by the the government um uh you know women have many more rights in in most places and um so we've we've come a long way and we have um we've really improved that uh uh you know oppression and um I mean even
War right you know now you know we may be in an unstable world that could that could you know plunge into war again but um we've been doing fairly well you know in terms of of War overall for the last several decades so um so I think things have gotten better and um and so I think progress happens
in in politics too in Morality and Society it's much less clear um it's much harder to measure it feels much less consistent much more you know two steps forward one step back versus science and technology which just kind of race ahead um but I think that but I think it's real
um I think one of the so one of the problems in the US especially and maybe more broadly in the world today when it comes to some of the stuff that you're talking about is that um when we look at the problems created by progress we very often uh adopt a solution that is in my opinion more or less micro
management right so what the so the solution to um you know to so let's just make this concrete right um something's going on like uh oh you know at the turn of the century last century it turns out like oh a lot of drugs were actually um uh just total fraud and um you know
meat handling was in a very bad State and and milk and like food handling in general and a lot of food was adulterated so okay really bad things going on right um or um you know you could look at all sorts of the cities cities burning down um disease spreading um uh whatever those electrical you know
power lines are dangerous Etc all these kind of problems but then the the the American impulse at least or through most of the 20th century has been okay um let's bring in inspectors so let's set up a regulatory agency let's have more oversight um and let's either put up a whole bunch
of really detailed rules that tell people exactly what they have to do or let's get an inspector you know or a regulator in place who will uh him you know he or she will be the one who will tell everybody kind of exactly what they have to do um and I think this has led to uh sort of you know governance by
micromanagement um and so I think you know coming back to what I said is really needed from the progress movement um I would love to look back or have a really comprehensive look back over the 20th century and and Beyond and look at all of these problems that arose that we said we need another uh maybe regulatory
agency in response to and just start to think about some alternate ways that that uh that some of those problems could have been solved um there were again we can't just be sort of complacent optimists and say like well we don't need all of these rules because you know everything will
be fine without them everything was very demonstrably not fine uh without them um and there are real issues of um of safety and of uh you know just all kinds of hazards that can be created um through through all kinds of technology and misuse or or abuse or or negligence um but I think that we should be you
know looking for Solutions other than let's come up with an enormous number of sort of very nitpicky rules that lock things in place and make it difficult to innovate um and uh and that also have this tendency to just sort of grow over time without ever uh being revised or at
least it's very difficult to revise them right regulation tends to be a ratchet where it kind of goes in One Direction it just ratchets up and it's very hard um not totally impossible but very hard to ever kind of undo it yeah I uh agree I serve on the board of a group called common good here in New
York Philip Howard has written lots of books about this and it is the replacement of the Judgment uh hopefully good of individual people in power men or women uh normally in government or Regulatory Agencies um with rules and um it takes the agency away from the individual for example the mandatory
sentencing guidelines for judges are absolutely ridiculous because they hobble the judge from using their common sense and you know their ability to weigh the situation of this particular instance right if it's three strikes and you go to jail forever and those strikes
were really not horrible but you know still counted as strikes you're sending potentially a very redeemable person to jail for the rest of their lives because that's the rule right if you're a fan of Douglas Adams you know all about the bogons right they're the most bureaucratic race in the galaxy and
everything is done according to rules that are Antiquated and usually lead to disaster um but I'm not at all opposed to regulatory oversight I think it's required right in in a world as you mentioned uh you know Upton Sinclair wrote all the books about the what was going on in the food industry and and
some really bad things that needed addressing and I often use my own birth the year of birth 1960 as an example of how much America in particular has changed for the better right um in 1971 a married woman could not get a credit card in her own name if she didn't have a letter signed giving her
permission from her husband oh crazy I mean just even hearing that I was 11 years old when that happened and you know all sorts of other uh things have gotten so much better in this country I think especially in this country um and you know that's that's part of the thing that makes it
um a challenge right for me because like if you're looking if you're looking how did goodness how did America become the richest most powerful country in the history of all Humanity basically by letting free people try out right there's a great book by Bill Bryson uh called America One Summer 1921 I think
is the title of it and it's so cool because when you read it like you forget we're new like radio was new Lindbergh was the most popular and best known figure in human history right and the guy who announced his welcoming party when he flew back and landed in the United States
Bryson points out in the book that individual I can't remember his name but that individual the radio announcer spoke to More Humans than any other human in human history and that my parents were babies right and so we've compressed a lot of progress both social progress which I think is awesome
uh with technological progress but I still you know where where do we get the balance how do we have how do like Can you steal men for example have you steel manned the case against progress and and what would that even look like I'm destroying all these softballs yeah definitely no I've thought about
this a lot and um uh I intend to uh have a chapter uh or two on this in the book that I'm working on so I'm I'm writing a book about progress and there's going to be an entire chapter on is progress good and it's gonna you know look at I mean you can look at every single argument in
one chapter but we're going to try to look at a lot of the you know the top things um yeah no there are there are look like I said the problems of progress are real um and so uh we can't you know and when I say we need a new philosophy of progress for the 21st century I I say that very deliberately
um because I think one of the things we can't do is go back to the sort of naive optimism of the 19th century um I think we need to acknowledge uh you know the problems so um there are all sorts of health hazards um and safety uh you know concerns uh I mean every almost every technology has
its own set of these um there is social upheaval and technological unemployment there is uh the potential for these things to be used for war and oppression um and so uh uh you know all of these are real and um we you know as we develop new technology and deploy it I think we need to think about
um about all of these things and think about how to how to mitigate these problems and I think we need to think about it you know more in advance than we used to right so um I think historically especially if you go back to you know before the middle of the 20th century or so um a lot of progress was made on a very
reactive basis you build something you put it out there oops then you see what went wrong now we can learn from failure and create um you know and and put something in place right we build the automobile we put it out there oops a lot of people are getting into crashes maybe we should
have seat belts in this thing um you know and and ultimately maybe it should have airbags and anti-lock brakes and and all that stuff I mean the first you know the first cars didn't have windshields they didn't even have brake lights or turn signals I mean there's a lot of stuff right we didn't we'd have
stop signs we didn't have traffic lights and we didn't have we didn't even we certainly didn't have driver's licenses right so there's a whole lot of stuff that was missing from that beginning and this is kind of what I was getting at earlier when I was saying like over time
as we've made the world safer people I think demand more safety from new technologies and so I think there actually is a positive trend of doing more uh safety testing on on Technologies up front um and I mean I gave so I gave autonomous vehicles self-driving car this is an example I think a lot with um
you know in biotech um certainly you know new treatments like genetic therapies are going to get way more testing done on them than the the first Pharmaceuticals did more than a century ago um I think um uh I mean in general biotech is an area that I a field that I think is very
conscious of its own uh potential to do harm and of the responsibility that it needs to take um and there are examples of this throughout um you know throughout the last you know several decades of of kind of Biotech history moments when people just said whoa this thing uh you know this thing could
be dangerous um and let's pause a moment let's slow down let's think about what you know how we how we need to uh to deal with this I mean so one famous example is um in 1975 when recombinant DNA uh techniques were invented and we could now do new types of genetic engineering
um a bunch of folks got together at what is now known as the Asilomar conference to discuss specifically like hey we could engineer some like some crazy viruses or you know something that might escape the lab we could actually create a big problem here what are we going to do about it and they came up with safety
standards for you know how to do your research and um uh you know what kind of safety equipment you needed When what when do you need a uh you know a lab with a reverse pressure so that if the door opens the air blows in and not out and when do you need to wear protective equipment and when do you need you know
so on and so forth um you know more recently um there was a researcher at MIT Kevin esvelt who created um they came up with the idea of the crispr-based gene drive so this is using crispr genetic technology to um uh be able to take a gene modification and actually uh spread it
through a population much faster than uh you know it would kind of naturally um uh spread through any kind of evolutionary process um and he came up with this idea and his first thought was oh my God you could use this to say you know eliminate the ability of mosquitoes to carry malaria
and we could end that disease and save you know all sorts of lives and then the next day he thought whoa wait a sec there's a lot of other things we could do with this technology bi besides and malaria and before I tell anybody about this before I even tell my advisor about this I should I gotta think this through and
he spent a lot of time thinking about the implications of the technology how it could be used for good or bad whether it favor in his terms whether favors offense or favors defense um and ultimately he decided to tell the world about it and to publish it and you know he decided it was better to have it
out there in the world than not but he was very careful in in and thoughtful in in thinking that through um so I think technologists can and should be responsible about their work in that way could not agree more um and uh I think again it's a great example of you know as we learn from uh
earlier Innovations you know you you mentioned the car um and That's a classic one because everyone knows about cars and um uh how how the path started with them being very dangerous um you know that was the red uh red uh flag idea was because briefly one of the states had a thing that somebody had to
walk in front of a car holding a red lamp Lantern who've worn all of the horses that this dangerous vehicle was coming um so I I think that we have iteratively become smarter about anticipating the secondary and tertiary uh effects of an innovation or a technology and I'm
totally 100 in favor of that um but then I worry okay um you have Rogue actors out there you have Rogue States out there where are good intentions really don't have any bearing and you know I I've thought about this endlessly like you know after after the horrors of uh chemical warfare during World War II we
effectively banned it right and there were very few chemical weapons used during World War II even though you had Adolf Hitler up there on the other side kind of the personification of evil how did how did that one stick and and and uh have compliance by some very bad actors
uh whereas others don't for example how long have we had nuclear weapons and the fact the world has not been blown up is and by many you could say that's somewhat surprising the fact that we have these weapons of mass destruction I I saw a cartoon just a brief digression which is
um uh AGI which is sentient artificial intelligence something I think is way in the future many people think it's now uh you can have a discussion about why they think that and why I think what I think but the little cartoon was cute it was like uh uh so it shows the computer becoming accentuate the AI becoming
sentient and launching all the nuclear weapons into the sun with with the with the with the uh a I say why in God's name are you women's I have these things right so how how do we how do we engineer it so to speak so that we can get widespread uh compliance even with Bad actors out there yeah
that's another problem I don't have the answer to um I uh and you know in in particular there's a a concern that um you know maybe up until now it's mostly taken nation states to do really bad things like have nuclear weapons um but uh there's uh I forget where this comes from the you know the notion that
every some number of years the IQ that it takes to destroy the world drops by one point and So eventually we might have Technologies in the hands of everyone any individual that would be so powerful that they could you know destroy everything and then it doesn't even take
um a nation-state right it just takes one terrorist group or one uh you know or One Lunatic um I I mean I have only uh only a couple of basic things to say in response to that I mean one is that um uh I think you know we need to develop defensive technology at the same time as we develop you know potentially
offensive capabilities um and uh you know that's very specific to each potential technology right I mean what what would guard against um you know a bioterrorism or you know an engineered or released uh deliberately reduced released pandemic is very different from what guards
against nuclear weapons or you know and so forth um but I think in each of those areas we do need to think about um you know what what kind of defenses could we have um and then you know but the other thing I'll just say is I think the fact that we haven't used nuclear weapons for about 75 years almost 80 years
um the fact that um you know that that some of these other other scenarios that you can really imagine would be quite terrible have not come to pass gives me a little bit of hope that maybe there's just enough you know sort of humanity and decency out there that make at least wanting to destroy the world or
being willing to um quite rare yeah I think uh you're the the scariest thing in your answer is something I've thought a lot about too which is um I listen I believe that AI should be ubiquitous and everywhere uh because I think if we you if we add a digital divide to an economic divide uh that
gets very scary very quickly but I think your point is well taken um about the ability by pushing down the IQ it takes to destroy the world um and you know unfortunately we have seen um through some just lived history that there are certain ideologies that lead to terrorism which lead to a desire that
they honestly believe that this is hell where they are right now Earth and that there's this golden Paradise uh if they blow themselves up and become a martyr um that makes them very willing to take down the rest of the world too so I I passionately agree with your idea that
we have to get good at defense as well and uh you know for example in AI I think um we we need a prize for deep uh fake detection um and you know I'm gonna put money up on one of those prizes hopefully stability AI will be the uh AI company to launch this Challenge and uh Shaughnessy Ventures will match whatever
they're offering because defense is something we're going to need to think a lot about um and I and and not simply relying on the better angel of people's Nature's uh because there's a lot of people who have you know their death Cults out there and and they are quite willing themselves to
die um and they're quite Welling if you give them the tools to bring all of humanity with them um so thinking defensively I think is required uh going forward uh I just wonder though that like even that part of this conversation right um people hear that and they're like what
and and then you just give them another reason to be frightened and I think that's how you get the pangolazi and everything is perfect in the best of all possible worlds on the naive Optimist side right uh like I'm incredibly optimistic but I'm a realist and like if you're a realist like you are and that's
why I think your Institute is great and what you're doing is great but um you know you you hesitate right because if you bring up something that's on a real problem um you you don't want to get it to so you scare the out of everyone so badly that they're like no shut it down shut everything down I mean
like is there is there an easier path for that or am I over worrying the situation good good I think the most important thing to do is for the technologists themselves I mean the the scientists and the engineers and the founders of technology companies and so forth for them to be very clear
that they are taking the risk seriously that they are um and that they have a plan and tell people what your plan is um tell people what risks you aren't worried about and how you're addressing them right and sort of build that confidence through openness um but present a plan and of you know
here's how we're going to move forward um uh you know and at the same time help people see the benefits like what's the upside of this of this new thing um why should we you know why why should we why should we be excited about this at all like why should we if there are these risks what makes it worth it right
and so just sort of paint that full picture um but I think I think being open about all of that including the risks and the plan for addressing them but making it a positive plan forward is is the way to go yeah I I that that is what I concluded as well um you know and my worry of course was
in this in this era of gotcha um and and arguments made not with good intentions um it becomes a challenge right uh and and you just have to hope that um the the people building these Technologies the people investing in these Technologies Etc have that kind of open uh minded
approach uh again sunlight is the best disinfectant and and so I I believe we should have a Wiki um that is moderated right so that people can't just go on and say everyone's gonna die and that's it um but you know that that can dissolve very quickly if there is a um you know a uh campaign if you're
uncertainty a doubt again do we want to rule we're gonna sow severe uncertainty and doubt and there are no there's no um lack of those people in the world right who just want to use the uh you know they just want to see everything burn um and so I I think that uh projects like yours like that's why I am
passionately in favor of I think it's a great uh project I think it's a great Institute and I think that um as we go forward uh you'll learn more and you'll get better at it and you'll draw more people to your cause hopefully this will draw more people to your cause um and so you can 100 count on my uh
support uh in this endeavor at the end of each of our podcasts we ask our guests um we're gonna make you the emperor of the world uh for one day um you can't kill anyone and you can't throw anyone in a re-education camp but we're gonna hand you a magical microphone and you're gonna be able to speak two
things into that microphone and you're going to incept the entire world whenever their next morning is when they wake up every eight every one of the eight billion people in the world are gonna think it just had the two greatest ideas and I'm gonna pursue both of them what are you going to incept in in all of the
world's population foreign so my I mean the two basic ideas that I'm trying to get out to the world or two two of them are like one progress is real and important and the progress in science technology uh you know industry and the economy over the last couple hundred years are basically
one of the greatest things that's happened to humanity um and we should really want to keep that going um and number two we can keep it going we are nowhere near done there is so much more progress to be had and if we look back at people from a couple hundred years ago and we say wow
they were desperately poor by the standards of today or flipping it around that we are in fact fantastically Rich by the standards of that time well if we think about the future we should be able to see that we today are desperately poor compared to where things can be and should be in the
future if we keep progress going or again to flip it around put it more positively the future can be fantastically wealthy everyone can be fantastically wealthy in the future um uh compared to you know by by the standards of today and we should be and that's the future that we should be
aiming for so if I if I boil those two ideas down to just two words progress is desirable and progress is possible I love it so let's go make it um how can our listeners and viewers find you how can they contribute to the Institute tell them where to find well sure uh you can find the roots of
progress online at rootsofprogress.org um and you can find me on Twitter my handle is Jason Crawford um those are probably the it's probably the two best ways um you can sign up for our mailing list at rootsofprogress.org and um you can also find out how to contribute there we have a patreon we
have we take PayPal and uh and so forth fantastic Jason I applaud your efforts uh count me as an ally and a contributor uh I think it's very important what you're doing and uh I tip my hat to you uh we need more people on our side in this thank you so much been a great conversation enjoyed being here