The Roots of Progress

Apropos time to link my favorite blog: https://rootsofprogress.org/. It's an exploration of the things that helped humanity leap forward. Spoilers: empirically-informed hygiene, and textile manufacturing techniques.

Some people really do follow this line of thinking all the way down to "the industrial revolution was therefore bad for humanity", but I think most people would agree that not true, so these simple narratives must be incomplete Jason Crawford has a really good analysis of this sentiment, trying to understand why people think this, on his Roots of Progress blog: https://rootsofprogress.org/the-spiritual-benefits-of-material-progres…

Roots of progress puts it nicely: A great leap forward needs supporting factors, therefore it does not appear every year [1]. I think: If a great leap forward appears, famous people may retrospectively considered to be geniuses. A change of society/industry and and admiration for geniuses accompany one another. [1] https://rootsofprogress.org/why-no-roman-industrial-revolution

> They mention, but don't really endorse, liability law models. But today's adversarial legal model in the US is also slow, expensive, and results in tons of cover-your-ass legalese at large places. They allude to no-fault workman's compensation laws, discussed at greater length in this excellent article: https://rootsofprogress.org/history-of-factory-safety The trick there was to take the liability out of the adversarial court system, by not requiring the injured party to prove that the employer was at fault -- only that they got injured somehow. And it worked much more reliably, with less ass-covering and less overhead, than the previous tort-based model.

"Progress" in the innovation sense comes from many places. Once something has been successful somewhere, it gets copied elsewhere. No one government controls innovation. The author does not seem to get this. (For an overview of the copying process, see "How Asia Works" by Studwell. It's a good study on how various Asian countries became part of the developed world.) The "Roots of Progress" organization he comes from is basically him.[1] [1] https://rootsofprogress.org/

This really is a fantastic resource (thanks!). I've found several great posts from it, including this one[1] which made a huge impact on me. [1] https://rootsofprogress.org/a-career-path-for-invention

BIG by Matt Stoller - mostly about antitrust and monopolies https://mattstoller.substack.com/ Roots of Progress - inventions and ideas that helped shape the world https://rootsofprogress.org/

He talks a little bit about that in the (equally interesting) follow up post: https://rootsofprogress.org/cement-redux

Both. See the followup here: https://rootsofprogress.org/cement-redux

The follow up from this year (2019) https://rootsofprogress.org/cement-redux is even more interesting. It also mentions the DARPA effort to re-discover the formula for Roman maritime cement which gets stronger in sea water rather than erodes in sea water. If we can figure that one out we could make concrete hulls for ocean going ships that would last many lifetimes.

If we're aspiring to 1970s standards then sure. Nuclear power isn't about achieving the lofty heights of the 1970s. I'm just going to wave the famous article by Crawford on the economics of nuclear around: https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop [0] What you can see there is a very impressive learning curve that was well on the way to very cheap electricity. Then it suddenly and sharply inverts in a shape that defies common sense. Then no-one else really builds any. "Supporting nuclear" isn't supposed to mean splitting the atom at any cost. The point is if we would just stop regulating the industry into oblivion and let costs drop then it'd be a perfectly competitive form of power. We have this lobby that goes in, wrecks the economics of nuclear then uses the wreck they created as justification for why we can't build any more. And in some senses that is fair because if they had the power to destroy past nuclear projects they can do it again. But lets not pretend that these costs are fundamental to nuclear. Keeping a weather eye on China, if they do their usual trick and start learning how to build nuclear cheaply they could leapfrog everyone else on energy tech in another industry. On the one hand that'd be fantastic to the point where I'd love it. On the other it is so frustrating to be relying on nominal communists to push the state of the art forward on energy technology after listening to my western compatriots whinge about exactly that topic for…

On nuclear construction cost increases, from Crowley and Griffith 1982, “US construction cost rise threatens nuclear option” (via @whatisnuclear): """ Ironically, some of the decisions that have been made in the name of improving safety margins for low probability events, may have reduced the safety margins for high probability events. The UE&C piping study uncovered numerous areas where the tolerances requested in the piping design documents might be appropriate for a machine shop oriented manufacturing operation, but are totally unrealistic for field construction. """ via https://rootsofprogress.org/links-digest-2023-12-15 The whole quote is worth reading/skimming. More importantly this zero risk approach has to be considered relative to all the other risks arising from building other types of power plants. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy (and of course a bit more on the problems with the process at the NRC https://thebreakthrough.org/blog/waiting-on-the-nuclear-regulatory-com… )

One claim of moving the goalposts comes from https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop: >> Excessive concern about low levels of radiation led to a regulatory standard known as ALARA: As Low As Reasonably Achievable. What defines “reasonable”? It is an ever-tightening standard. As long as the costs of nuclear plant construction and operation are in the ballpark of other modes of power, then they are reasonable. >> This might seem like a sensible approach, until you realize that it eliminates, by definition, any chance for nuclear power to be cheaper than its competition. Nuclear can‘t even innovate its way out of this predicament: under ALARA, any technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it‘s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job. Basically the safety regulations (some of which are nonsensical -- the whole article is worth a read) preclude cost-effective nuclear. I won't address your point on waste, I think it's covered elsewhere on this page well enough.

> It's a big mystery for me how the things went down since seventies. There is a insightful (if a bit messy, and occasionally wrong) book that purports to answer that question: Where is my flying car?: A memoir of future past, by J. Storrs Hall. [1] In that author's view, it boils down to * a levelling off of energy consumption per capita, that previously had doubled every 10 years. (In particular, the author laments the dearth of advanced nuclear power, which would be good for the economy and the climate.) * increasing regulation and risk aversion. * as well as “centralized funding streams”, “bureaucratic inertia,” “cultural malaise and indifference”. [1] Reviews: https://rootsofprogress.org/where-is-my-flying-car https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/09/where-is-my-… https://jakeseliger.com/2020/12/28/where-is-my-flying-car-a-memoir-of-…

A better argument that it is due to red-tape: https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

Romans had slaves, so labour was cheap. Industrialization requires expensive labour as demand driver. Wasn't there just an article on HN about that? Edit: Found it: https://rootsofprogress.org/robert-allen-british-industrial-revolution

I think the eruption of mount Tambora, in 1816 and ensuring famine was the main impetus for the creation of the bicycle. Think from the perspective of the future: Q: "Why didn't they just use solar cells to power their cars instead of using gasoline?" A: "They had almost unlimited access to an energy-dense fuel called petroleum they mined from the earth." My point is we can imagine many technologies that would serve our needs with much less energy use. https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle#:~…

People saying "he doesn't address the downsides" could read the three pages on the same site which do address the downsides, and which are prominently linked right at the start of the essay: https://rootsofprogress.org/unsustainable https://rootsofprogress.org/catastrophic-resource-shortages https://rootsofprogress.org/can-growth-continue-ignite-talk

It's funny how these things work. There are many inventions that, looking back, could've happened centuries earlier purely from a resource/physical constraints point of view (of course, scientific knowledge doesn't work quite that way). As a film photographer, if I ever find myself in possession of a time machine, the first thing I'll do is go back to ancient Minoa/Rome/Egypt/China/Tikal and show people how to make silver based emulsions to use with pinhole cameras. In a similar vein, this article "Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?" is a nice read. https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle

I think Bret Devereaux's article on why the Industrial Revolution started in Britain and not elsewhere is quite interesting ([1]). The Industrial Revolution happened not only because of advances in politics and engineering, but also because of Britain's unique geography: Britain got heavily deforested in its human prehistory, and so later Britons were forced to make use of coal. Trying to extract more coal more cheaply led to the industrial revolution. This explains why the industrial revolution did not begin in China or the Roman Empire. There are some counterarguments to Devereaux's claims given in [2] and even in the HN article. [1] - https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revo… [2] - https://rootsofprogress.org/why-no-roman-industrial-revolution

On the other hand Bilderberg members like Peter Thiel are not happy. He says that we are in a era of stagnation. https://rootsofprogress.org/technological-stagnation https://youtu.be/nHXEjdYwoYE

Fascinating! Here's a summary of his book from which this article seems to be taken. https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop The book is here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1098308964

The grant/funding process itself slows down science. How to slow down scientific progress According to Leo Szilard https://rootsofprogress.org/szilard-on-slowing-science Discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34264436

Crawford response to some of the criticisms https://rootsofprogress.org/bbc-future-covers-progress-studies

See [1] for the site's statement of purpose. It seems entirely dedicated to overturning the perceived current technological pessimism (or even fatalism). TFA seems to be justifying the sites existence by arguing that technological optimism is responsible for much of the "progress" seen since 1800 or so. 1: https://rootsofprogress.org/a-new-philosophy-of-progress

Nuclear hasn't, but WHY is very interesting. And the answer seems to be because there's a DOE regulation that says that the risk of death from nuclear power must be "As Low As Reasonably Achievable". In practice, this means that if nuclear power is cheaper than the alternatives, then you could be spending more on safety for the same price as its alternatives (never mind that nuclear is already safer than the alternatives), and so the price of nuclear goes up. And since this feedback loop is regulator-powered, there's a chance for them to go too far in the direction of "expensive safety" and make nuclear economically unreasonable and never recover. Which it did. https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop is a pretty interesting article.

That's a problem of our own making, and we could revert. The timelines are driven by permitting (both at the local level and at the NRC) and the customization of each reactor. We desperately need reactors to roll off of an assembly line to drive down physical costs. And we also desperately need to trim down the regulatory burden. Together, those changes would dramatically speed up deployment and cut costs. This was an interesting essay and I will probably read the book it is reviewing: https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

""" Excessive concern about low levels of radiation led to a regulatory standard known as ALARA: As Low As Reasonably Achievable. What defines “reasonable”? It is an ever-tightening standard. As long as the costs of nuclear plant construction and operation are in the ballpark of other modes of power, then they are reasonable. This might seem like a sensible approach, until you realize that it eliminates, by definition, any chance for nuclear power to be cheaper than its competition. """ from: https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

Not sure about Europe, but nuclear seems to be expensive in the US because construction costs are high because of overcautious regulation[1]. It was considerably cheaper in the 50/60s here, and it seems like mostly a policy issue [1] https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop

All of these problems are due to bad regulation, not the technology. Nuclear fission was well on its way to cost-effective production back in the day. https://rootsofprogress.org/devanney-on-the-nuclear-flop