Following up on our previous post, check out this op-ed by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen explaining why we need a new science of progress. According to Mssrs Collison & Cowen, “there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up.” But what is “progress”? Collison & Cowen define progress broadly as that “combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries.” (What motivates their fetish with recent history? What about those advancements that occurred prior to 1800 AD?) File under: “hubris”?
