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Why “progress studies” is interdisciplinary

2 points| jasoncrawford | 3 years ago |rootsofprogress.org

1 comment

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hendler|3 years ago

Bravo on an interesting area and a disciplined approach.

I feel like I can relate to this effort.

In 1999 was really curious about the question what is progress? I own and used to write at https://whatisprogress.com/ (most recent stuff focuses on AI, but writing and academia not my strength). I spend my time at startups on in "social impact". It's an easy story to tell about why mental health, ed tech and climate can contribute to humanity's progress.

I've been looking for a definition that's outside capitalism, but more rigorous and quantitative than social science's. Generally, I like Musks' and others definition of progress around maximizing the size and distribution of consciousness and survivable outcomes for humanity.

A lot of startups that "simply" improve transaction efficiency at scale contribute to abundance but get trapped straddling the world of capital and separately social impact efforts. A more wholistic set of principles than a B-Corp or foundation would be good. I like social impact investing as a lever, but the framework for evaluating success much harder than capitalism.