I Went to Berkeley, California, and All I Got Was a Vibe

What I learned from attending the 2024 Progress Conference

Last Friday and Saturday, I attended the 2024 Progress Conference in Berkeley, California. I agree with Dean Ball: It was the best event of its kind that I have been to.

2024 Progress Conference, Berkeley, CA. More Photos.

The people assembled were excellent, the ideas that were brought to the space were fascinating, and the 'machines' (i.e., the handling of logistics) was top-tier. All credit is due to Jason Crawford, Heike Larson, and Emma McAleavy, they put on an amazing show.

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Progress Studies grew out of an Atlantic article by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen from 2019 that called for a new “science of progress”. As they put it:

“For a number of reasons, there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study. We suggest inaugurating the discipline of ‘Progress Studies.’”

This conference was an opportunity, 5 years after this initial suggestion, to take stock of what has emerged so far. There was a lot of energy. Many people from all over the world have been doing interesting and impactful work. Those associated with Progress Studies have learned a great deal. It felt like a moment to commemorate some of the successes the ‘movement’ has achieved.

But the closest thing to a one-line summary came from a keynote discussion between Dwarkesh Patel and Patrick Collison. In this discussion, Collison suggested that today he sees Progress Studies less as an academic discipline or even a gentleman’s science and more as an aesthetic. “A vibe.”

This could be disheartening. If the people motivated by the original article have not yet created something that looks like a scientific study of progress, almost half a decade into their efforts, then is the endeavour a failure¹? It might seem like talking about Progress Studies now as a vibe is a kind of goalpost moving or even a managed retreat.

For me, though, this summary is encouraging. There may be no formal academic study of progress, but the resulting fluidity has allowed the idea of Progress Studies to energize a wide variety of people and institutions engaged in progress without any of them becoming bogged down in theory. Something that would be impossible for an academic discipline.

The people associated with Progress Studies, more or less formally, now include: Think tanks and activist groups like the Institute for Progress and California YIMBY, which push for public policy changes; writers and filmmakers like Packy McCormick and Jason Carman, who do reporting and create stories that can teach and inspire new activity; and novel institutions like Astera that work directly on the problems of speeding up science.

At the same time, perhaps a vibe is a more impressive thing to have created than an academic discipline. I've recently been studying the work of Michael Polanyi on the foundations of knowledge, and one of his recurring themes is a defense of the value of the hunches, intuitions, and particular postures that scientists, artists, and craftsmen adopt. He argues that these less clear spaces are where we find the most important ideas on the boundaries of what we already know. It is not the crystallized formula and accounts of logically worked out systems but instead these half-baked aesthetic considerations that provide the most fertile ground for doing great work.

So, if Progress Studies has managed to find its footing with a shared set of cares, concerns, and approaches then that is perhaps a much greater success than if it had simply arrived at a particular orthodoxy about what produces progress. It is from such a space of new perceptive structures that both insight and action truly emerge.

Sometimes vibes are just fashion, but other times they are the beginning of culture.

The Clock of the Long Now. Source.

I learned a lot, and it’s going to take me a while to process it all, but here are some of the things I’m thinking about:

Things I learned about progress

• Many fundamental questions about progress are still open. There was a lot of discussion throughout the event about the shape of progress. Is progress a steady, linear growth? An S-curve that in recent decade has hit diminishing returns? Or, a punctuated equilibrium of golden ages and long periods of stagnation? Are the shapes of this graph driven by human agency or do they look more like rules of nature? Is it people, ideas, institutions, or culture that matters most for progress to continue? It was a pleasant surprise to me that all of these remain open questions with impassioned defenders.
  

• Progress requires both ideas and action. There was a through line at the conference of people asking whether progress is primarily the result of ideas or execution. More concretely, you could ask if progress is the result of people like Elon Musk, driven by an overwhelming thumos to reach the stars, taking specific action to get there or is a by-product of the creation of new knowledge, new science and technology that gives us leverage over the world. Before the conference I couldn’t have told you which I believed most important but coming away it was clear that both sides were essential. Packy McCormick wrote a perfect summary of this debate: What do you do with an idea?
  

• There is no single load-bearing scientific domain for progress. Progress, in the guise of prosperity, is sometimes reduced to an 'energy problem' or similar oversimplification. But, the truth is we need to progress on all fronts. We talked about energy, but also chemical synthesis, materials, and medical breakthroughs. Progress in all these domains is tightly interconnected and anything that prioritizes just one area to the detriment of all others will hold us back. Just one example: Vaccines have saved millions of lives but could we have ever administered them safely without stainless steel needles?

Things I learned about Progress Studies

• Progress Studies is pro-human. Progress Studies remains relatively undefined - perhaps on purpose - but if I were to try to nail down one thing about the ‘vibe’ it is that it is incredibly pro-human. We didn’t talk about it much but it was obvious that this group has no interest in the advance of techno-capitalism as such but only as something that can serve people. Technology matters to make people’s lives better. Malaria currently causes around half a million deaths a year. Speeding up a vaccine that works by just a few years would have a profound impact on human betterment. But technology is not an end in itself.
  

• Progress Studies attracts worldly philosophers. The people associated with Progress Studies have a a worldview influenced by economic thinking. They approach problems in concrete ways: pushing to make reference to specific facts; wary of any standard for progress that can not be measured; and arguing through problems as systems of inputs and outputs. But at the same time, like the best economists, they are sentimental. They wish to solve problems not simply so that they can understand things but because they care for the people underneath the equations.
  

• Progress Studies people love to yap (and yapping really matters). There were a lot of talkers and that is a good thing. Talking can do a lot of good for the world and the stories we tell can have as much force in changing our societies as the most sophisticated technologies.
  

Things I learned about hosting a great event

• All great events are parties or party-adjacent. At an object level the purpose of a conference is to discuss ideas and develop the ecosystem of a specific domain in some way. But the best environment to do this is one where people are open, engaged, and holding each other and their ideas with love. A place where ideas can not just be shared but played with. A party.
  

• The university as a model for promoting great work remains undefeated. The university has aimed for centuries at creating a walled garden where ideas can flourish. It does this by bringing together many different experts and equipping them with the tools they need to work together efficiently and effectively with a focus on establishing truth. This weekend felt like a highly condensed university environment. Many experts in different fields brought together to discuss a single topic from several, very different, points of view.
  

• The affordances of a space matter a lot for creating a university environment. The conference was hosted at Lighthaven a space created and managed by Less Wrong. I don’t know the exact story but I would guess it is ~three lots that have been joined together then laid out with one large interconnected open space, three larger structures, and a few smaller buildings. It was a true university campus in miniature with larger lecture halls, seminar rooms, dormitories for visitors, a gym, kitchens, and endless conversation nooks. Spending two days there was electric. The perfect setting for sparking conversation and keeping fresh perspectives. Some of the most direct proof I’ve experienced of Christopher Alexander’s observation that certain spaces afford more life.

The Lighthaven campus. Source.

I loved this conference. It was a true celebration. I’m sure there will be much to process for many days to come.

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A Few Personal Updates

In case you missed the original announcement I am pursuing a new research program called Skillful Notes looking at how people, organizations, countries, and civilization builds competence. You can read more about the plan in the announcement post. So far I’ve posted ~10 case studies and reviews there and most of my writing efforts going forwards will be on this project. I think the best pieces so far are:

• The Art of Training Young People on apprenticeship

• Bringing Design to Life on the teaching techniques employed by the Bauhaus

• Brian Eno’s Apprentice on Fred again.. and what his journey tells us about scientific skill

I am going to maintain this blog as a way to write about things on my mind that fall outside of this specific project as well as using it as a place to collate announcements of anything else I am working on.

In that spirit, here are some updates on other projects I’ve recently been working on.

I recently launched a seminar exploring the philosophical and theological origins of progress. You can see the full reading plan and some associated commentary at philosophyofprogress.com. I am looking for sponsors and grant making organisations that might be interested in supporting this so that I can provide more scholarships, including free rides. If this is you, or you know of anyone please reach out!

After a couple successful experiments I am working on a lecture series to bring together the best public intellectuals in Toronto for nights of insight, education, and fun. If you have any recommendations for speakers I should reach out to let me know! They do not have to be Toronto-based but ideally they are somewhere in the North East.

If you happen to be looking for an amazing lecture to spend your evening on I would highly recommend Nick Mount on Waiting for Godot. It totally reframed my understanding of Samuel Beckett’s work.

Thank you for everything.

1. To be clear many rigorous approaches to the study of progress (at least in the realm of economics) have been proposed and there is great work happening on this. But it is the case that, at least today, nothing like consensus has yet emerged.