Jason Crawford

5 days ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford

In the progress movement, some cause areas are about technical breakthroughs, such as fusion power or a cure for aging. In other areas, the problems are not technical, but social. Housing, for instance, is technologically a solved problem. We know how to build houses, but housing is blocked by law and activism. The YIMBY movement is now well established and gaining momentum in the fight against the regulations and culture that hold back housing.

3 weeks ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford

This digest is late and slightly outdated because I’ve been focusing on writing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto. If I missed some of the more recent announcements, they’ll be in the next digest, which will be out approximately whenever. To follow news and announcements in a more timely fashion, follow me on Twitter, Notes, Farcaster, Bluesky, or Threads.

3 weeks ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford

Previously: Solutionism, part 1, part 2 and part 3. Part of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto. If the dramatic progress of the last few centuries is the great boon of history, then the great tragedy of history is in all the centuries prior, when that progress didn’t happen. For tens of thousands of years, people toiled, starved, suffered, and died until we finally achieved modern economic growth. Why? Why was progress so slow, for so long? Did it have to be?

1 month ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford

Previously: Solutionism, part 1 and part 2. Part of The Techno-Humanist Manifesto. Progress solves problems, but creates new ones. I have claimed that the new ones are better problems to have, that they can be solved in turn by more progress, and that history shows a pattern of us doing so.

1 month ago | newsletter.rootsofprogress.org | Jason Crawford |Brian Potter |Casey Handmer

Solar has an average capacity factor in the US of about 25%. Naively, you might think that to turn this into a highly-available power source, you just need to have 4x the solar panels, plus enough batteries to store 75% of a day’s worth of power. E.g., for each continuous megawatt you want to supply, you need 4 MW of solar panels, and 18 MWh of batteries. During the day, you supply 1 MW from the panels and use the other 3 MW to charge the batteries.