What is the aggregate rate of progress in science going to be, between now and then? Right? Maybe some tail, really bad things are going to happen. But don’t happen, I think that the single biggest determinant will be the aggregate rate of progress in science.
The discussion is focused on Collison’s claim that on a per-scientist basis, scientific productivity is declining rapidly. I liked best the last 15 minutes or so.
Collison has an ability, which I am pretty sure I don’t have, of finishing a thought out loud when it’s clear that his mind has moved on to a new thread.
Looks like something went wrong with this post. Please delete this comment when fixed.
the blog looks different. Did I change my default settings in browser, or is the blog showing up in smaller text? Please delete at will, thanks!
fixed
Up until about 2000, you could roughly see a lot of science showing up as normal, consumerish goods.
Now? It seems to primarily be an engine of deflation. Stripe itself is a heresy on the traditional credit card terminal. While it enables a high degree of mobility in accepting payment, it reduces the actual volume of money flowing into the design and building of credit card terminals themselves.
There might be significant progress possible based on the sorts of things talked about by the biologists but there’s next to no activity that way, outside of the dumpster fire of rent seeking that is Big Pharma.
Never mind that SiVa itself is increasingly about rent-seeking. It’s the “ghetto” of all the nerds and outside of SiVa there’s a growing intolerance of innovation beyond the duct-tape level.
Is it just me, or is the quote from Collison incoherent?
I understand it as (in reference to really bad things):
“But if they don’t happen,”
(rather than “But don’t happen”)
typo
“Right? Maybe some tail, really bad things are going to happen. But if they don’t happen, I think that the single biggest determinant will be the aggregate rate of progress in science. “
The article has the “if they don’t” — mis-copy typo.
The rate of progress in the life sciences has been absolutely staggering in the past 20 years. Almost none of much of the progress there can be translated into practical advances that register in everyday life on account of ideological/cultural impediments that rapidly get transformed into political/bureaucratic barriers.
Just to take a few examples. Sequencing a single human genome took thousands of PhD level scientists, billions of dollars, and years to accomplish. It now takes a single technician a few hours, and $200 dollars to accomplish the same thing. CRISPR has turned DNA into programmable software. The ease and power of DNA editing this technology allows was basically unthinkable as late as 2011.
All of this transformative technology could have already been deployed to, say, permanently eradicate all mosquitos that predominantly feed on humans at a very low cost (well under a billion dollars), without using an ounce of pesticide or draining a single swamp via gene-drive technologies. The effects on agriculture could easily be every bit as profound. The ability to get more reliable, higher yields on less land using less water, fertilizer, herbicide, insecticide, and fuel very quickly translates into tangible improvements in human well-being, but the same forces that have kept golden rice on the shelf for the past 20+ years will likely keep all of this potential locked in the lab for another two decades at least. You can tell a similar story with respect to nuclear power. The technology is there, the public’s capacity to engage in a rational consideration of costs, risks, and benefits is not. Worse yet – it seems to be decreasing as the first-hand experience of material privation and hardship that shaped the sensibilities of previous generations morphs into folklore.
Scientists getting less productive isn’t the problem, political constraints that have diminished our capacity to harness the technology that scientists develop is.
Interesting to think about the rate of science progress. In the comments there was the idea of a sphere getting larger, so more difficult to be touching multiple points on the frontiers. What are the right metrics?
Certainly in economics, “progress” seems to be going backwards, with huge numbers of people “believing” in the moral rightness of socialistic stuff. I’m convinced the rate of science progress, however it’s measured, will be slowing down as more organizations get taken over by the PC-Klan.