You could imagine a world where cartography never incorporated drawings of territories, and instead relied solely on written descriptions of land. “To the west is a mountainous range, with several large rivers emptying to a gulf in the south.” In such a world, there would no doubt be practised experts, capable of envisioning in their minds the described area. But these written maps would clearly suffer from a lack of depictions.

Having that utopian vision of the world is important though. And being optimistic about making enormous change is important, too. But I’m learning that the truly wise folks hold that vision in their minds whilst making tiny incremental progress in that direction every single day. Tiny steps is how you solve everything; from a bad design, to a confusing codebase, to a dysfunctional society.

In the third episode of The Torch of Progress, we sit down with Patrick Collison, the Co-founder and CEO of Stripe. We discuss progress studies, his perspective on the sciences, Effective Altruism, on being a self-described 'fallibilist,' and the entrepreneurial mindset. Key Topics: - The rate of scientific progress and whether it's slowing down. - Progress Studies at large and Patrick's views on Effective Altruism - On being a self-described 'fallibilist' and the entrepreneurial mindset. - Q&A from students and attendees, and much more. In this episode we discuss: (0:15) Intro to Progress Studies for Young Scholars (0:50) Past guest speakers - see the replay on Youtube (1:00) Upcoming guests - Max Roser, Deridre Nansen McCloskey, Joel Mokyr (2:00) Introductions: Jason Crawford with Roots of Progress and Patrick Collison, CEO & co-founder of Stripe (3:00) Patrick talks about Stripe, an online payment system (5:42) Fast Grants for Covid-19 research: What have you learned and what does the future of Fast Grants look like? (13:00) The great corporate research labs (Bell Labs, Xerox PARC) - are they a thing of the past? If so, was that natural? Is there something new we should move to? Should we try to bring it back? (15:55) If you were asked to write a report on the future of science and research, like the Endless Frontier Memo by Vannevar Bush in 1945, what would you say? (18:50) - If you had to give society a progress KPI (key performance indicator), what are the key metrics? (23:40) what are the metrics people use to argue if science is slowing down? Scott Alexander said, "Constant progress in science in response to exponential increases in inputs ought to be our null hypothesis." What is your take on this? (29:45) Compare/contrast effective altruism and progress studies (33:28) If we just run full throttle ahead with progress, what about the risk that we are not careful enough and we get some global catastrophe? (36:05) Your twitter bio describes you as a fallibilist optimist. What does this mean and why did you choose those terms? (39:50) What advice that is commonly given to teens is actually wrong? (43:10) Follow Patrick on twitter @patrickc and online patrickcollison.com Q&A (43:50) What do you think about the future of the internet as the rate of adoption is slowing? Do you see it becoming increasingly zero-sum / less spending on r&d? (46:00) Some people have suggested a Manhattan Project for Covid-19. Is that what Fast Grants is doing? If not, is something like that even feasible anymore? (47:19) You mentioned the existential risk that comes with more progress can be mitigated. What do we need to do to mitigate it? (48:10) You gave the advice to keep learning another 5-10 years, but that is not what you did (started a company at a young age). Why? (50:35) Big companies need an effective organizational structure to avoid getting more inefficient and less innovative. What have you done with Stripe to keep it innovative and nimble? (54:06) How did you found a company? How did you know where to start and what steps to take? (55:40) What do you think about studying liberal arts if in college for technology? Links: Progress Studies for Young Scholars: progressstudies.school The Academy of Thought and Industry: thoughtandindustry.com The Roots of Progress Blog: rootsofprogress.org/ Higher Ground Education: tohigherground.org Guidepost Montessori: guidepostmontessori.com

The future starts from belief, not rationalism, and belief is cultivated partly with aesthetics. Progress will come from regaining a grasp on the aesthetics that move us.

Progress doesn’t happen automatically when the scientific or technical prerequisites for it are in place. It only happens when people work on it, and that almost always requires funding. --- It only happens when people work on it, This is what concerns me with mathematics and the fact that verifying correctness still relies on an “unnamed collection of experts” instead of formal verification.

And yeah, I think that sense of future shock is what has disappeared, which was in retrospect a very rapid turnover of styles one was accustomed to. ​ Music is the site where the major symptoms of cultural malaise can be detected I think. ​ what’s missing is a popular experience of newness.

it suggests that present funding mechanisms are likely to be far from optimal, in part because they do not focus enough on research autonomy and risk taking. ​ But when viewed through the lens of Progress Studies, the implicit question is how scientists (or funders or evaluators of scientists) should be acting. The success of Progress Studies will come from its ability to identify effective progress-increasing interventions and the extent to which they are adopted by universities, funding agencies, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, policy makers, and other institutions. In that sense, Progress Studies is closer to medicine than biology: The goal is to treat, not merely to understand.

Is there an argument to be made that they choked off real innovation over the past decade. ​ We’re still using the same exact apps and they kind of look and feel the same.

So the assertion that technology companies can’t possibly be shaped or restrained with the public’s interest in mind is to argue that they are fundamentally different from any other industry. They’re not. ​ an echo of the very ethos that founded America: progress at all costs. ​ and it’s time to question what “progress” actually means.

...the evidence is that science has slowed enormously per dollar or hour spent. That evidence demands a large-scale institutional response. It should be a major subject in public policy, and at grant agencies and universities. Better understanding the cause of this phenomenon is important, and identifying ways to reverse it is one of the greatest opportunities to improve our future.

In the middle of my sketching hours, I don’t want to be worrying about whether I’ll be ready for my classroom prototype next month. Within a given day, action-oriented “butt-in-chair”-style advice does help; meta-thought is just distracting. But go too long without error correction, and you’ll misspend hours in the chair. ​ The rest of the day’s work becomes roughly deontological. I give myself permission to be satisfied with the day if I spent three focused hours sketching like I’d planned. ​ From time to time, I flip back into execution mode. It feels like an old friend. We say hello, dance for a while, and part ways smiling, just as it always was. Open-ended mode is more enigmatic, reserved—yet occasionally it sparks some moment so singular it lights up the whole year. Those moments don’t happen without the days spent together between those moments. I’m slowly learning to make the most of our quiet strolls.