(ongoing) commentary on the writings of roots of progress

Ideas of progress: The idea of progress being new (2 centuries b/w columbus and newton) and how in culture there was a great respect for “what came”, even in the books like ancient city where people used to worship thor ancestors (that was literally their life’s motive in the form of religion i.e big deal)

Baconian program: (former lord chancellor of england) Bacon has been called the father of empiricism, scientific method. Even though refuted by the likes of david deutsch now - empiricism still played a huge role in the scientific progress in the start. Ideas of applied knowledge (science, patterns and truths of nature) for the benefit of the society. Advocated industrial revolution two centuries before.

Virtuousness of technology: this resembles david deutsch’s refutation of the idea of spaceship earth, where people think that this planet is it. It seems perplexing how much the initial low-hanging fruit ideas of culture (like that of worshiping nature) impacts people’s perception of reality. Human craves certainty, controlled narratives to guide them through life. Is this evolution? Aversion to trying out new things because eating a new fruit could kill you.

Religious freedom: just this one simple movement of the idea of “tolerance” seems to have changed everything. Generally as deutsch says the idea of “fallibilism” - the idea that you can be wrong about anything anytime. Also resembling deutsch’s idea that progress is interconnected - scientific progress also means moral progress. Still religion was connected to all kinds of progress during this time 15th - 17th century. Also is curiosity a innate nature of humans? If yes then this time captured the nature well and channeled it (or unleashed it).

(now history of industrial revolution)

The newcomen steam engine: “It’s like the single-celled prokaryote of the Industrial Revolution, that eventually evolved into the multi-celled organism of today’s global economy”. The first machine to harness the power of steam and move away from primate ways of doing work. It’s interesting how the ideas of wanting progress, of improving the world, of curiosity lets us “think” innately differently than one would in a static society. It’s the same human nature and psyche just channeled differently. Ideas matter. https://rootsofprogress.org/the-newcomen-steam-engine

James Watt’s steam engine: Improved steam engine from that of newcomen’s. The improvement allowed for the full potential of the steam power. I wonder how did improvement on “ideas” and “thoughts” happened before the ideas of tolerance was not widespread. People still needed to solve problems, and win wars. Randomly like evolution?

The significance of the steam engine: “So the steam engine solved all of the problems with natural forces at once”. The marriage of heat and motion. The ability to work, to do physical transformations efficiently maybe lies at the root of progress.

understanding some very fundamental aspects of humanity’s technology tree:

What is an “engine”?: converts heat energy into motion

What is charcoal? And how is it different from coal?: charcoal is man-made (process of charring), and coal is the rock we dig out of ground (coke is the product of charring coal). It is indeed interesting how there are so many fundamental things about the civilisation that most people do not know. “Abstractions of civilisation or specialization”, but what is the right balance of knowing or not knowing? And the bigger issue is that most people do not want to know such fundamental facts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzLvqCTvOQY

What is steel? And how is it related to iron?: “steel actually has a lower carbon content than cast iron: under 2% carbon for steel, vs. more like 3–4% for cast iron. So steel is, in a sense, more iron than “iron”.” Such basic facts about the fundamentals of civilisation and yet most people do not know it, seems very perplexing.

What is smelting?: chemical transformation (remove oxygen) + very time taking and messy process.

Ignorance seems to work in the modern world. This is a privilege but maybe for unbounded progress such basic and important facts about how things actually work needs to be known by more people.

There are no natural resources: “So a lot of industrial processes come down to: extracting useful materials from the environment, making them into the form or the products we want, moving them to the place where we want them, and making them available on demand.”. Also resembles david deutsch’s ideas that “resources” can only be used when we have the knowledge of how to use them.

Better living through chemistry: Based on “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm”. Importance of chemicals and their progress during the industrial revolution. For example nitrogen as a fertilizer which feeds most of the the population.

The Malthusian Trap?: Malthusian trap is that with increasing population, less people are well of due to goods being used by more. But the thing to notice here is that goods are produced by people, so doesn’t more people mean more goods? Maybe the answer is technology.

The Malthusian Trap, analyzed: “If lots of people died, incomes tended to go up, as fewer workers benefited from a stable supply of crops. If lots of people were born, however, incomes would fall…” and the idea that land productivity could only increase linearly whereas population growth can happen exponentially. Also Jason writes that “To be fair, the whole of human history up to that point (1798) seemed to bear him out.)”. The interesting point here is that the classical fallacy of induction. Just because something has happened one way does not mean it will continue (black swans do happen), but it is inherently hard to predict. Same with progress i guess, we never know what new knowledge will be created and what the outcomes of such knowledge could be. “increasing level of production with a geometrically increasing population, implies diminishing productivity per capita as population increases” - i wonder whats the state now? We can never have enough scientists or engineers. Also one more thing to point out is that the opposite is now happening! The fertility rate all around the world is less than 2.1, so how would less population impact overall progress? To keep up with the increasing population knowledge has to grow and technology needs to improve.

Trains and steamboats: land is inefficient to move through, water is easy. steam engine allowed travel by water without relying on steering forces like wind. “Why do trains run on tracks, and pull cars of cargo? They were an evolutionary development from what already existed at coal mines. Mines ran track from the mouth of the mine down to the river, and cars would be filled with coal and then coasted downhill or pulled by horses. Trains were just a matter of hooking a steam engine to this existing technology.”

Categorizing technologies: Agriculture, Medicine, Manufacturing, Energy, Transportation, Information. Manufacturing seems to be the most complex, encompassing materials and infrastructure too. Also finance is not on the list, but seems to be an integral part of the social tree. (it enables things). Is education also an important progress area? Conveying the best of knowledge and principles to the next generation is also pivotal, and today it’s state is abysmal.

The beginning: 2,500,000 years ago: Stone tools, 50,000 years ago: Language, 5,000 years ago: Writing, 500 years ago: Science. The interesting point being how each new milestone happens faster than the one before, resembles tim urban’s concept of Law of Accelerating Returns. And how around 50k years before something changed and abstract thoughts came into being. Maybe jump to universality?

Nomad life: The idea that nomadic tribes can’t progress because they’re always on the move via Bakhtiari tribe of persia’s example. Resembles Will Durant’s line from Story of our civilization: “It is when man settles down to till the soil and lay up provisions for the uncertain future that he finds time and reason to be civilized.” . History is so interesting, all these lives lived, through thousands of years - all for this moment? The moment where we might have the chance to begin open-ended unbounded progress? (beginning of infinity), and more interestingly the importance of ideas. Humans 40,000 years before were capable of finding the general theory of relativity, but the anti-rational ideas they had would never let them. This emphasizes how we can never be complacent with ideas, especially about life, society and the world - for it is these meta guiding principles that decides the fate of humanity as a whole. But again as most people do not know what coal or charcoal is, they never give thoughts to such things. Maybe soon.

Smart, rich and free: Jason writes for most people throughout history: “In short, their lives were characterized by abject poverty, superstition born of ignorance, and constant tribal warfare.” But last 1% of the history changed everything (scientific, industrial and american revolution). How?

Charting progress: The overview works fine but to keep in mind is Nassim Taleb’s view is history which is we sometimes abstract things, datafit and make narratives.

category tech

Vaclav Smil on “Making the Modern World”: an extract from vaclav’s book on how materials progress is so fundamental and how it has played out.

Turning air into bread: the story of how fritz haber and carl bosch saved the world. If haber-bosch process literally saves billions of people from starvation - how is it then people still believe in anti-tech philosophies all over the world? Fixation of nitrogen to make ammonia (NH3), which ca be used as fertilizers.

The story of materials: general overview of the sophistication of materials used in the world during stone age to industrial age. Plastic seems to be one of the most impactful material tech to be unlocked, its everywhere! Electronics also. Future of materials also seems exciting - nanomaterials, biomaterials, etc. Also one more interesting point is how during the agricultural age, all main fundamental materials like metal, stone, glass, concrete were being already use but the quality and price got immensely better during the industrial age.

The shadow of the moon: Jason writes: “And it’s fascinating to see the spirit of the Enlightenment developing through events like these, as the general public took an interest in science and Newton’s theory showed the world that the universe is governed by natural laws which we can learn and master—a crucial development in the idea of progress.”. It is indeed fascinating how much one can do just by hand, and should an average person know how to do this (predict eclipses?)

The most peaceful time in history:

“Pinker estimates that government alone, any functioning government, reduces the rate of violent death fivefold compared to pre-state society. He calls this the Pacification Process.”
Government and organization of power and duty reduces violence. Its interesting to think how decentralized and scattered power before rulers was chaotic, but in the modern times it’s a kind of decentralized power (democracy) that is better to protect human progress and reason.
The emergence of sympathy and reason - just understanding that killing someone or burning a cat for entertainment is not good. So baffling to think that for most of history this was not apparent. Its not even been 100 years since slavery was officially abolished from the world. Government, commerce, and reason collectively contribute to the decline in violence.

The senator really took a beating:

“Got all that? A Congressman brutally, physically attacks a Senator, on the Senate floor, gets away with it, and is hailed as a hero. Imagine the shock, revulsion and horror if anything like that happened today.”
I wonder if violence and hatred, in terms and context of power and tribalism is one of those areas in our civilisation that will (or has to be) solved in the path of enlightenment. Still plenty of such examples (I live in india!)

What was the relationship of scientific revolution to the industrial?:

“The successes of the Scientific Revolution, and Newton’s achievement in particular, provided inspiration to innovators for centuries to come. It was proof that we could advance knowledge, that we could understand the world, that science and mathematics were powerful tools”
Even if the engineers of steam engine did not, explicitly, use the scientific theory, they still had the idea of “scientific method”. Also they still had the understanding of the properties of the vacuum and the nature of atmospheric pressure, which was taken forward by the scientists.
It’s “applied” science. Science comes first, and “applied” later. (i guess)
I wonder about elon’s answer in one of the interviews that engineering is more important than scientific discoveries.

Pesticides and old lace:

we used arsenic before DDT.
As many as 50 million civilians had died from malaria and typhus during the previous decade. DDT powder quickly began to reverse that carnage by eliminating the insects responsible, along with houseflies, bedbugs, fleas, hornflies, and lice.
I think about Nassim Taleb’s point of how it is not our responsibility of saving other species, because they were dying long before we came anyway. 99.5% species that ever came are dead, and most of that before humans ever walked. Still we do save and put our efforts into saving other species today. Maybe we’re not evil after all.

Why did we wait so long for the cotton gin?:

Monetary incentives maybe increase the number of inventions. Patent Act in the USA might have inspired Eli Whitney’s Invention’s the the cotton gin. (capitalism)
Cultural reasons and the main ideas prevalent in society matter a lot. This was the dawn of the industrial revolution, and people just did not think that mechanical ingenuity can change the daily life in ways no one can imagine. Maybe this is one of the reasons sci-fi and imaginative thinking is so important. To imagine to is build, maybe.

And they shall walk:

Elizabeth Kenny’s story of creating a unorthodox treatment for polio, but how she was ignored for decades.
Disobedience and originality is what drives innovation.
Might be interesting to research about women’s status throughout history. As far as i remember, in India women had a lot of rights during the old times (many gods are female figures). And there have been instances of matriarchal societies too (even in other species like elephants it exists).

Twelve books from 2017

Instant stone (just add water!):

“This is cement. We start with rock, crush and burn it to extract its essence in powdered form, and then reconstitute it at a place and time and in a shape of our choosing. Like coffee or pancake mix, it is “instant stone—just add water!” And with it, we make skyscrapers that reach hundreds of stories high, tunnels that go under the English channel and the Swiss Alps, and bridges that stretch a hundred miles. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.”
Cement is so fundamental, and old!
Seems baffling how is it that all of civilisation isn’t interested in increasing our repertoire of magic? At Least the ones who are in a position that they can. Such things are so fundamental, the ability to solve problems and do things. Why isn’t this obvious? Maybe play factorio.

The first and true inventor:

Exclusive rights for inventions existed long before modern patent law, dating back thousands of years. The idea of protection!
Under the Tudors, patents were often granted to courtiers for revenue rather than genuine invention. Obviously simple idea - you give the rights to those you want to please. The 1623 Act by Edward Coke established the legal framework for patents, emphasizing the need to demonstrate “mastery of the method” for patent protection
Wonder about the balance between open source vs closed source in this context of exclusive rights.

Primitive thoughts: (one of the best blogs)

Primitive societies lack quantitative thinking. “hunter-gatherers reckon the passing of the year by their seasonal activities and the availability of different food resources, rather than by a calendar based on twelve lunar months. … Nor do hunter-gatherers divide space by the cardinal points of North, South, East and West, but use specific features of the terrain to orientate themselves”
“The whole emphasis of their thought is on the local, the specific, the concrete, and the individual.”
Magical thinking. Making sense of things - telling narratives.
Education: “The child is highly motivated to conform, and his basic learning commitment is not to things or ideas, but to people, especially those closest to him socially.”
Animism and mind vs reality
There is no symbolic meaning, the objects hold inherent meaning.
There is no internal mind, people just react to external stimuli (whats happening). Though as a society we understand the concept of mind and meditating, do most follow this?
There, probably, still exists these ideas in good prevalence in today’s societies.

Enlightenment Now: A summary:

In my opinion, Enlightenment Now is just what the world needs right now. It is a defense of the ideas and values that have created the modern world, and a defense of that world itself. I don’t agree with every word of it, but I agree with its theme and essence.
Want to read the book, so did not read in detail.

Learning with hands:

There are so many fundamental and important skills that human civilisation had as its crucial component, but today’s tech acts as an abstraction.
Very interesting to see so many communities in this niche of “it’s a primitive skills gathering, where the best and brightest practitioners in the world get together to teach and learn skills that are stone age up to pre-modern”.
https://www.thecrucible.org/, https://www.primitive.org/, https://earthskillsgathering.org/. https://www.wintercountcamp.com/, https://www.rabbitstick.com/

Going for a spin:

Cool photos! And interesting activity.

Out of whole cloth:

Brief history of how textiles industry came to be.
“To summarize: the productivity of the textile manufacturing process, and thus the cost of cloth, was improved by orders of magnitude starting in the 1700s through a series of inventions from multiple inventors that, in aggregate, transformed it from a fully manual process to a fully automated and powered one. Once the initial inventions removed the manual labor and careful fingerwork from the process, subsequent inventions, continuing through the 1800s and 1900s, focused on improving speed, efficiency, and quality. The result is the modern textile industry: large factories turn out enormous amounts of high-quality fabric at extremely low cost.”
I remember Kevin Martin: Inventing 3D Weaving taking the tradition of improving textiles industry forward.

The time machine:

“Finance is often seen as somewhere between “shady” and “the root of all evil” (indeed, one of the lessons of the book is that social criticism of finance has been around as long as finance). But in fact, finance is an amazing and vastly underappreciated mechanism of social cooperation. It allows the rich to help the poor. It allows the old to help the young (via their accumulated savings). It allows the lucky to help the unlucky (think insurance), thus smoothing out the bumps, jolts and shocks of nature and of life. It allows those with ideas and ambition to pursue them, regardless of their personal funds (otherwise, entrepreneurship would be only for the rich). In general, it accumulates capital from many sources to make it useful, instead of letting it sit idle. In so doing, it allows anyone with any degree of savings to participate in value creation of the economy.”
If technology is important, then better ways of social organization and cooperation is equally important. Aligning people towards a goal is also very hard. The finance systems (especially capitalism) works by incentivising people for individual benefits, and from this simple component emerges complex plethora of different kinds of systems. Venture capital, credit system, real estate, insurances, etc - all complex but an important part of our civilisation.

Learning the loom:

Another example of learning a primitive skill.
And again cool photos!

Unsustainable: (one of the best blogs)

“A major theme of the 19th century was the transition from plant and animal materials to synthetic versions or substitutes mostly from non-organic sources”. For example, fertilizers, materials, wood, etc.
If plant and animal materials were unsustainable in the 19th century, why are they the solution to sustainability in the 21st?
Sustainability had a very different meaning in the 19th century. It then meant finding new abundant resources and efficient processes to sustain growth and progress, avoiding the Malthusian trap.
Today it is synonymous with a different movement: of degrowth, of preserving the environment and “but simply the sustaining of a given industrial process indefinitely. It also has, perhaps, a connotation of avoiding unforeseen disasters caused by technology and industry.”
“based on the history of the 19th century, I’m skeptical that it means plastic made from corn”

Problem-solution history:

Name-date history → storytime history → cause and effect history → big picture history → problem solution history
Not just what happened, but why it happened and why we made it happen.
Like balaji said: for future entrepreneurs history will be the best guide.