Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:00)
Okay, today, I had the pleasure of speaking with Jason Crawford.
He's a former tech startup founder, and now he writes at The Roots of Progress. He has his posts that are very well-researched and insightful about the history of technology and industry, and he's filled the gap, at least in my education, and I suspect many others, of the history of progress and its consequences and the lessons we can learn from it. So Jason, it's very nice to talk to you.

**Jason Crawford** (0:24)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:25)
Of course, and can you just tell us before we get into the weeds, what you're doing at The Roots of Progress?

**Jason Crawford** (0:31)
Yeah, sure.
I write about the history of technology and the philosophy of progress. So The Roots of Progress looks at how did, over the last couple of hundred years, how did we create this amazing world around us and this really wonderful, incredible standard of living that we now enjoy that is so much, life is just so much better in so many ways, in almost every way than it was about 200, 250 years ago or so. Really, even then, if you compare to 100 years ago or 50 years ago, things just keep getting better.
And this phenomenon is unprecedented in history. For thousands, tens of thousands of years, as far as back as you want to go, really, there was very little improvement in the standard of living, the way people lived, in life expectancy, in health, in our ability to get around. I mean, for so many years, we were limited to the speed of horses and sail, the wind. And then the last couple of hundred years, all of that changed, and it was just absolutely unprecedented. So how did that happen? What were the steps? What were the major inventions and discoveries? And then what can we learn from this? Why did it take so long? What were the root causes that suddenly caused things to take off and for life to improve? And how do we keep it going?
And how do we make sure that it doesn't sort of accidentally slow down or stop or even reverse? Those are the questions I'm concerned with.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (1:58)
So let me offer a different interpretation of what you might be up to. Because you say you're studying why progress has been so overwhelming, but maybe a different way to look at it is why you're studying progress at this moment and why people like Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowan are worried about it. It's not because progress has been so overwhelming recently, but in the last 50 years, it's actually been underwhelming.
You mentioned the speed of travel, but we're still flying at the speed of the 747, which was invented in the 1970s.

**Jason Crawford** (2:23)
It's true. That was not my original motivation. And I think if you step back, it's an important question, an important thing to look at.
It's something that honestly, I was a little skeptical about when I first heard it and have since warmed up to it. I mean, I think the numbers are there and I see where this stagnation hypothesis comes from. I do think it's an important thing to look into.
But it wasn't the original motivation for me. I really got into it looking at the last 200 or so years and contrasting those with the thousands of years before. And that was what I wanted to understand and figure out. But I think they're really the same thing.
Or I mean, they're just very much along the same lines. They're both wanting to understand what are the root causes of progress? How do we keep it going? The stagnation hypothesis is just, I would say just gives it a little bit of extra urgency because it says, hey, we might not, hey, look, this thing is, this progress thing is not automatic. It's not inevitable. It doesn't just keep going with its own momentum. It can slow down. Maybe it's running into friction. Let's take a look at that. But in my mind, whether or not it has slowed down in the past is actually even less important than whether or not it could be sped up in the future. And sort of what are the range of possible futures? How much might it slow down? How much might, could it be sped up?
And how much control do we have over this? And what are the control knobs or levers, right? Those are the most important things. If it was a natural slowdown in the last 50 years, or if it was caused by something we did or failed to do in the last 50 years, like that's good to know, but only so that we can, you know, so that we can shape the future. That's really what it's all about.