Cross-posted from: https://cleanenergyreview.io/p/grid-defection-is-coming-to-california

A decade ago, a specter haunted Europe.

No, not Communism; utility death spirals.

Utilities were faced with growing legions of subsidized rooftop solar customers who weren’t paying enough into the grid to cover system costs. Some were even leaving the grid entirely (otherwise known as grid defection). Their share of system costs would then fall on non-solar customers, causing more people to switch until the utility’s business had been irreparably eroded…

Except this didn’t come to pass, mostly because defecting proved too costly for customers once regulatory supports were reduced.

Rooftop solar was relatively expensive, and only produced power during the day. Batteries to make the system work 24/7 were even more expensive. Regulations were restructured to avoid unduly favoring renewables. As a result, regulators and utilities mostly stopped...

Thoughts on Dario Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace.”

By Niko McCarty for Asimov Press.

Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, recently published an essay called “Machines of Loving Grace.” It sketches out his vision for how AI could radically transform neuroscience, economics, diplomacy, and the meaning of work. Amodei also imagines the ways AI could accelerate biological research and yield miraculous cures in the 21st century; everything from the prevention and treatment of nearly all infectious and inherited diseases to the elimination of most cancers.

“Biology is probably the area where scientific progress has the greatest potential to directly and unambiguously improve the quality of human life,” Amodei writes. “My basic prediction is that AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress the progress that human biologists would have...

Imagine for a moment that instead of Republicans and Democrats, we had two different political philosophies: the Dynamists and the Stasists.

Dynamists put their faith in experimentation, ongoing competition, and iterative evolution towards ‘the good’ without knowing exactly how we’ll get there. They value ongoing progress but can come off as a bit simplistic when pressed on the details of how their policies will lead to flourishing.

By contrast, Stasists seek stability and order—either through a return to a previous ideal period, or through technocratic control of ongoing change—in pursuit of the ‘one best way’ to organize society. They often deride the Dynamists as naive and out of touch with human nature, believing that without rigorous control we risk spiraling into chaos.

Now, which best describes the culture of the...

We're excited to announce our November book discussion featuring Deirdre McCloskey's The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce as part of our ongoing book series dedicated to exploring the ideas of Progress Studies.

Pathways to Progress is a community of individuals committed to understanding and contributing to human prosperity. Through our discussions, we examine technological and scientific innovation, economic development, and their role in advancing human prosperity.

Each month, we read selected book(s), followed by a Q&A event with the author. In October, we discussed J. Storrs Hall's Where's My Flying Car?, followed by a Q&A with Hall. Previous books include Tyler Cowen's Stubborn Attachments and Ed Glaeser's Triumph of the City. We also host speaker events with guests such as Jason Crawford, Matt Clancy, and Heidi...

Sharing from my blog: https://spiralprogress.com/2024/10/22/scenario/

Following Kuhn, normal progress is when things get better along the values you already hold and society feels improved without becoming less recognizable. Cars get safer, screens have more pixels, food gets cheaper.

Normal progress does not mean “trivial” or “frivolous”. Decreasing infant mortality is hugely important and also a kind of “normal” progress.

There are however, rare moments of revolutionary progress where society changes in a more profound way. I am thinking of the advent of democracy, the slow death of religious fundamentalism, the shift to agriculture. In these moments, along the values and priorities held by the pre-revolutionary people, society may actually seem to be in decline. It is more difficult to say along the same axes that were important pre-revolution, that these...

The first practical steam engine was built by Thomas Newcomen in 1712. It was used to pump water out of mines.

An astute observer might have looked at this and said: “It’s clear where this is going. The engine will power everything: factories, ships, carriages. Horses will become obsolete!”

This person would have been right—but they might have been surprised to find, two hundred years later, that we were still using horses to plow fields.

In fact, it took about a hundred years for engines to be used for transportation, in steamships and locomotives, both invented in the early 1800s. It took more than fifty years just for engines to be widely used in factories.

What...

The history of humanity can be summarized as a long series of “fuck around and find out.”^[1] 

It’s the cycle of innovation and consequence. We see a problem X, we invent a solution, we discover that solution creates a new problem, we can't stop doing X, and we have to invent another solution. And so on. This is our philosophy: to seek, to solve, to stumble anew.

We invented fire, which kept us warm and cooked our food, and also burned down our villages and killed us in wildfires. We invented knives and arrows and saws, which helped us hunt and build, and also cut off our fingers and stabbed us in the gut. We invented agriculture, providing food surplus, yet it sowed seeds of war, famine, and environmental...

Most development interventions are considered “good buys” (for donors or governments) if they return $15 in social benefits for every $1 spent.

Every $1 spent on reading glasses could result in $46 more in earnings.