What do we mean by “Progress Studies” and how can this field of study be advanced? I’ve been thinking about that question a lot since Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen published their 2019 manifesto in The Atlantic on why “We Need a New Science of Progress.” At present, there is no overarching “unified field theory” of what Progress Studies entails or what underpins it, and that may be holding up progress on Progress Studies. I recently attended an important conference on the “Moral Foundations of Progress Studies,” co-hosted by The Roots of Progress and the Salem Center at UT Austin, where I discovered that many others were grappling with these same issues. 

While a broad range of people are interested in Progress Studies, their moral priors differ, sometimes significantly. For example, the UT Austin conference included scholars from diverse disciplines (philosophy, psychology, economics, political science, history, and others) whose thinking was rooted in different philosophical traditions (utilitarianism, effective altruism, individualism, and various hybrids). Everyone shared the goal of advancing human well-being, but participants had different conceptions of the moral foundations of well-being, and even some disagreement about what well-being meant in concrete terms. There were also differing perspectives about what the “studies” part of Progress Studies should entail. Specifically, does it include progress advocacy, including the potential for specific policy recommendations? 

Comprehension vs. Advocacy

Part of the confusion over the nature and goals of Progress Studies can be traced back to Collison and Cowen’s foundational essay. On one hand, their goal was progress comprehension. “Progress itself is understudied,” Collison and Cowen argued. They lamented that “there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress.” 

But Collison and Cowen went further. Their goal was not merely to inspire the development of a field of study that could give us a better understanding of the prerequisites of progress, but also to formulate a plan for advancing progress. They argued that “mere comprehension is not the goal,” and advocated for “the deeper goal of speeding it up.” They went on to say, “the implicit question is how scientists [and others] should be acting” and that Progress Studies should be viewed as, “closer to medicine than biology: The goal is to treat, not merely to understand.” The presupposition here is that progress is important and that we need to take steps to get a lot more of it. Again, we can think of this part of Progress Studies as progress advocacy. And advocacy can entail both advocating for progress generally as well as specific types of policy advocacy.

This raises an interesting question we debated at the UT Austin conference: Can you study something and advocate for it at the same time? Some felt you really cannot separate them, while others believed that the broader questions about how progress has worked could be kept separate from any advocacy efforts. Of course, this same tension between comprehension and advocacy comes up in many other fields.

What Progress Studies Can Learn from STS

In this sense, Progress Studies might learn some important lessons by examining the older but loosely related field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). STS incorporates a wide variety of mostly “soft science” academic disciplines, such as law, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. These scholars analyze the relationship between technology, society, culture, and politics.

One conclusion from studying STS is obvious: comprehension and advocacy frequently get blurred. Many of the STS scholars who engage in critical studies of the history of technology seamlessly transition into anti-technology advocates, even as many of them claim they are “just studying” the issues. As I’ve noted elsewhere:

When thinking about of technology, STS scholars commonly employ words like “anxiety,” “alienation,” “degradation,” and “discrimination.” Consequently, most of them suggest that the burden of proof lies squarely on scientists, engineers, and innovators to prove that their ideas and inventions will bring worth to society before they are deployed. In other words, STS scholars generally fall in the precautionary principle camp, and their policy prescriptions have grown increasingly radical over time.

Meanwhile, as I discussed in my latest book, many STS scholars describe themselves as “humanists” while implicitly suggesting that those who promote technological progress are somehow callous oafs who only care about the cold calculus of profit-seeking and creating shiny new gadgets we don’t need. 

While some STS scholars continue to do important and largely objective work, many others routinely show their more radical leanings in books, essays, and social media posts. Most worrying is their newfound love of Luddism, as they spin revisionist histories of “Why Luddites Matter,” insisting that “There’s Nothing Wrong with Being a Luddite,” and that “I’m a Luddite. You Should Be One Too.” Neil Richards, a law professor and leading STS scholar declares bluntly on Twitter: “Less metaverse, less crypto, less disruptive innovation. More regulation, more ethics, more humanity.” In other words, public policy defaults should be set squarely to the Precautionary Principle and anyone opposed to that is unethical and anti-human. Taken to the extreme, STS scholars marry up this Luddite revisionism with the retrograde philosophy of “degrowth” and produce book chapters with titles like, “Methodological Luddism: A Concept for Tying Degrowth to the Assessment and Regulation of Technologies.”

The Progress Studies movement might consider framing its work as a response to the growing extremism of the STS movement. STS scholars have become so remarkably hostile to the very notion that science and technology are central to human advancement that the field might today better be labeled Anti-Science & Technology Studies. Yet, these are the scholars that dominate many academic departments where students are learning about technological progress. Progress Studies scholars can push back against that radicalism and offer level-headed, empirical responses to it. 

Ensuring A Big Tent 

To improve its chances of success, the Progress Studies movement should seek to broaden its appeal by avoiding a dogmatic party line on its moral foundations while ensuring that multiple disciplines and viewpoints are incorporated into it. 

In terms of philosophical underpinnings, those interested in Progress Studies can take different approaches to the moral foundations of progress and human well-being. Many philosophers get frustrated when others fail to hammer out all the detailed nuances of the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of these matters. I understand that urge, but I’ve now spent over 30 years covering technology policy and have been constantly surprised about how many people can come together and agree on a broad set of principles about the importance of progress without sharing a common philosophical framework. 

The same is true as it pertains to policy prescriptions. We need to ensure a “big tent” in this way, too. It is already the case that many people engaged in Progress Studies have very different perspectives on issues like intellectual property and industrial policy, for example. I have many friends on different sides of these issues. Importantly, there are not even clear sides on these issues but rather a very broad spectrum of viewpoints. Progress Studies scholars will likely always disagree on the finer points of both types of “IP” policy. Nonetheless, they can remain more unified in stressing the common goal of moving the needle on progress in a positive direction and highlighting the continuing importance of flexible experimentation with policies aimed at enhancing innovation and growth. 

To the extent there is any litmus test for the Progress Studies movement, that’s it: advancing opportunities for innovation and growth is paramount. Regardless of how one grounds their moral philosophy, or goes about constructing a theory of rights, many people can agree that granting humans the freedom to explore, experiment, and be entrepreneurial has important benefits for individuals, families, organizations, and entire nations. Openness to change is what unifies us. Stagnation and “steady state” thinking—and the Precautionary Principle-based policies that flow from such reasoning—are the enemy. 

Thus, the Progress Studies movement can focus on both studying progress and advancing it at the same time, even if some will devote more effort to one priority than the other. And we shouldn’t forget that these two objectives are reinforcing: Comprehension informs advocacy and vice-versa. Progress is a never-ending process of trial-and-error. It’s all about learning by doing. We try, we fail, we learn, and we try again. This is as true for the individuals attempting to make progress in the real-world as it is for scholars studying it and seeking to promote it. 

Let us get on with this important work, regardless of what motivates us to do it. 


 

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Thanks Adam! A few thoughts in response:

1. On comprehension vs. advocacy, I think there are actually two types of advocacy. One is more like “application” and is analogous to medicine or engineering: we learn something (comprehension) that can then be applied for practical results. In Cowen & Collison's article, they give the example of teaching better management practices to companies.

The other type is advocating for progress itself: promoting the idea that progress is even desirable and possible. I don't think this has an analog in biology/medicine, because health is not a very controversial goal. There is no “dehealth” movement advocating sickness; no one calls health an “addition” or a “fetish,” etc.

(The question of whether you can both “study” and “advocate” at the same time is interesting and important, and it would be good to take that up in a separate post/thread here.)

2. Related, re:

The Progress Studies movement might consider framing its work as a response to the growing extremism of the STS movement.

I think that's right. Although I wouldn't define PS primarily as a response to any other idea or movement. PS would be needed and would be essentially the same even if STS didn't exist.

3. Re “big tent”, I generally agree, although I think this is a subtle issue.

I definitely want to avoid dogmatic party lines, or dogmatism of any form. (The question of epistemic standards for the progress movement is also worth a separate post and discussion.)

That said, I do think that there are certain basic premises that are needed to give this community/movement some coherence and identity. I've identified those as: progress as a historical fact; human well-being as the standard of value; and a belief in human agency. In other words: progress is real, desirable, and possible. (And even within those basic premises, there's room for debate over exact definition, interpretation, and applications.)

If we agree on the goal, then there is a lot of room for debate about specific policies and approaches. The progress community spans a range from progressive to libertarian, and I'd love to see people debate their preferred systems in terms of what actually achieves progress.

I would go even a bit further and say that I would like this community, and especially this forum, to be welcoming of people who aren't even sure that they're on board with the basic premises, and don't self-identify with the movement. No need to pledge allegiance or anything. If you can contribute to the discussion, then we're glad to have you here.

All that said, I would emphasize that I do think the basic premises matter, including “hammering out all the detailed nuances.” I think those premises have powerful consequences for how we interpret “progress” and what conclusions we draw about it. So even while we leave them somewhat open, I think we should do so not on the idea that basic premises are irrelevant fluff, but rather on the idea that we're still figuring out what they are, as part of an iterative epistemic process of improving our views.

"Progress is real, desirable, and possible" is an inspiring slogan, but I would suggest that it's actually mistaken. What we want is differential progress where we accelerate those technologies most likely to be beneficial and slow those technologies most likely to be harmful.

What's a good example of slowing a technology that is likely to be harmful?

Nuclear non-proliferation has slowed the distribution of nukes; I acknowledge that this is slowing distribution rather than development.

There are conventions against the use of or development of biological weapons. These don't appear to have been completely successful, but they've had some effect.

There has been a successful effort to prevent genetic enhancement - this may be net-positive or net-negative - but it shows the possibility of preventing development of a tech, even in China which was assumed to be the wild West.

But going further, progress studies wouldn't exist if we didn't think we could accelerate technologies. And as a matter if logic if we have the option to accelerate something we also have the option to not accelerate it, otherwise it was never an option. So even if we can't slow a harmful technology relative to a baseline, we can at least not accelerate it.

Chris, you seem to be reducing "progress" down to "technology". This is exactly the type of thing progress studies needs to clarify. As someone who has spent half his life studying progress, my two cents on the issue is that it is helpful to view two distinct types of progress. 
The first is what I call type 1 progress or progress in capability, knowledge or technology. This is nukes! Progress in technology and capability are fairly commonplace in history and even evolution.

The second is what I call type 2 progress, or progress in outcome or welfare. This is the hard one, and is extremely rare on a population level. The first and only known example of type 2 progress in the observable universe has been with humanity over the past 250 years or so.  
 

Technology and science certainly play a crucial role in type 2 progress. But they are in no way sufficient. 

OK. Why do these examples make “progress is real, desirable, and possible” mistaken?

Can't it be understood that by “progress,” we mean progress on things that are good for human well-being? Does every reference to progress always have to include a qualifier or disclaimer?

Things that are good are desireable would seem like a tauntology.

But my deeper critique is that whether a motto is a good choice or not depends on the context. And while in the past it may have made sense to abstract out progress as good, we’re now at that point where operating within that abstraction can lead us horribly astray.

I agree with distinctions between applied policy advocacy - with significant intellectual diversity of opinion - and conceptual advocacy, which is axiomatic to the field - the idea that progress is "real, desirable and possible".

I wan to posit an addition flavor of study and applied advocacy, one that is human, rather than progress focused. It asks how we can help people (especially the early/late majority) adapt to increasing rates of progress and change and avoid the worst fates of progress losers. This rather sits squarely between applied and conceptual, likely employing conceptual tools like 'widespread cultural agreement' as well as specific policy analysis and advocacy.

A single example where this kind of understanding could have played a large role can be seen with the CDC's COVID vaccination timelines that were frequently influenced by their opinions on public perception of their decisions, which seemed to lack scientific basis.

Beyond that, this advocacy has the potential to moderate many of the "anti-humanist" arguments put forth by both Adam & Jason. 

Biography is a god example of a genre where you can study something and advocate for it simultaneously, and in good biography often they are the same thing. Advocating doesn't have to mean apologising in this context. Simply explaining something properly and with the aim of increasing appreciation for all its elements so it becomes higher status for all its good and bad point is the best form of advocacy biography offers, with acceptance of fault or limitations. I think this is or should be an important part of progress studies. The best advocacy is inspirational to others!