Dwarkesh PodcastJason Crawford - The Roots of Progress & the History of Technology
Dwarkesh Patel and Jason Crawford on jason Crawford Explores Why Progress Happened—and How To Protect It.
In this episode of Dwarkesh Podcast, featuring Dwarkesh Patel and Jason Crawford, Jason Crawford - The Roots of Progress & the History of Technology explores jason Crawford Explores Why Progress Happened—and How To Protect It Jason Crawford discusses his work at The Roots of Progress, focusing on how technological, scientific, and social advances created modern prosperity and why continued progress is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Jason Crawford Explores Why Progress Happened—and How To Protect It
- Jason Crawford discusses his work at The Roots of Progress, focusing on how technological, scientific, and social advances created modern prosperity and why continued progress is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
- He engages with the “great stagnation” hypothesis, explaining how overlapping technological S‑curves, cultural attitudes, regulation, and talent allocation may explain why progress feels slower in recent decades.
- Crawford outlines the emerging field of “progress studies” as a cross‑disciplinary, value‑laden lens on history and economics, and describes efforts to educate high school students about the history of technology.
- He argues for a nuanced, prescriptive optimism that acknowledges existential risks and systemic fragility while insisting on active, deliberate effort to build a safer, more advanced future.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasProgress is real, transformative, and historically unprecedented, but not automatic.
For most of human history, living standards barely improved; only in the last few centuries have health, lifespan, mobility, and comfort risen dramatically—and this depends on deliberate choices, institutions, and ideas that can weaken or be reversed.
Technological progress follows overlapping S‑curves, so stagnation can occur when new curves lag.
Each major technology (like electricity) ramps slowly, then rapidly, then plateaus; sustained exponential progress requires continuously seeding and scaling new domains (e.g., biotech, computing) before old ones saturate.
Culture, education, and regulation strongly shape the rate of innovation.
Post‑WWII fears (nuclear horror, environmental crises, oil shocks) and growing bureaucracy may have dampened enthusiasm for science and industry and added friction to invention, a tradeoff for safety that we have not rigorously costed.
Progress studies is less a new discipline than a coherent lens and value system.
Crawford frames it as a school of thought that treats progress as real, important, and fragile, guiding which questions scholars ask, which data they collect, and which policy implications they emphasize across history and economics.
Science and technology are deeply intertwined, not simply a one‑way pipeline.
Inventions like the steam engine and transistor emerged from messy back‑and‑forth between theory and tinkering: sometimes technology precedes understanding and then motivates new science, while instruments and tools are themselves technologies that enable further scientific discovery.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesProgress is not automatic, it's not inevitable, it doesn't just keep going with its own momentum.
— Jason Crawford
We get long‑run exponential progress by overlapping the S‑curves.
— Jason Crawford
Progress studies is not really a new field… it's more like a school of thought, a set of premises and values.
— Jason Crawford
It's been said that thermodynamics owes more to the steam engine than the steam engine does to thermodynamics.
— Jason Crawford
I am always and ever a prescriptive optimist… no matter how bad the odds are, we're never going to give up.
— Jason Crawford
QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
5 questionsHow could we systematically measure whether regulation and bureaucracy have actually slowed technological progress, versus simply made it safer?
Jason Crawford discusses his work at The Roots of Progress, focusing on how technological, scientific, and social advances created modern prosperity and why continued progress is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
What concrete policies or institutional reforms would best realign talent and culture toward ambitious, pro‑progress projects today?
He engages with the “great stagnation” hypothesis, explaining how overlapping technological S‑curves, cultural attitudes, regulation, and talent allocation may explain why progress feels slower in recent decades.
How should education at the high school and university level change if we took progress studies seriously as a core civic subject?
Crawford outlines the emerging field of “progress studies” as a cross‑disciplinary, value‑laden lens on history and economics, and describes efforts to educate high school students about the history of technology.
Given the intertwined nature of science and technology, how should funding and organizational structures for research be redesigned?
He argues for a nuanced, prescriptive optimism that acknowledges existential risks and systemic fragility while insisting on active, deliberate effort to build a safer, more advanced future.
What practical steps can individuals and institutions take to embody prescriptive optimism in the face of existential risks like engineered pandemics or advanced AI?
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
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