This article in the Atlantic says we need a “new science of progress”. It’s an interesting philosophical question – the universe is all around us, its secrets there for us to reach out and understand. The knowledge that exists to discover is not changing, and yet we seem to only be able to discover it in fits and starts. Are there things we could do to discover it faster? Well, there is something called the scientific method. There is something called technology. The field of economics certainly tries to study progress in a systematic way. How best to educate and train human beings is a perennial field of research. Maybe we need to mash all these together somehow, then add hefty doses of system thinking and data science? Or maybe we just need to find the really smart, innovative, unconventional thinkers and figure out how to harness their genius better?

This is exactly what Progress Studies would investigate. It would consider the problem as broadly as possible. It would study the successful people, organizations, institutions, policies, and cultures that have arisen to date, and it would attempt to concoct policies and prescriptions that would help improve our ability to generate useful progress in the future.

Along these lines, the world would benefit from an organized effort to understand how we should identify and train brilliant young people, how the most effective small groups exchange and share ideas, which incentives should exist for all sorts of participants in innovative ecosystems (including scientists, entrepreneurs, managers, and engineers), how much different organizations differ in productivity (and the drivers of those differences), how scientists should be selected and funded, and many other related issues besides.

The Atlantic