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Do We Need a New Academic Field of "Progress Studies"?

8/1/2019

13 Comments

 
​Before we begin today, let’s briefly discuss the ratings for the final episode of America Unearthed. The season finale pulled in 454,000 viewers, about on par with the season’s average, but losing 80,000 viewers from the rerun of Expedition Unknown that served as its lead-in. As of this writing, the Travel Channel had not announced whether it would cancel or renew the series. I’d have a hard time justifying renewing a show that brings in fewer viewers than a rerun, but the show does well on streaming services, which might make it a more attractive purchase. We’ll have to wait and see.
​In the Atlantic this week, the head of a software infrastructure firm and an economics professor joined together to propose the need for a new field of science to study progress and advocate for methods that would accelerate technological, economic, and social progress. Patrick Collison of Stripe and Tyler Cowen of George Mason University said that progress is not widely studied and that this is slowing down the development of our civilization:
Progress itself is understudied. By “progress,” we mean the combination of economic, technological, scientific, cultural, and organizational advancement that has transformed our lives and raised standards of living over the past couple of centuries. For a number of reasons, there is no broad-based intellectual movement focused on understanding the dynamics of progress, or targeting the deeper goal of speeding it up. We believe that it deserves a dedicated field of study. We suggest inaugurating the discipline of “Progress Studies.”
​There is a good reason that there is no “progress studies.” That would be because “progress” is subjective, relative to the observer, and inherently a political or social goal rather than a scientifically objective end state. If they can’t see that, then they don’t deserve to be proposing new fields of study.
 
The two men, for example, propose a goal of “improving” lifestyles by three percent per year. How does none measure an improvement in lifestyle and livelihood? Is adding Netflix a 0.01% improvement? What about having a tree in the neighborhood instead of a concrete slab? How do you measure the value of a bird’s song? More to the point, how does one define “progress” objectively? Liberals’ view of progress is not the same as conservatives’. Americans’ goals for progress are not the same as the Native tribes of the Amazon or the ayatollahs who run Iran. It is dangerous to assume that the values and goals of upper middle-class Americans of the twenty-first century are universal, or universally good.
 
Because Collison is a technologist and Cowen is an economist, their view of progress is almost strictly material. They write of progress as improved access to consumer products, enhanced wealth generation capabilities, and better health care. When they do speak of less directly material concerns, such as the arts, take a look what they have to say. Here is how they describe the flourishing of Renaissance Art, which they weirdly decide is the most important progress in the arts in the past thousand years: “Along the cultural dimension, the artists of Renaissance Florence enriched the heritage of all humankind, and in the process created the masterworks that are still the lifeblood of the local economy.” Ah, yes, the economic value of art—the real reason that Renaissance art is more important than medieval or Baroque art, or—heaven forfend—non-European art.
 
That’s another blind spot in their analysis. The two men view progress almost exclusively through a Western lens, focusing on European and American cultural developments and then assuming that such developments are necessarily progress. (They briefly mention Muslim and Chinese science of the Middle Ages, but only in passing. All other examples are European or American.) They praise the Industrial Revolution as because it “elevate[d] standards of living for everyone,” though this is a debatable point. Working conditions were atrocious and many were sicker and more miserable than before, in environments that were cramped, polluted, and dangerous. By some accounts, it took generations before the elevation in standards of living were felt across all social classes, and even then because of specific political, economic, and social choices.
 
The authors seem to vaguely be aware that what they are proposing is not really an academic field of study but rather a pollical and economic policy workshop. According to them, “Progress Studies” would be all about generating policy solutions to achieve predetermined outcomes: “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.” The two ill-defined words are “successful” and “progress.” These are intimately tied to current American cultural values, and therefore the mask falls away and we see that this not an intellectual field of objective scientific study but basically an excuse to rope scholars into a policy workshop whose goals would be set according to political views about the direction society should be heading—a political and philosophical question.
 
The focus that the authors place on “optimal” management, “efficiency,” and “productivity” as proxies for progress speaks to the inherently short-sighted, materialist, and capitalist goals behind their seemingly high-minded appeal to intellectualism. They seem bling to the potentially dangerous potential for politicizing Progress Studies by defining progress according to ideological goals. Who decides where society should be heading? It might seem self-evident that “progress” involves healthier people, more secure lives, etc., but these are generalized bromides whose application is inherently ideological. What is “health”? What makes a lifestyle comfortable? The more you drill down into the application, there more obvious it becomes that the values on display are those of the observer, not an objective measure of human wellbeing.
 
That’s not to say that there is no value in investigating how to measure the potential impact of policy decisions in order to select those that best help reach specific goals. That ought to be a prerequisite for politics. But dressing it up as objective science only gives cover to those who want to pursue ideological ends while pretending that their policy choices are self-evident, inevitable, and unopposable. 
13 Comments
a different jim
8/1/2019 10:14:30 am

Progress is whatever our future AI overlords tell us it is...

Reply
TONY S.
8/1/2019 10:50:13 am

There's something Orwellian about this whole issue.

To declare that one set of values only is or should be the defining one of any society is at best misguided, at worst, the path to totalitarianism. To say such things as if they are objective fact and that they speak for everyone is the height of arrogance.

The Third Reich labeled the art of the Dutch Masters degenerate; the Soviet Union repudiated all art save that which glorified the proletariat. Both did so according to their own notions of "progress".

The idea that it's an objective fact that one form of art is superior to all others misses the very point of art itself. It's by it's very nature subjective, as you pointed out, Jason.

I grew up right outside of New York City, I love its museums. But I never have once set foot inside the MOMA; modern art doesn't appeal to me in the least. I find nothing interesting about it nor any value in it. That being said, I fully appreciate the fact that it is a form of art all its own, and many other people do find beauty and value in it because of their personal perspectives formed from their own unique life experiences.

I love the Met's collection of art which extends through the ancient, medieval, Baroque, Renaissance periods, etc. I love them all, find things to appreciate about them individually on their own.I personally prefer some over others, but that's because of my own taste as an individual. Others may not find anything redeeming about them, or perhaps enjoy one or two but not the others. It's all subjective, and to put forward any ideology that attempts to control thought and opinion in the direction of one set of values only is inherently dangerous and insidious. We've all seen where such methods lead to in the end.

The idea that the Industrial Revolution made things better for everybody is so laughable that I can't even take it seriously enough to address it.

Reply
orang
8/1/2019 11:25:43 am

This reminds me of a short story from decades ago in which mankind's civilization was going to end. Somehow, wise men were able to judge what was needed to save it, and it was a poet. The worldwide search for a poet came up empty.

Reply
White
8/1/2019 12:45:48 pm

Is it not obvious which countries are most progressive?

Reply
Kent
8/1/2019 09:18:42 pm

The two guys mentioned are at best trying to push a long train like you'd push a car. Any discussion of "progress", including this article, which doesn't mention W.E. Deming can safely be ignored.

"More to the point, how does one define “progress” objectively?" Start with the easy stuff: drinkable water, indoor plumbing, vaccinations, literacy.

"Americans’ goals for progress are not the same as the Native tribes of the Amazon or the ayatollahs who run Iran." It's culturally interesting that Jason capitalizes "Native" but not "ayatollahs". The Indians got screwed and Iran's gummint by fiqh فقه is idiotic, but that's the situation.

"The two men view progress almost exclusively through a Western lens" Westerners, and in particular Germans, make the best lenses.

"The idea that the Industrial Revolution made things better for everybody is so laughable that I can't even take it seriously enough to address it" he typed on his computer.

Reply
TONY S.
8/1/2019 09:52:08 pm

I wasn't speaking it's legacy, about the present day. Like Jason, I was referring to the horrid conditions that prevailed at the time in many places which the Industrial Revolution either did not make better, or made worse.

Reply
Kent
8/1/2019 10:57:29 pm

So you were talking about horrid pre-existing conditions and not the Industrial Revolution at all. My previous position of not caring is intact.

TONY S.
8/1/2019 11:13:20 pm

Actually, I was talking precisely about the Industrial Revolution, I thought I made that clear. But if not, sh$t happens, as they say.

It's good to know that your position of not caring is clearly so strong that you felt the need to tell me you don't care. Doesn't sound very "intact", as it were.

But hey, disagreement is all a part of Life's rich pageant.



Kent
8/2/2019 12:03:08 am

"I was referring to the horrid conditions that prevailed at the time in many places which the Industrial Revolution either did not make better, or made worse."

Pre-existing conditions.

Scoutmaster
8/2/2019 12:08:32 am

Saying you don't fuck is not the same as fucking. Saying you don't care is not the same as caring.

Mr. Obvious
8/6/2019 07:55:05 pm

Sounds like someone who doesn't know much of anything about fucking or caring.

William Fitzgerald
8/4/2019 04:21:26 pm

If there is no objective better or right, than what is the point of you being. Or put it another way: how does a skeptic of pseudoscience get away with calling everything relative? The cognitive dissonance is...interesting.

I don't necessarily agree with the approach being advocated for "Progress Studies." I agree this is not a hard-science, which is why we have social-sciences. But is it so wrong to want to improve people's lives using metrics? But, let's take your argument to the logical conclusions: if everything is relative and no human condition is objectively correct, then no one can be considered a human-being.

In your relativist outlook you are in essence denying that anyone can be human, have human needs or desires; because there is no standard on which to measure these factors. I reject this and believe there are fundamental human qualities. While admittedly absolutes are rare, aberrations tend to smooth out creating the uniqueness that is human-nature. People tend to gravitate towards and desire the good-life, which is inherently understood by people. What makes a good-life, I believe can be understood and measured to better people's lives. To say that we can't try to better people's lives, because we don't know what that means, is wrong.

Everyone needs to breath, eat, feel safe, let's say as a starting point. The vast majority of people feel a need to procreate or at least create and share something with the world. To do that one must generally be healthy and find support within their community. Ultimately people want to understand themselves and be comfortable in that. There can be more, but the point is that human-nature can be understood and society can help people live a better life.

Preserving culture, attitudes, proclivities seemingly standing in the way of a better life, is a another debate; but that is why we have democracy. As an example, if someone deeply felt there life and legacy would be at risk if they did not have a right to arm themselves and therefore wants to preserve easy access to guns; is this a legitimate point of view? Or can you say that their rights and own sense of comfort must be weighed against the needs of many others who suffer gun violence?

(I love when you go social justice warrior, Jason. It makes me think a little and laugh a lot).

Reply
Dan Elton link
2/24/2022 07:53:45 pm

I think a lot of what Collison & Cowen are proposing would be an objective science, though. For instance, all of the following are objective metrics that can be tracked:
-- rate of major scientific advancements (as defined by surveys of scientists who mark out the best papers, or through citation network analysis)
-- average lifespan
-- prevalence of cancer, mental illness, and other disease
-- QALY (quality adjusted life years) generated per year
-- GDP (imperfect but tracks many other things people generally care about)
-- rate of creation of successful new businesses
-- rate of patents (imperfect)
-- literacy rates
-- rates of deprivation / hunger / homelessness

All of these can be studied in the historical record. Why did some places like Bell Labs lead to high rates of scientific advancement and invention? What are the cultural practices and economic / political systems that improve these metrics (where improvement is just defined as what is accepted by the vast majority of people as an improvement) ? Those are objective questions.

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