Tyler Cowen walks onto stage in a cozy blue knit sweater. He waits patiently while an organizer adjusts the microphones of his interlocutor, Moxie Marlinspike.
Technology sorted, Tyler begins. “Hello everyone, and welcome back to Conversations with Tyler.” The exact same words, the exact same inflection he uses to begin every episode of Conversations with Tyler. No “It’s great to be here” or any other preamble you expect from panelists at a live event.
The crowd laughs with delight — this in media res beginning is exactly what we expect from Tyler.
The progress movement has been around long enough to accumulate lore, folkways, and memes, which were on full display at last weekend’s Progress Conference. One attendee I talked to described it as “Coachella for people who read Tyler Cowen.”
Piles of Stripe Press books scattered around. Jason Crawford waxing poetic about the latest advancements in AI and math. Scattered sessions of “underrated vs overrated.” The Dean Ball / Caleb Watney mix-up that became an instant meme1.
The movement also carries a debt, sometimes uneasy, to the Bay Area Rationalists. P(Doom), Foom, updating, paperclips. Dwarkesh saying the word “cruxy.” Small-group discussions in Bayes Attic. Perhaps never before has a senior Department of War official attended an event catering so thoughtfully to vegans.
Now, I realize this description won’t really sell the conference for someone not already immersed in the progress movement stew. So let me emphasize: These bits of progress tradition were sprinkled throughout the weekend for those who cared to find them, but were not required context for conference attendance.
The conference’s real value came from gathering ideologically diverse, smart, ambitious people, all working seriously in technology, policy, and academia to unlock the fruits of human progress.
The keynote talks were good. Waymo CEO Dmitri Dolgov was my favorite, and of course Minn Kim’s presentation on upgrading the permission layer for critical talent was spot-on.
But the casual conversations were even better. I interrogated someone from 80,000 Hours about China’s AI ambitions, and someone from NVIDIA about open-weight models. I got the inside scoop on Próspera, Honduras, and Tatu City, Kenya. And most usefully for me: I got to meet IRL some of America’s best thinkers on immigration2.
Being around these people raised my ambition level for improving America’s talent infrastructure. I realized some of my views are more provocative than I had previously thought (rant post, coming soon). And I now have a pipeline of collaborators for future writing3.
So if you see a burst of productivity from me over the next few months, it’s a result of an inspiring and invigorating conference. Onward progress!
Thanks to Ben Thomas, Jason Crawford, the entire Roots of Progress team, and the sponsors for putting on a great event! Looking forward to the next one.
This was the subject of a very silly parody video played at the conference.
I think a major gap from the progress conference was China. Despite much interest in China, there seemed to be very little understanding.
Lauren Gilbert collab coming soon.