One central goal of this project is to show not just what mind-boggling potential we humans have right now to make our lives better, but how we can actually unleash that potential. Think of it as a compass and map that allows us to figure out the direction our civilization should best go into and along which we should align our actions.
If you remember my metaphor of the science compass where I stated that understanding the world better is the very first step in figuring out exactly what we should do to improve our lives, or in more metaphorical terms, which direction we should walk into. That’s because there are an infinite amount of ways to be wrong about something (e.g. that the flu is a curse of the gods or it’s due to a lack of human sacrifices) and usually just one way to being right (which we find through science).
In fact, as I’ve described before, the most important thing with doing anything, is first really understanding what is going on, how the world works, because otherwise you’re shooting in the dark, i.e. the Science step in the STEPS framework.
In that sense, I try to establish an understanding of how to make progress through my innovation research. Most ideas and plans to make improvements to our lives and the world in general are either harmful or not effective. The big question therefore is what is really valuable and what works – out of the thousands of different things we could do at any given point. Here is how I explained to a friend of mine what my goal is with my research and GU up on the Fisherman’s Bastion in Budapest:
Here is why this is really important and why I spend most of my time on finding that path to progress.
You see, when you are traveling just one degree off from your desired destination, then after a long enough time you’ll be in an entirely different place. For example, if you want to hike up a mountain peak that is 100km away, then 1 degree would place you 1.76km away. If you sailed a boat 1,000 km and are 1 degree off, you could end up in a storm instead of sunshine. With GU I want to establish what the direction of progress is, with the hypothetic goal of building a Utopia (read up what I mean exactly here) in this generation.
Ideally, we could build a precise plan or strategy with all the different actions needed to maximize progress, or as I aspire to, at least find the key factors and connect them to a logic that unites most of the many other small factors. The most central factor for making progress is to find and implement the innovations with the greatest multiplier effects and the rest of my work highlights the steps that are necessary for this (summarized here).
Even if such a plan or unifying logic is not perfect and a quadrillion little surprises and challenges have to be overcome on the way, at least – and this is really the take-away point of this article – we started out in the most precise direction we could. I try to get a vision across of what incredible, beautiful progress we could make, and how, so that at least we end up in a better place than without such a vision at all. The surprises and challenges come anyway, no matter what path we choose.
And as I explained above, just being a few degrees closer can make a gigantic difference. For example, if the world economy grows 1% faster a year over the next generation, it would add roughly $10,000 of income per person on the planet every year (inflation adjusted) (a). In the US it would even be $56,000 per person a year! That’s an amazing, and realistic prospect that will significantly lower poverty, improve medical research (e.g. on cancer) and so on (exponential basics). 1% might sound overoptimistic, but between a financial crisis and a boom you can get a difference of 6%.
And we should all be very much concerned with this path and the direction we take, because if affects you directly, like when you walk along with a group on a hike or are a passenger on a ship that is being navigated off-course from the desired destination. If we do the right things, it could mean that you have to work only 20 hours a week instead of 30 over the next generation, or not at all (these two previous articles go into more detail how we can align selfishness to increase progress: 1 and 2).
The story of humans so far is one of progress, of going from A to B in terms of making our lives better, step by step – and we’ve come so far already! Virtually everybody agrees that this is the right direction, after all who would want to go back to 1998 (including jobs, medicine, infrastructure, etc.)? We have to set our sights straight on point Z, and not just B, and stop getting distracted every step along the way, e.g. automation’s role in improving our lives is a common thread that spans back like a straight line 200 years ago yet we still philosophize about a million potential problems all the time.
When we are constantly distracted by unnecessary distractions and don’t get the direction right at all, then we are more drifting rather than sailing. In fact, academically speaking, this is how progress happens mostly, i.e. a slow co-evolution of technology and society where progress resembles more of a sluggish and indirect advancement of genes (innovations).
All we have to focus on is the general direction of creating value, of doing things better through innovation and hence making the cake bigger as much as possible that everybody feeds off. We can all agree on this, from stockbroker to environmentalist. And when this direction of innovation becomes an intuition and a habit, something our actions align more on, then the ship of progress sails faster towards a better destination and society can truly unleash the unprecedented innovation potential of this generation.
To recap, I think that first gaining the best possible knowledge of how to make progress and improve our lives at a faster rate is the first step in actually changing the world for the better. This is no different than my argument that science, i.e. understanding things about our world as well as we can, is the first “STEP” to changing the world, but with a focus on innovation specifically.
By knowing more about how to innovate we can do more things that benefit us. It tells us the direction we need to walk into, albeit not telling us how to overcome every little detail, in order to make our lives better.
Footnote:
a) The world’s GDP per person is roughly $10,000. At the current growth rate of just over 3% the world economy would grow to 257% of the current level in the next 32 years; at 4% it would grow by 350%, so almost 100% difference from current level, i.e. $10,000.
Generation Utopia 