A small correction:

Infamously there was a period where some scientists on the project were concerned that a nuclear bomb would ignite the upper atmosphere and end all life on Earth; fortunately they were able to do some calculations suggesting that showed beyond reasonable doubt that this would not happen before the Trinity test occurred. 

The calculations suggesting the atmosphere couldn't ignite were good, but were definitively not beyond reasonable doubt. Fermi and others kept working to re-check the calculations in case they'd missed something all the way up to the day of the test and wouldn't have done so if they were satisfied by the report. 

The report (published after Trinity) does say:

One may conclude that the arguments of this paper make it unreasonable to expect that the N + N reaction could propagate. An unlimited propagation is even less likely.

That is often quoted by people who want to suggest the case was closed, but the next (and final) sentence of the report says:

However, the complexity of the argument and the absence of satisfactory experimental foundations makes further work on the subject highly desireable.

Great piece William — thanks for sharing it here.

I liked your strategy for creating robust principles that would have worked across a broad range of cases, and it would be good to add others to the Manhattan Project example. 

I particularly liked you third principle:

Principle 3: When racing, have an exit strategy 

In the case of the Manhattan project, a key moment was the death of Hitler and surrender of Germany. Given that this was the guiding reason — the greater good with which the scientists justify their creation of a terrible weapon — it is very poor how little changed at that point. Applying your principles, one could require a very special meeting if/when any of the race-justifying conditions disappear, to force reconsideration at that point.

This paragraph was intended to speak to the relevance of this argument given that (as you say) we can't easily advance all progress uniformly:

And it may have some uncomfortable consequences. If advancing all progress would turn out to be bad, but advancing some parts of it would be good, then it is likely that advancing the remaining parts would be even more bad. Since some kinds of progress are more plausibly linked to bringing about an earlier demise (e.g. nuclear weapons, climate change, and large-scale resource depletion only became possible because of technological, economic, and scientific progress) these parts may not fare so well in such an analysis. So it may really be an argument for differentially boosting other kinds of progress, such as moral progress or institutional progress, and perhaps even for delaying technological, economic, and scientific progress.

Thanks Mike — a very useful correction. I'm genuinely puzzled as to why this didn't lead to a more severe early response given China's history with SARS. That said, I can't tell from the article how soon the sample from this patient was sequenced/analysed.

Yes, that's right about the track-skipping condition for the exogenous case, and I agree that there is a strong case the end of factory farming will be endogenous. I think it is a good sign that the structure of my model represents some/all of the key considerations in your take on progress too — but with the different assumption about the current value changing the ultimate conclusion. 

I delivered this talk before the Rootclaim debate, though I haven't followed that debate since, so can't speak to how much it has changed views. I was thinking of the US intelligence community's assessments and the diversity of opinions among credible people who've looked into it in detail. 

I meant vaccines for diseases that didn't yet have a vaccine. The 1957 case was a vaccine for a new strain of influenza, when they already had influenza vaccines.

That's an interesting and unusual argument for progress:

Progress so far has brought us to a point where we are causing so much harm on a global scale that the value of each year is large and negative. But pushing on further with progress is a good thing because it will help end this negative period.

That could well be correct, though it is also very different from the usual case by proponents of progress.

I hadn't seen that and I agree that it looks like a serious negative update (though I don't know what exactly it is measuring). Thanks for drawing it to my attention. I'm also increasingly worried about the continued unprecedentedly hot stretch we are in. I'd been assuming it was just one of these cases of a randomly hot year that will regress back to the previous trend, but as it drags on the hypothesis of there being something new happening does grow in plausibility.

Overall, 'mixed' might be a better summary of Climate.

The hypothetical being considered in this piece is that all progress is advanced by a year. So e.g. we have everything humanity had in the year 1000 in the year 999 instead. Imagine that it was literally exactly the same state of the world, but achieved a year earlier. Wouldn't we then expect to have 2025 technology in 2024? If not, what could be making the effect go away?

In general, there is not much of an external clock that would be setting quality of life in the year 3000 just because that is what the calendar says. It will mainly depend on the internal clock of the attributes of civilisation and this is the clock we are imagining advancing.

This is very different to the the global health and wellbeing interventions, which I wouldn't class as attempting to 'advance progress' and where I'd be surprised to see a significant permanent effect. The permanence will be stronger if the effect is broader across different sectors, or if it is in a sector that is driving the others, and it is aimed at the frontiers of knowledge or technology or institutions, rather than something more like catch-up growth.