4 ms·

Why the Age of American Progress Ended

19 points by tysone 4y ago

slowmovintarget 4y ago
Thesis of the article: > Progress is our escape from the status quo of suffering, our ejection seat from history—it is the less common story of how our inventions and institutions reduce disease, poverty, pain, and violence while expanding freedom, happiness, and empowerment. > It’s a story that has almost ground to a halt in the United States. > ... > What went wrong? There are many answers, but one is that we have become too enthralled by the eureka myth and, more to the point, too inattentive to all the things that must follow a eureka moment. The article talks about the follow-through after great discoveries and makes the assertion that adoption of new inventions, discoveries, and techniques, even those developed in the U.S., has stagnated in the U.S. Further, that it is the adoption of the new, not just its discovery, that marks advance in the sense of being better off (longer life-expectancy, better health, better living conditions). Government and politicians provide the follow-through to eradicate Smallpox. Government "cleared the road" for the fastest delivery and wide deployment of new vaccines ever. Public-private partnerships of that sort could move mountains (like curing cancer, or delivering wind and solar energy supplements to the grid).
- readonthegoapp 4y ago
  https://archive.vn/9lfwd#selection-1019.0-1019.983 https://archive.vn/9lfwd#selection-1019.0-1019.983 thought this was a great article, with the disclaimer as usual that parts of it are pretty nuanced and don't know if i agree with all of it. one part i'd agree with is the part you quoted: There are many answers this part was insane: Still, doctors faced a prodigious challenge: how to deliver the stuff around the world in an era without cold storage, airplanes, or cars. They settled on distribution methods that were, by any reasonable estimation, extremely strange and a little ingenious. In the early 1800s, Spain recruited 22 orphaned boys to bring the vaccine to the Americas on their body. Two boys were vaccinated immediately before their ship’s departure. When pustules appeared on their arms, doctors scraped material from them to jab two more children on board. Doctors continued this daisy-chain routine until the ship reached modern-day Venezuela, where they began using the most recent pox eruption to vaccinate people in the Americas. Without any advanced storage technology, they had managed to transport history’s first vaccine more than 4,000 miles, in perfect condition. Arm-to-arm, the vaccine traveled to Mexico, Macau, and Manila. Within 10 years of Jenner’s paper, the vaccine had gone global.
vt85 4y ago
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19 points by tysone 4y ago

Thesis of the article: > Progress is our escape from the status quo of suffering, our ejection seat from history—it is the less common story of how our inventions and institutions reduce disease, poverty, pain, and violence while expanding freedom, happiness, and empowerment. > It’s a story that has almost ground to a halt in the United States. > ... > What went wrong? There are many answers, but one is that we have become too enthralled by the eureka myth and, more to the point, too inattentive to all the things that must follow a eureka moment. The article talks about the follow-through after great discoveries and makes the assertion that adoption of new inventions, discoveries, and techniques, even those developed in the U.S., has stagnated in the U.S. Further, that it is the adoption of the new, not just its discovery, that marks advance in the sense of being better off (longer life-expectancy, better health, better living conditions). Government and politicians provide the follow-through to eradicate Smallpox. Government "cleared the road" for the fastest delivery and wide deployment of new vaccines ever. Public-private partnerships of that sort could move mountains (like curing cancer, or delivering wind and solar energy supplements to the grid).

readonthegoapp 4y ago
https://archive.vn/9lfwd#selection-1019.0-1019.983 https://archive.vn/9lfwd#selection-1019.0-1019.983 thought this was a great article, with the disclaimer as usual that parts of it are pretty nuanced and don't know if i agree with all of it. one part i'd agree with is the part you quoted: There are many answers this part was insane: Still, doctors faced a prodigious challenge: how to deliver the stuff around the world in an era without cold storage, airplanes, or cars. They settled on distribution methods that were, by any reasonable estimation, extremely strange and a little ingenious. In the early 1800s, Spain recruited 22 orphaned boys to bring the vaccine to the Americas on their body. Two boys were vaccinated immediately before their ship’s departure. When pustules appeared on their arms, doctors scraped material from them to jab two more children on board. Doctors continued this daisy-chain routine until the ship reached modern-day Venezuela, where they began using the most recent pox eruption to vaccinate people in the Americas. Without any advanced storage technology, they had managed to transport history’s first vaccine more than 4,000 miles, in perfect condition. Arm-to-arm, the vaccine traveled to Mexico, Macau, and Manila. Within 10 years of Jenner’s paper, the vaccine had gone global.

vt85 4y ago

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