#13 José Luis Ricón - Grand Narratives of Progress are Flawed

Hinting at the perceived sluggish rate of innovation in recent decades, Peter Theil famously said that “we were promised flying cars and all we got is 140 characters”.

Today, I’m going to pick Jose’s brain on whether technological and scientific progress is indeed slowing down, and what that suggests for our society’s future.

== What we talk about ==
0:04​ - Introduction
0:50​ - What does being an independent researcher mean for you?
2:50​ - How did you become an independent researcher?
9:40​ - You don't publish in peer-review journals, why?
12:35​ - How do you pick your research subjects?
15:48​ - Being an independent researcher, how do you get feedback on your research?
21:14​ - What is the great stagnation and why do people believe that it exists?
28:24​ - What is the narrative behind it and why does it matter?
33:59​ - Is there great stagnation in technology?
43:07​ - How should we interpret the possibility of productivity slowing down?
49:21​ - Why should the world care about productivity and efficiency?
52:01​ - Is the marginal cost of new knowledge increasing?
59:36​ - Even when we have more cumulative knowledge, the rate at which the economy grows still has been constant. Your views on this?
1:02:30​ - How do you make sense of laws like Moore's law?
1:09:42​ - With your diverse research background, what have you changed your mind on?

== About the guest ==
José is an independent researcher who likes to get into details of things. On his blog https://nintil.com​, among a wide range of topics, he writes about how science is done, advances in human longevity research, economics and innovation.