I write and speak about the history & philosophy of progress. Founder, @rootsofprogress. Host of the Progress Conference. Author, The Techno-Humanist Manifesto.
Boston
Joined April 2007
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Announcing The Techno-Humanist Manifesto, a book by me laying out my philosophy of progress.
“Techno-humanism” is what I am calling that philosophy, a worldview founded on humanism and agency.
To read it, follow me here or subscribe to my newsletter (link below).
“When disruptive technology comes along that makes people radically more productive, the first people who really come alive are the people who know what to do” @pmarca
Jason Crawford retweeted
Applications for the next cohort of the American Tech Fellowship are live now! Apply today to build the future.
You know your industry up close and personal. You’ve stood on the polished concrete of the shop floor. Felt the rumble of creation at the build site. Lived the ordered chaos of the hospital during a code.
You know the work—and you know the bottlenecks. The paper tidal waves drowning your coworkers. The schedules and routines crying out for automation. The back-office drudgery keeping you and your team at your desks instead of in the action. Your boss may not know or care. But you do—and you’re ready to level up.
The American Tech Fellowship wants you.
ATF is Palantir’s 12-week virtual boot camp for workers in the load-bearing industries of American life: defense, manufacturing, construction, healthcare, ag, energy, and more.
In just over a year, ATF has equipped more than 1,000 Americans from across the country with the tools they need to revolutionize their work. We induct them into the guild, train them on Palantir’s industry-leading AI tools, and then unleash them to rock and roll on real-world problems.
We select only the best—and it shows. ATF graduates have gone on to great things. Many have earned new jobs and new missions at Palantir and our customers. Others have founded their own startups. All are building real tools with AI to solve the hardest problems.
So if you are on the front lines of American industry and you have the fire to deliver wins for your customers and fellow citizens—we want you.
Applications are open now. The cohort begins January 12th. What will you build?
jobs.lever.co/palantir/0ccbe…
Jason Crawford retweeted
I would turn the question around on its head: isn't it wonderful that *anyone* can now do this with $200? Doesn't it speak to a great democratization of science?
if everyone started doing this with 200$ then what't the point of doing physics anymore?
arxiv.org/pdf/2610.33179
Jason Crawford retweeted
.@NSF is hiring the inaugural Head of its Office of Metascience to apply the scientific method to how we fund, organize, and evaluate research. Continuous improvement will accelerate discovery.
If you care about the science of science, apply:
nsf.gov/careers/openings/od/…
Jason Crawford retweeted
For anyone getting into biology, please consider taking airborne disease resistance more seriously.
It's a super important area of medicine that is a huge cause of death and sickness but easily gets forgotten. We're likely to get many more airborne plagues in the future due to the combination of not just extremely dense and interconnected society (including city and farm animals), but also accidents from bio research and offensive biotech (both from random people and from secret government programs that can easily get themselves exempted from safety restrictions), all enhanced by powerful AI.
Right now, this area is getting way less love than longevity research (which continues to be super important!), but it's an area where there are lots of unclaimed wins that we know exactly how to do (but are not yet doing) with present-day tech:
* early detection
* passive universal testing
* filtration/ventilation/UVC
* better vaccines (including making them open source and open science)
* cryptography to make all of the above privacy-preserving
We can have China-level pandemic resistance with Sweden-level limited intrusion into people's lives, and then go even further. We just have to actually do the work for it.
Jason Crawford retweeted
Announcing three major scientific discoveries, one each in mathematics (harmonic analysis), computer science (complexity theory), and physics (quantum field theory).
AI starting to help us improve our understanding of the universe! openai.com/index/building-sc…
Jason Crawford retweeted
The most mind blowing stat we've seen so far is this:
"As of June 30, 2026, we had raised an aggregate of $141.1 billion of capital and had cash and cash equivalents of $112.4 billion and short-term investments of $19.3 billion."
That means to date, they have burned 9.7b, they are growing at a rapid pace, and are profitable on an operating income basis as of the June quarter! This is likely the most efficient scaling of a business in the history of capitalism.
xitter.cf/AnthropicAI/status/211…
Anthropic has filed an S-1 registration statement with the SEC related to its proposed IPO.
Read more: anthropic.com/news/s1-sec
Legal disclaimer: A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold, nor may offers to buy be accepted, prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.
Jason Crawford retweeted
Anthropic S-1 here. sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
Jason Crawford retweeted
I'm not sure a lot of people understand what game coders actually do. We're not spending 9 hours a day finely hand crafting artisan software and expressing our inner dreams... 90% of the time we are fighting compilers and existing architecture, having to work out how undocumented code works, and tracking down obscure bugs and behavioural issues.
Most of game programming is just difficult, tedious, laborious grunt work, and the cognitive load we have to endure to get anything done is tiring and frustrating. No game coder is doing it for this 90% of the job.
We make games because the 10% that IS actually about making things fun and expressing ourselves is so incredibly rewarding it makes the other 90% bearable.
Now imagine if there was a tool, some kind of AI agent maybe, which could do most of the 90% grunt work for you, leaving you to just make all the decisions and express your creativity. How amazing would that be. How completely revolutionary would that be.
Enjoyed this conversation with @benlandautaylor!
Where the Industrial Revolution Came From
@jasoncrawford and @benlandautaylor cover the Industrial Revolution, the acceleration of technology, and how our increasing awareness of technological progress as a historical force has altered society.
0:00 — Intro
0:50 — The accelerating flywheel of technological progress
8:31 — Why couldn’t the Industrial Revolution happen sooner?
14:44 — The role of philosophy of progress
19:42 — Prerequisite technology
22:09 — Why no Chinese Industrial Revolution?
28:19 — What was going on in Britain?
33:22 — The role of science
39:11 — The shadow of the World Wars
50:23 — The durable echoes of older ideologies
Jason Crawford retweeted
Where the Industrial Revolution Came From
@jasoncrawford and @benlandautaylor cover the Industrial Revolution, the acceleration of technology, and how our increasing awareness of technological progress as a historical force has altered society.
0:00 — Intro
0:50 — The accelerating flywheel of technological progress
8:31 — Why couldn’t the Industrial Revolution happen sooner?
14:44 — The role of philosophy of progress
19:42 — Prerequisite technology
22:09 — Why no Chinese Industrial Revolution?
28:19 — What was going on in Britain?
33:22 — The role of science
39:11 — The shadow of the World Wars
50:23 — The durable echoes of older ideologies
What's up with videos where the captions appear like one word at a time? Seems like a trend with reels and similar
Some AI-wealthy philanthropists should set up a foundation to provide paid full-time positions for professional maintainers on critical pieces of open-source software infrastructure. Shouldn't be left to lone volunteers!
70% of the internet was vulnerable yesterday to very bad security flaws inside a coding language. Turns out, *one volunteer* is mostly responsible for maintaining that code & helping push updates. Yesterday Ondřej Surý saved the internet. So I called him up. He rules. theatlantic.com/technology/2…
“Reality has not consulted your model” is another line I really gotta use sometime
First, Zucman claims billionaires have “no incentive to move” because the tax is “one-time” and is owed based on residency as of January 1, 2026.
Yet, as we document, seven billionaires publicly left California before the January 1, 2026, snapshot date. These seven departures alone represent 30% of the state’s billionaire wealth.
Reality has unfortunately not consulted Zucman’s model. 2/14
Classic case of bad product design.
The app ought to know why the signature request was closed. Why make the user wonder, or guess? Good software handles what it can and doesn't place needless burdens on the user.
(Very typical for error states to have this lack of care, btw)
More on error states and UX design, from an old post of mine: jasoncrawford.org/error-mess…
PS: I got a new signature request, signed it, and… when it was done, landed on this screen again! That is pretty egregious. C'mon, @HelloSign
Jason Crawford retweeted
Making sure I state it clearly:
We can literally patch and prove bug-freeness of the entire software stack running in production. With AI that exists right now for ~$100m.
This means no more software-level hacks. I know it sounds too good to be true, but it isn't. AMA.
We formally verified 123 open-source projects in a partnership with Anthropic. Formal verification at scale is here!
Now we’re launching OSS Verify to scale it to the software we all depend on. We prove it’s crash-free or send you the patches it needs. Free for open-source. Let’s bootstrap the verified software ecosystem: theorem.dev/oss-verify
