From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 15 1998 - 15:40:13 MST
Billy Brown wrote:
>>> Recent history demonstrates ... you can create
>>> a situation in which the ability of your society to make technological
>>> advances increases faster than the difficulty of taking the next step.
>>> A reasonable extrapolation of the trend would predict a century or
>>> two of steadily-accelerating progress before things begin to change so
>>> fast that an unenhanced human can't cope..
>>
>> What is the "recent history" that shows a "trend" of
>> "steadily-accelerating progress"? No such acceleration shows up in
>> economic trends over the last half century.
>
>I meant technological progress, not economic growth. Since new inventions
>do not necessarily show up in economic data, even when they have a
>substantial effect on the human condition, concentrating exclusively on
>economic data could easily lead us to miss important facts.
OK, what is recent history of tech progresss that shows acceleration?
Patent stats show deceleration, if anything.
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar FAX: 510-643-8614
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 510-643-1884
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:50:01 MST