Technological stagnation: Why I came around - LessWrong“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” says Peter Thiel’s
Founders Fund, expressing a sort of jaded disappointment with technological
progress. (The fact that the 140 characters have become 280, a 100% increase,
does not seem to have impressed him.)
Thiel, along with economists such as Tyler Cowen (The Great Stagnation) and
Robert Gordon (The Rise and Fall of American Growth), promotes a “stagnation
hypothesis”: that there has been a significant slowdown in scientific,
technological, and economic progress in recent decades—say, for a round number,
since about 1970, or the last ~50 years.
When I first heard the stagnation hypothesis, I was skeptical. The arguments
weren’t convincing to me. But as I studied the history of progress (and looked
at the numbers), I slowly came around, and now I’m fairly convinced. So
convinced, in fact, that I now seem to be more pessimistic about ending
stagnation than some of its original proponents.
In this essay I’ll try to capture both why I was originally skeptical, and also
why I changed my mind. If you have heard some of the same arguments that I did,
and are skeptical for the same reasons, maybe my framing of the issue will help.
STAGNATION IS RELATIVE
To get one misconception out of the way first: “stagnation” does not mean zero
progress. No one is claiming that. There wasn’t zero progress even before the
Industrial Revolution (or the civilizations of Europe and Asia would have looked
no different in 1700 than they did in the days of nomadic hunter-gatherers, tens
of thousands of years ago).
Stagnation just means slower progress. And not even slower than that
pre-industrial era, but slower than, roughly, the late 1800s to mid-1900s, when
growth rates are said to have peaked.
Because of this, we can’t resolve the issue by pointing to isolated advances.
The microwave, the air conditioner, the electronic pacemaker, a new cancer
drug—these are great, but they don’t disprove stagnation.
Stagnation is relative
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