4 ms·

A lot of technology comes from population increase. Necessity is the mother of invention, and more brains and resources means you can do more interesting things

A lot of technology comes from population increase. Necessity is the mother of invention, and more brains and resources means you can do more interesting things and things which increase the quality of life and production of everyone else. If you want technological advancement, innovation, and better life for everyone-- we need more people. And if you want space exploration and expansion, we need more people with more ideas and resources.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Reminds me of this speculative post on SlateStarCodex: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing... Ultra-brief summary: it may be that technological progress is actually tied to population growth, not economic growth - and population growth is slowing down. So unless we can figure out a way to switch the driver of scientific and technological breakthroughs from population (more researchers) to economy (e.g. machines that would think for us), we're gonna stall the progress of science and technology too.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Or. Use the existing population more effectively? Educate everybody instead of just the rich few. Subsidize technology again. Understand that basic research is the foundation of later development. But we have to hope for a rational society for all that! I will be far easier I agree, to just grow population instead.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Using the existing population more effectively through structural changes would IMO very quickly hit diminishing returns. But it could be viable with various kinds of technologies designed to improve individual and organizational cognitive performance; hell, I think this is the very way from here to the "machines that think for us", so it's a part of the solution.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      Wait - we don't need geometrically expanding technological development. It becomes sufficient at some level? So 'diminishing returns' might not be a thing, if we can get to where we need to be with some level of population. And I'm pretty sure we have a long way to go on using existing population better. We probably don't use 10% of the very-smart people - they live and die in some lonely village somewhere without ever being recognized. Remember Ramanujan - one of the few to find his way (almost by accident) into the academic world.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        > Wait - we don't need geometrically expanding technological development. It becomes sufficient at some level? I don't know. I might reconsider "sufficient" after we've cured aging and had 100 years to play with molecular nanotechnology. It's my belief that we have a long way to go still. > And I'm pretty sure we have a long way to go on using existing population better. We probably don't use 10% of the very-smart people - they live and die in some lonely village somewhere without ever being recognized. Remember Ramanujan - one of the few to find his way (almost by accident) into the academic world. 100% agreed here and I've used this argument in the past in support of helping to improve living conditions in developing nations. That said, even if we could 10x the intellectual output of the world through non-technological changes, what then? How do we get to the next 2x or 10x improvement?
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  To be honest that looks more like a history of really bad projections and extrapolations that failed to even try to account for many other variables let alone the correlations and their causations. It brings to mind one flaw of the game series Civilization as a game with fixed assumptions - it always assumes food surplus maps to population growth. While it certainly poses a limit past a certain point more food isn't going to help any more than twenty randy husbands will cause a fertile woman to have a full term baby every month. Food to farm labor's link has been downright economically broken with mechanized farming. People and even land aren't the limit to production for first world farming ability but the limit past which it makes no economic sense to do so. Hyperbolic growth requiring a singularity to sustain does not imply hyperbolic growth alone is going to give a singularity - unless there are no other limits which will become readily apparent as it is approached.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Reminds me of this speculative post on SlateStarCodex: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-singularity-was-cancelled/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing... Ultra-brief summary: it may be that technological progress is actually tied to population growth, not economic growth - and population growth is slowing down. So unless we can figure out a way to switch the driver of scientific and technological breakthroughs from population (more researchers) to economy (e.g. machines that would think for us), we're gonna stall the progress of science and technology too.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Or. Use the existing population more effectively? Educate everybody instead of just the rich few. Subsidize technology again. Understand that basic research is the foundation of later development. But we have to hope for a rational society for all that! I will be far easier I agree, to just grow population instead.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Using the existing population more effectively through structural changes would IMO very quickly hit diminishing returns. But it could be viable with various kinds of technologies designed to improve individual and organizational cognitive performance; hell, I think this is the very way from here to the "machines that think for us", so it's a part of the solution.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Wait - we don't need geometrically expanding technological development. It becomes sufficient at some level? So 'diminishing returns' might not be a thing, if we can get to where we need to be with some level of population. And I'm pretty sure we have a long way to go on using existing population better. We probably don't use 10% of the very-smart people - they live and die in some lonely village somewhere without ever being recognized. Remember Ramanujan - one of the few to find his way (almost by accident) into the academic world.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > Wait - we don't need geometrically expanding technological development. It becomes sufficient at some level? I don't know. I might reconsider "sufficient" after we've cured aging and had 100 years to play with molecular nanotechnology. It's my belief that we have a long way to go still. > And I'm pretty sure we have a long way to go on using existing population better. We probably don't use 10% of the very-smart people - they live and die in some lonely village somewhere without ever being recognized. Remember Ramanujan - one of the few to find his way (almost by accident) into the academic world. 100% agreed here and I've used this argument in the past in support of helping to improve living conditions in developing nations. That said, even if we could 10x the intellectual output of the world through non-technological changes, what then? How do we get to the next 2x or 10x improvement?
Nasrudith 7y ago
To be honest that looks more like a history of really bad projections and extrapolations that failed to even try to account for many other variables let alone the correlations and their causations. It brings to mind one flaw of the game series Civilization as a game with fixed assumptions - it always assumes food surplus maps to population growth. While it certainly poses a limit past a certain point more food isn't going to help any more than twenty randy husbands will cause a fertile woman to have a full term baby every month. Food to farm labor's link has been downright economically broken with mechanized farming. People and even land aren't the limit to production for first world farming ability but the limit past which it makes no economic sense to do so. Hyperbolic growth requiring a singularity to sustain does not imply hyperbolic growth alone is going to give a singularity - unless there are no other limits which will become readily apparent as it is approached.