Counterexample: the sudden population reduction of the Black Death produced progress by encouraging exploring high-productivity paths instead of following tradi

Counterexample: the sudden population reduction of the Black Death produced progress by encouraging exploring high-productivity paths instead of following tradition and just throwing more people at various problems. Obviously some populations are too small (eg the N=6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lykov_family spent their lives with an ever-dwindling tech tree) but at 8 billion the slope is a long way from being slippery.