Doesn’t this line of argument pretty much concede that few new inventions are innovative? Granted, it says each new invention would be a mindblowingly massive innovation if there were no other inventions, but in practice the marginal innovativeness of new inventions is small, just as (I’m assuming — I haven’t read Cowen’s book) the Great Stagnation thesis dictates.
Doesn’t this line of argument pretty much concede that few new inventions are innovative? Granted, it says each new invention would be a mindblowingly massive innovation if there were no other inventions, but in practice the marginal innovativeness of new inventions is small, just as (I’m assuming — I haven’t read Cowen’s book) the Great Stagnation thesis dictates.