Since this apparently bothers people, I’ll try to fix it at some point. A more faithful statement would be that we start by investing work w, get a return w2 ~ log(w), reinvest it to get a new return log(w + w2) - log(w) = log ((w+w2)/w). Even more faithful to the same spirit of later arguments would be that we have y’ ~ log(y) which is going to give you basically the same growth as y’ = constant, i.e., whatever rate of work output you had at the beginning, it’s not going to increase significantly as a result of reinvesting all that work.
I’m not sure how to write either more faithful version so that the concept is immediately clear to the reader who does not pause to do differential equations in their head (even if simple ones).
Well, suppose cognitive power (in the sense of amount of cognitive work put unit time) is a function of total effort invested so far, like P=1-e^(-w). Then it’s obvious that while dP/dw= e^(-w) is always positive, it rapidly decreases to basically zero, and total cognitive power converges to some theoretical maximum.
Since this apparently bothers people, I’ll try to fix it at some point. A more faithful statement would be that we start by investing work w, get a return w2 ~ log(w), reinvest it to get a new return log(w + w2) - log(w) = log ((w+w2)/w). Even more faithful to the same spirit of later arguments would be that we have y’ ~ log(y) which is going to give you basically the same growth as y’ = constant, i.e., whatever rate of work output you had at the beginning, it’s not going to increase significantly as a result of reinvesting all that work.
I’m not sure how to write either more faithful version so that the concept is immediately clear to the reader who does not pause to do differential equations in their head (even if simple ones).
Well, suppose cognitive power (in the sense of amount of cognitive work put unit time) is a function of total effort invested so far, like P=1-e^(-w). Then it’s obvious that while dP/dw= e^(-w) is always positive, it rapidly decreases to basically zero, and total cognitive power converges to some theoretical maximum.