Wow. This is some dope research. I’m blown away. (I’ve curated this post.)
I have no idea how you guys came up with these areas to explore. “Let us attempt to track the size of ships in the 1800s”. “Let us research the temperature at which superconduction worked in the 1900s”. This is an impressive number of trends explored and data gathered, and a fascinating set of results for thinking about AI but also for understanding history and the world generally.
Regarding curating the post, I have to mention that very rarely does historical research like this ever get written in such a simple, concise and readable way, so thank you very much for that on top of the research itself.
And above all, I’ll remember to look out for discontinuities when interacting with product features, objects that have size, or Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
IIRC we had a bounty out, to crowdsource suggestions for metrics and specific inventions to investigate. We also just thought of a bunch ourselves. In fact one major limitation of our research is that there are probably all sorts of selection biases in what we chose to investigate; it would be great to have a random sample instead of a brainstormed sample, because then we could say much more substantial things about the probability of discontinuities.
IMO Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Elon Musk seem pretty similar. For example, they both have weird names. I’d predict a heightened chance of discontinuities on metrics his companies are working on. Maybe also a heightened chance of something really big being built. :)
IMO Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Elon Musk seem pretty similar. For example, they both have weird names. I’d predict a heightened chance of discontinuities on metrics his companies are working on. Maybe also a heightened chance of something really big being built. :)
Are there any major recent discontinuities in the cost, range, or number of electric cars, cost or energy density of batteries, or cost of putting stuff into orbit?
I don’t know; I haven’t investigated. My guess is that the Falcon 9 is the most impressive of all the things Musk has done so far, but cost per kilogram to orbit is a weird metric because of how corrupt and ossified the industry is (other than SpaceX.) When companies like Boeing, ULA, etc. manage to lobby politicians to throw huge wads of cash at them for inferior products, and then SpaceX comes along and undercuts them with a superior product, who knows what the “real” costs-per-kilogram are? Both SpaceX and its competitors are probably charging substantially more than they need to.
Cost, range, and number of electric cars are rather artificial metrics—I think measuring the cost, range, and number of cars in total would be much more in the spirit of the post, which haven’t seen any surprising departures from trends. As for batteries, a ~15% decrease in cost per doubling in cumulative number of lithium-ion batteries produced combined with roughly exponential growth in the market has meant a smooth trend over the past few years: see this source.
I believe it’s also easily checked that there’s no significant discontinuity in cost to orbit. Starship could be promising, and Musk’s goal is an extremely ambitious $2M/1000t to LEO, but even that is only 30 years or so on the current trend line.
On the contrary, the graph of launch costs you link seems to depict Falcon 9 as a 15-ish-year discontinuity in cost to orbit; I think you are misled by the projection, which is based on hypothetical future systems rather than on extrapolating from actual existing systems.
On the last point, I wonder if there might be a slight bias in general of history remembering people with distinctive names, or indeed other irrelevant characteristics. (Cf Robert Hooke’s disputes with other scientists led to centuries of underestimation of his importance.)
Wow. This is some dope research. I’m blown away. (I’ve curated this post.)
I have no idea how you guys came up with these areas to explore. “Let us attempt to track the size of ships in the 1800s”. “Let us research the temperature at which superconduction worked in the 1900s”. This is an impressive number of trends explored and data gathered, and a fascinating set of results for thinking about AI but also for understanding history and the world generally.
Regarding curating the post, I have to mention that very rarely does historical research like this ever get written in such a simple, concise and readable way, so thank you very much for that on top of the research itself.
And above all, I’ll remember to look out for discontinuities when interacting with product features, objects that have size, or Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
IIRC we had a bounty out, to crowdsource suggestions for metrics and specific inventions to investigate. We also just thought of a bunch ourselves. In fact one major limitation of our research is that there are probably all sorts of selection biases in what we chose to investigate; it would be great to have a random sample instead of a brainstormed sample, because then we could say much more substantial things about the probability of discontinuities.
IMO Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Elon Musk seem pretty similar. For example, they both have weird names. I’d predict a heightened chance of discontinuities on metrics his companies are working on. Maybe also a heightened chance of something really big being built. :)
Are there any major recent discontinuities in the cost, range, or number of electric cars, cost or energy density of batteries, or cost of putting stuff into orbit?
I don’t know; I haven’t investigated. My guess is that the Falcon 9 is the most impressive of all the things Musk has done so far, but cost per kilogram to orbit is a weird metric because of how corrupt and ossified the industry is (other than SpaceX.) When companies like Boeing, ULA, etc. manage to lobby politicians to throw huge wads of cash at them for inferior products, and then SpaceX comes along and undercuts them with a superior product, who knows what the “real” costs-per-kilogram are? Both SpaceX and its competitors are probably charging substantially more than they need to.
Cost, range, and number of electric cars are rather artificial metrics—I think measuring the cost, range, and number of cars in total would be much more in the spirit of the post, which haven’t seen any surprising departures from trends. As for batteries, a ~15% decrease in cost per doubling in cumulative number of lithium-ion batteries produced combined with roughly exponential growth in the market has meant a smooth trend over the past few years: see this source.
I believe it’s also easily checked that there’s no significant discontinuity in cost to orbit. Starship could be promising, and Musk’s goal is an extremely ambitious $2M/1000t to LEO, but even that is only 30 years or so on the current trend line.
On the contrary, the graph of launch costs you link seems to depict Falcon 9 as a 15-ish-year discontinuity in cost to orbit; I think you are misled by the projection, which is based on hypothetical future systems rather than on extrapolating from actual existing systems.
This seems right, thanks.
On the last point, I wonder if there might be a slight bias in general of history remembering people with distinctive names, or indeed other irrelevant characteristics. (Cf Robert Hooke’s disputes with other scientists led to centuries of underestimation of his importance.)