If we achieved a linear relationship between input and output, we would have maybe 6 orders of magnitude more important scientific and technological advances per year. If we actually achieved “synergy”, that oft-theorized state where the accumulation of knowledge grows at a rate proportional to accumulated knowledge, we would have a fast take-off scenario, just without AI.
How much should the fact that we do not have a fast take-off of organizations make us more pessimistic about one with AIs being likely?
That’s the question. We should consider the overhead cost of knowledge, and the possibility that we will see a logarithmic increase in knowledge instead of a linear one (or, that we will see a linear one given an exponential explosion in resources).
Much depends on how you measure knowledge. If you count “bits of information”, that’s still growing exponentially. If you count “number of distinctions or predictions you can make in the world”, that probably isn’t.
There is a critical relationship between GDP and the efficiency of science. Until 1970, the money we put into science increased exponentially. Economic growth comes (I believe) exclusively from advances in science and technology. In 1970, we hit the ceiling; fraction of GDP spent on science had grown exponentially until then, when it suddenly flattened, so that now resources spent on science grows only as fast as GDP grows. This should cause a slower growth of GDP, causing a slower increase in scientific results, etc. IIRC there’s a threshold of scientific efficiency below which (theoretically) the area under the curve giving scientific results off to infinity is finite, and another threshold of efficiency above which (theoretically) the curve rises exponentially.
Economic growth comes (I believe) exclusively from advances in science and technology.
This alone doesn’t seem sufficient to explain the distribution of economic growth between countries. Most science, and most technology more than a generation old, is now public domain. But even if we go two generations back, US GDP/capita was ~$25K, which would still put it in the top quartile of modern countries. The countries at the bottom of the economic lists are often catching up, but not uniformly.
This sounds more like a conflation between the “availability” of S&T versus the “presence” of S&T.
Technology being in the public domain does not mean the remote-savannah nomad knows how to use wikipedia, has been trained in the habit of looking for more efficient production methods, is being incentivized by markets or other factors to raising his productivity, or has at his disposal an internet-connected, modern computer, another business nearby that also optimizes production of one of his raw materials / business requirements, and all the tools and practical manuals and human resources and expertise to use them.
Long story short, there’s a huge difference between “Someone invented these automated farming tools and techniques, and I know they exist” and “I have the practical ability to obtain an automated farming vehicle, construct or obtain a facility complete with tools and materials for adjustment so I can raise livestock, contacts who also have resources like trucks (who in turn have contacts with means to sell them fuel), and contacts who can transform and distribute my products.”
The former is what you have when something is “public domain” and you take the time to propagate all the information about it. The latter, and all the infrastructure and step-by-step work required to get there, is what you need before the economic growth kicks in.
I believe the latter was being referred to by “advances in science and technology”.
Could you more clearly define the “presence” of S&T? Your examples like “automated farming tools are practical to obtain” sounds like a way of restating “both the availability of S&T and the economy are strong”, which does indeed imply that the economy will be strong, but “A ⇒ B” would have been a much more useful theory than “A && B ⇒ B”.
You’re making some argument that you think is implied by what you’ve said, but that I can’t see. I don’t see how the US of 2 generations ago having a high GDP is inconsistent with growth being a result of science and technology, unless you imagine science and technology are the same all over the world at a given time, which would be a strange thing to imagine.
(Side note: “Technology” here include organizational and management techniques.)
The use of science and technology isn’t the same all over the world at a given time, but the availability is remarkably close, don’t you think? What are the less developed countries left out on? ITAR-controlled products, trade secrets, and patents? For everything else they have access to the exact same journals.
Perhaps your side note is what’s critical: are there organizational and management techniques which are available in the United States but which we’ve successfully kept a secret internationally? Are multi-generational trade secrets the critical part of science and technology?
Or would other countries grow much faster if they just fully used public domain technology, but there’s some other factor X which is preventing them from using it? If the latter, then what is X, and wouldn’t it be a better candidate explanation for disparate economic growth?
This is a reasonable observation; yes, it is not obvious why every nation can’t jump straight to modern-nation productivity.
There are plenty of places in Africa where water purification is a great new technology, and plenty of places in China where closed sewage lines would be a great new technology. Why don’t they use them?
The stories I hear from very-low-tech countries usually emphasize cultural resistance. One guy installed concrete toilets in Africa, and people wouldn’t use them because concrete had negative connotations. People have tried plastic-water-bottle solar water purification in southeast Asia, and some concluded (according to Robin Hanson) that people wouldn’t put plastic bottles of water on their roof because they didn’t want the neighbors to know they didn’t have purified water. Another culture wouldn’t heat-sterilize water because their folk medicine was based on notions of what “hot” and “cold” do, and they believed sick people needed cold things, not hot things. There are many cases where people refused to believe there are invisible living things in water. (As Europeans also did at first.)
(Frequent hand-washing and checklists are technologies that could save many thousands of lives every year in US hospitals, but that are very difficult to get doctors to adopt.)
But lots of low-tech countries can’t afford anything that they can’t build themselves. How much of modern technology can be built with materials found on-site without any tools other than machetes, knives, and hammers? Mosquito netting is very valuable in some places, but impossible to manufacture in a low-tech way.
My short answer is that there are a variety of obstacles to applying any technology in a low-tech nation. But growth is only possible either by finding more resources, or by using existing resources more efficiently, and using resources more efficiently = technology.
If it were possible to have growth without technology—let’s say 1% growth every 10 years—then a society with medieval technology, and no technological change, would eventually become as productive per person as today’s modern countries. And that’s physically impossible, just using energy calculations alone. There may be other necessary conditions, but tech improvement is absolutely necessary.
Economic growth comes (I believe) exclusively from advances in science and technology.
Do you really thing that things like Good Governance don’t have anything to do with economic growth? Science doesn’t help you much if a competitor pays a corrupt official to shut your business down.
How much should the fact that we do not have a fast take-off of organizations make us more pessimistic about one with AIs being likely?
That’s the question. We should consider the overhead cost of knowledge, and the possibility that we will see a logarithmic increase in knowledge instead of a linear one (or, that we will see a linear one given an exponential explosion in resources).
Much depends on how you measure knowledge. If you count “bits of information”, that’s still growing exponentially. If you count “number of distinctions or predictions you can make in the world”, that probably isn’t.
There is a critical relationship between GDP and the efficiency of science. Until 1970, the money we put into science increased exponentially. Economic growth comes (I believe) exclusively from advances in science and technology. In 1970, we hit the ceiling; fraction of GDP spent on science had grown exponentially until then, when it suddenly flattened, so that now resources spent on science grows only as fast as GDP grows. This should cause a slower growth of GDP, causing a slower increase in scientific results, etc. IIRC there’s a threshold of scientific efficiency below which (theoretically) the area under the curve giving scientific results off to infinity is finite, and another threshold of efficiency above which (theoretically) the curve rises exponentially.
This alone doesn’t seem sufficient to explain the distribution of economic growth between countries. Most science, and most technology more than a generation old, is now public domain. But even if we go two generations back, US GDP/capita was ~$25K, which would still put it in the top quartile of modern countries. The countries at the bottom of the economic lists are often catching up, but not uniformly.
This sounds more like a conflation between the “availability” of S&T versus the “presence” of S&T.
Technology being in the public domain does not mean the remote-savannah nomad knows how to use wikipedia, has been trained in the habit of looking for more efficient production methods, is being incentivized by markets or other factors to raising his productivity, or has at his disposal an internet-connected, modern computer, another business nearby that also optimizes production of one of his raw materials / business requirements, and all the tools and practical manuals and human resources and expertise to use them.
Long story short, there’s a huge difference between “Someone invented these automated farming tools and techniques, and I know they exist” and “I have the practical ability to obtain an automated farming vehicle, construct or obtain a facility complete with tools and materials for adjustment so I can raise livestock, contacts who also have resources like trucks (who in turn have contacts with means to sell them fuel), and contacts who can transform and distribute my products.”
The former is what you have when something is “public domain” and you take the time to propagate all the information about it. The latter, and all the infrastructure and step-by-step work required to get there, is what you need before the economic growth kicks in.
I believe the latter was being referred to by “advances in science and technology”.
Could you more clearly define the “presence” of S&T? Your examples like “automated farming tools are practical to obtain” sounds like a way of restating “both the availability of S&T and the economy are strong”, which does indeed imply that the economy will be strong, but “A ⇒ B” would have been a much more useful theory than “A && B ⇒ B”.
You’re making some argument that you think is implied by what you’ve said, but that I can’t see. I don’t see how the US of 2 generations ago having a high GDP is inconsistent with growth being a result of science and technology, unless you imagine science and technology are the same all over the world at a given time, which would be a strange thing to imagine.
(Side note: “Technology” here include organizational and management techniques.)
The use of science and technology isn’t the same all over the world at a given time, but the availability is remarkably close, don’t you think? What are the less developed countries left out on? ITAR-controlled products, trade secrets, and patents? For everything else they have access to the exact same journals.
Perhaps your side note is what’s critical: are there organizational and management techniques which are available in the United States but which we’ve successfully kept a secret internationally? Are multi-generational trade secrets the critical part of science and technology?
Or would other countries grow much faster if they just fully used public domain technology, but there’s some other factor X which is preventing them from using it? If the latter, then what is X, and wouldn’t it be a better candidate explanation for disparate economic growth?
This is a reasonable observation; yes, it is not obvious why every nation can’t jump straight to modern-nation productivity.
There are plenty of places in Africa where water purification is a great new technology, and plenty of places in China where closed sewage lines would be a great new technology. Why don’t they use them?
The stories I hear from very-low-tech countries usually emphasize cultural resistance. One guy installed concrete toilets in Africa, and people wouldn’t use them because concrete had negative connotations. People have tried plastic-water-bottle solar water purification in southeast Asia, and some concluded (according to Robin Hanson) that people wouldn’t put plastic bottles of water on their roof because they didn’t want the neighbors to know they didn’t have purified water. Another culture wouldn’t heat-sterilize water because their folk medicine was based on notions of what “hot” and “cold” do, and they believed sick people needed cold things, not hot things. There are many cases where people refused to believe there are invisible living things in water. (As Europeans also did at first.)
(Frequent hand-washing and checklists are technologies that could save many thousands of lives every year in US hospitals, but that are very difficult to get doctors to adopt.)
But lots of low-tech countries can’t afford anything that they can’t build themselves. How much of modern technology can be built with materials found on-site without any tools other than machetes, knives, and hammers? Mosquito netting is very valuable in some places, but impossible to manufacture in a low-tech way.
My short answer is that there are a variety of obstacles to applying any technology in a low-tech nation. But growth is only possible either by finding more resources, or by using existing resources more efficiently, and using resources more efficiently = technology.
If it were possible to have growth without technology—let’s say 1% growth every 10 years—then a society with medieval technology, and no technological change, would eventually become as productive per person as today’s modern countries. And that’s physically impossible, just using energy calculations alone. There may be other necessary conditions, but tech improvement is absolutely necessary.
Those are excellent answers; thank you.
Do you really thing that things like Good Governance don’t have anything to do with economic growth? Science doesn’t help you much if a competitor pays a corrupt official to shut your business down.