Given the sheer economic value of improvements, is there any reason at all to expect optimization/research to just stop, short of a global disaster? (And even then, depending on the disaster...)
No, not particularly that I can think of. The only examples where people stop working on optimizing a problem is when the problem has become so easy that it simply doesn’t matter to optimize further, but such examples are rare, and even in those sorts, further optimization does occur just at a slower place.
Given the sheer economic value of improvements, is there any reason at all to expect optimization/research to just stop, short of a global disaster? (And even then, depending on the disaster...)
No, not particularly that I can think of. The only examples where people stop working on optimizing a problem is when the problem has become so easy that it simply doesn’t matter to optimize further, but such examples are rare, and even in those sorts, further optimization does occur just at a slower place.