There is an OECD world economic projection out to 2060. It has China and India getting far stronger economically but predicts that China will not do better than 50% of US GDP PPP per capita in 2060. India stays below about 35% of US GDP PPP per capita. Indonesia is projected to get to about 42% of US GDP PPP per capita. South Korea today is already at 70% of US GDP per capita and the 2060 projection is South Korea stalls at 85 fo US GDP per capita.
This projection assumes that most of the development catchup ends around 2040.
It also assumes that there is slowing technological improvement and slowing GDP growth around the world.
The report only talks about financial and policy restructuring and tax increases to cover increasing health costs.
NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth.
The Long View: Scenarios for the World Economy to 2060
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
india will employ many people to clean up the aftermath from people standing on railroad tracks who didnt know that they are used for trains this will give them a big economic advantage and create lots of jobs and make india worlds economic leader by 2030
india will employ many people to clean up the aftermath from people standing on railroad tracks who didnt know that they are used for trains this will give them a big economic advantage and create lots of jobs and make india worlds economic leader by 2030
Correction.One of the biggest growth industry in the Indian service sector will be,to reassure insecure,jealous foreign pygmies,that ‘India isn’t doing as well as it appears’.Give your ‘female’ relatives my ‘regards’.
Correction.One of the biggest growth industry in the Indian service sector will beto reassure insecurejealous foreign pygmiesthat ‘India isn’t doing as well as it appears’.Give your ‘female’ relatives my ‘regards’.
Correction.One of the biggest growth industry in the Indian service sector will be,to reassure insecure,jealous foreign pygmies,that ‘India isn’t doing as well as it appears’.Give your ‘female’ relatives my ‘regards’.
Correction.One of the biggest growth industry in the Indian service sector will beto reassure insecurejealous foreign pygmiesthat ‘India isn’t doing as well as it appears’.Give your ‘female’ relatives my ‘regards’.
Correction.One of the biggest growth industry in the Indian service sector will be,to reassure insecure,jealous foreign pygmies,that ‘India isn’t doing as well as it appears’.Give your ‘female’ relatives my ‘regards’.
india will employ many people to clean up the aftermath from people standing on railroad tracks who didnt know that they are used for trains this will give them a big economic advantage and create lots of jobs and make india worlds economic leader by 2030
india will employ many people to clean up the aftermath from people standing on railroad tracks who didnt know that they are used for trains this will give them a big economic advantage and create lots of jobs and make india worlds economic leader by 2030
india will employ many people to clean up the aftermath from people standing on railroad tracks who didnt know that they are used for trains this will give them a big economic advantage and create lots of jobs and make india worlds economic leader by 2030
None of those technologies are implemented in a way that really disrupted anything. They are still in a lab phase.
None of those technologies are implemented in a way that really disrupted anything. They are still in a lab phase.
Innovation doesn’t scale that way. If you could have a few 400IQ humans they would accomplish far more than many 130-150IQ ones.
Innovation doesn’t scale that way. If you could have a few 400IQ humans they would accomplish far more than many 130-150IQ ones.
I can guarantee none of this will happen and world in 10 years won’t be that much different. Only incremental improvements.
I can guarantee none of this will happen and world in 10 years won’t be that much different. Only incremental improvements.
None of those technologies are implemented in a way that really disrupted anything. They are still in a lab phase.
Innovation doesn’t scale that way. If you could have a few 400IQ humans they would accomplish far more than many 130-150IQ ones.
I can guarantee none of this will happen and world in 10 years won’t be that much different. Only incremental improvements.
We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.” Actually, the American Eugenicists influenced the Nazis and not the other way around. They (the Germans) even sent over folks to learn from the Eugenicists. Where do you think they got the idea of mandatory sterilization of those with Down’s Syndrome? And many of the organizational aspects of the the Final Solution. Oh yeah, from Margaret Sanger and illk. THE Margaret Sanger who founded what is known today as Planned Parenthood.
We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.””Actually”” the American Eugenicists influenced the Nazis and not the other way around.They (the Germans) even sent over folks to learn from the Eugenicists. Where do you think they got the idea of mandatory sterilization of those with Down’s Syndrome? And many of the organizational aspects of the the Final Solution. Oh yeah”” from Margaret Sanger and illk.THE Margaret Sanger who founded what is known today as Planned Parenthood.”””
to the extent solar power is the source for the electricity, it *is* used to refine aluminum” Interesting. I would have pegged solar being used simply as concentrated heat rays (Martians!) to directly smelt the ore to a state where extracting out pure aluminum is rather easy, instead of converting it to electricity and doing it that way.
to the extent solar power is the source for the electricity” it *is* used to refine aluminum””Interesting. I would have pegged solar being used simply as concentrated heat rays (Martians!) to directly smelt the ore to a state where extracting out pure aluminum is rather easy”””” instead of converting it to electricity and doing it that way.”””
Laws of physics are just things we made up from observing our environment and using our reasoning, they are just things we noticed that always happen. It could very well be possible that all of it is wrong. We as humans are able to do many things that monkey’s would deem impossible based on their understanding of physics. Keep in mind the dumbest human is around 10 standard deviations smarter than the smartest ape. If it was possible we would have done it by now, since we don’t have faster than light drives it is thus impossible. If we were to predict a truly alien intelligence, it would be a group where the dumbest alien was 10 standard deviations more intelligent than the smartest human. Which is my entire point, every species has a hard limit on intelligence thus there are limits to said species technological advancement. Ape’s will never go beyond the stone age, because that is their limit.
Laws of physics are just things we made up from observing our environment and using our reasoning they are just things we noticed that always happen. It could very well be possible that all of it is wrong. We as humans are able to do many things that monkey’s would deem impossible based on their understanding of physics. Keep in mind the dumbest human is around 10 standard deviations smarter than the smartest ape. If it was possible we would have done it by now since we don’t have faster than light drives it is thus impossible. If we were to predict a truly alien intelligence it would be a group where the dumbest alien was 10 standard deviations more intelligent than the smartest human. Which is my entire point every species has a hard limit on intelligence thus there are limits to said species technological advancement. Ape’s will never go beyond the stone age because that is their limit.
F-22, J-20 any modern car, smartphones, sub 10nm chips etc… Any modern machine built today is far more complicated and requires far more people than the equivalent in the past. For example modern cars, the engine blocks are machined with nanometer precision with numerous different alloys, coatings, parts with all sorts of different treatment options and coatings they are also filled with computers, microchips and numerous sensors etc…
F-22 J-20 any modern car smartphones sub 10nm chips etc… Any modern machine built today is far more complicated and requires far more people than the equivalent in the past. For example modern cars the engine blocks are machined with nanometer precision with numerous different alloys coatings parts with all sorts of different treatment options and coatings they are also filled with computers microchips and numerous sensors etc…
“We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.”
Actually, the American Eugenicists influenced the Nazis and not the other way around.
They (the Germans) even sent over folks to learn from the Eugenicists. Where do you think they got the idea of mandatory sterilization of those with Down’s Syndrome? And many of the organizational aspects of the the Final Solution. Oh yeah, from Margaret Sanger and illk.
THE Margaret Sanger who founded what is known today as Planned Parenthood.
“to the extent solar power is the source for the electricity, it *is* used to refine aluminum”
Interesting. I would have pegged solar being used simply as concentrated heat rays (Martians!) to directly smelt the ore to a state where extracting out pure aluminum is rather easy, instead of converting it to electricity and doing it that way.
Laws of physics are just things we made up from observing our environment and using our reasoning, they are just things we noticed that always happen. It could very well be possible that all of it is wrong.
We as humans are able to do many things that monkey’s would deem impossible based on their understanding of physics.
Keep in mind the dumbest human is around 10 standard deviations smarter than the smartest ape.
If it was possible we would have done it by now, since we don’t have faster than light drives it is thus impossible.
If we were to predict a truly alien intelligence, it would be a group where the dumbest alien was 10 standard deviations more intelligent than the smartest human.
Which is my entire point, every species has a hard limit on intelligence thus there are limits to said species technological advancement.
Ape’s will never go beyond the stone age, because that is their limit.
F-22, J-20 any modern car, smartphones, sub 10nm chips etc…
Any modern machine built today is far more complicated and requires far more people than the equivalent in the past.
For example modern cars, the engine blocks are machined with nanometer precision with numerous different alloys, coatings, parts with all sorts of different treatment options and coatings they are also filled with computers, microchips and numerous sensors etc…
By 2030 we will have artificial general intelligence, we would have ended aging, we will have a moon base, and a colony on Mars. Everything will be very cheap or free. Nations are more likely to be looking at the exploitation of space than exploiting each other.
By 2030 we will have artificial general intelligence we would have ended aging we will have a moon base and a colony on Mars. Everything will be very cheap or free. Nations are more likely to be looking at the exploitation of space than exploiting each other.
Their science is hobbled by Communist ideology. Whatever goes against Party Doctrine is not allowed. Like when Hitler hobbled the Nazi atomic bomb program by forbidding any ‘Jewish science’ to be used. “Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita” Not it isn’t. One is not causative of the other and vice versa. “With further 10% growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP), we will see paradigm shift, because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years. ” Tell me, are you a paid wu mau? Only they are pushing this 10% per year nonsense. There’s this economic problem called The Law of Diminishing Returns. And China is not immune. They won’t be making 10% per year. It will be lucky to be making 5%. 80% of Chinese financial capital each year is sucked up by insolvent, overly indebted SOEs. All they do is produce jobs and need constant cash flow, like the old Japanese keirestu and South Korean chaebol did. Totally unsustainable. Science and technological progress isn’t measured in PPP or GDP or money at all. Nor should it be.
Their science is hobbled by Communist ideology. Whatever goes against Party Doctrine is not allowed. Like when Hitler hobbled the Nazi atomic bomb program by forbidding any ‘Jewish science’ to be used.Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita””Not it isn’t. One is not causative of the other and vice versa.””””With further 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP)”” we will see paradigm shift”” because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years. “”””Tell me”” are you a paid wu mau? Only they are pushing this 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} per year nonsense. There’s this economic problem called The Law of Diminishing Returns. And China is not immune. They won’t be making 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} per year. It will be lucky to be making 5{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12}. 80{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of Chinese financial capital each year is sucked up by insolvent overly indebted SOEs. All they do is produce jobs and need constant cash flow”” like the old Japanese keirestu and South Korean chaebol did. Totally unsustainable. Science and technological progress isn’t measured in PPP or GDP or money at all. Nor should it be.”””
You may have different opinion and do not believe in China. My bet is on innovative China. They have(young generation) similar, nerdy, geeky culture like in Japan and South Korea, why wouldn’t they be able to come with new ideas? Period of catching up is ending very fast. I am sure that number of articles on NBF about new and original developments from China will be growing rapidly. Like I wrote earlier Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita. It is not coincidental that most innovative countries (Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Finland, Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Germany) are those with highest PPP per capita. Because they were always on top in modern times, they were always most innovative. But once again, China will change that in next few years. With further 10% growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP), we will see paradigm shift, because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years. You may be sceptic now, but are you 100% sure that when China will reach South Korea/Japan level of development, nothing will change and it will be still the same China as in 1980’s? Let’s simply wait and see.
You may have different opinion and do not believe in China.My bet is on innovative China. They have(young generation) similar nerdy geeky culture like in Japan and South Korea why wouldn’t they be able to come with new ideas?Period of catching up is ending very fast. I am sure that number of articles on NBF about new and original developments from China will be growing rapidly. Like I wrote earlierInnovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita. It is not coincidental that most innovative countries (Switzerland Sweden USA Finland Netherlands Singapore Denmark Germany) are those with highest PPP per capita. Because they were always on top in modern times they were always most innovative. But once again China will change that in next few years.With further 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP) we will see paradigm shift because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years. You may be sceptic now but are you 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} sure that when China will reach South Korea/Japan level of development nothing will change and it will be still the same China as in 1980’s?Let’s simply wait and see.
F-35 is not a good example to use. It is overly complicated by (bad) design.
F-35 is not a good example to use. It is overly complicated by (bad) design.
The RISE OF CHINA, awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop, which should take them another 8-10 years, additional 20% of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D. ” Hahahahahahahahahahahahah! No, it won’t. China has rapidly developed simply as a giant, macroeconomic act called ‘playing catchup’. But going forward, it is hard slugging just as it is for the first world nations. And there will be nobody to steal the tech from, either.
The RISE OF CHINA awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop which should take them another 8-10 years” additional 20{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D. “”Hahahahahahahahahahahahah!No”” it won’t. China has rapidly developed simply as a giant macroeconomic act called ‘playing catchup’. But going forward it is hard slugging just as it is for the first world nations. And there will be nobody to steal the tech from”” either.”””
Nice. Except you COULD say the same thing about earth’s surface. Solar energy is everywhere, it’s free, and its definitely abundant. Sure, it is bedeviled by dust, clouds, diurnal motion, and all that, but hey… its definitely free, abundant, ubiquitous and trustworthy. So why isn’t solar power being used to mine ores, to smelt them into metals, to take inert rock and make the most amazing assortment of raw materials and finished product? Mmmm… because solar power turns out to be hard to harness in most intense ways. Saying that “the total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves every minute” is a bit of dramatic overrepresentation. You could say that of ANY large area in space. Has nothing to do with the Moon. It also has nothing to do with the Scale of the Earth↔Moon distance: one would not be using an appreciable amount of the solar power between these two astronomical bodies in any case. For any purpose. (πR² of Earth:Moon distance, 400,000,000 meters mean, and 1360 watts per m² gives 185,000,000 TW) But I feel where you’re coming from: there IS abundant solar energy “up there” which, tapped, harnessed, tamed, “invested in”, might have a whole host of uses. Not least of which will be vaporizing hapless asteroids that just seem to be ambling by. Catch ’em, bake ’em, smoke ’em until they glow. Gather the volatiles, and see what the husk has left. Refine that into other stuff. And so on. I just don’t see it happening in my remaining lifetime. Maybe yours! Just saying, GoatGuy
Nice.Except you COULD say the same thing about earth’s surface. Solar energy is everywhere it’s free and its definitely abundant. Sure it is bedeviled by dust clouds diurnal motion and all that but hey… its definitely free abundant ubiquitous and trustworthy. So why isn’t solar power being used to mine ores to smelt them into metals to take inert rock and make the most amazing assortment of raw materials and finished product? Mmmm… because solar power turns out to be hard to harness in most intense ways. Saying that “the total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves every minute” is a bit of dramatic overrepresentation. You could say that of ANY large area in space. Has nothing to do with the Moon.It also has nothing to do with the Scale of the Earth↔Moon distance: one would not be using an appreciable amount of the solar power between these two astronomical bodies in any case. For any purpose. (πR² of Earth:Moon distance 400000000 meters mean and 1360 watts per m² gives 185000000 TW)But I feel where you’re coming from: there IS abundant solar energy “up there” which tapped harnessed tamed “invested in” might have a whole host of uses. Not least of which will be vaporizing hapless asteroids that just seem to be ambling by. Catch ’em bake ’em smoke ’em until they glow. Gather the volatiles and see what the husk has left. Refine that into other stuff. And so on.I just don’t see it happening in my remaining lifetime. Maybe yours!Just sayingGoatGuy”
Hey Mr. Wang… Perhaps we could do a side-by-side? You know, projections of the next 42 years from 42 years ago compared to our projections of the next 42 years. Just to see how well the producers of projections generally do. As it were. Just saying, GoatGuy ______ There’s the 1975 World Economic Survey PDF from the United Nations… http:\www.un.orgendevelopmentdesapolicywesswess_archive1975wes.pdf (change backslashes to slashes /), but it isn’t very useful. I went a’googling, and couldn’t find much. Seems to confirm something I’ve long mused at: projections made in the past ‘disappear’ from the public record relatively quickly.
Hey Mr. Wang… Perhaps we could do a side-by-side? You know projections of the next 42 years from 42 years ago compared to our projections of the next 42 years. Just to see how well the producers of projections generally do.As it were.Just sayingGoatGuy______There’s the 1975 World Economic Survey PDF from the United Nations… http:\\www.un.org\en\development\desa\policy\wess\wess_archive\1975wes.pdf (change backslashes \ to slashes /) but it isn’t very useful. I went a’googling and couldn’t find much. Seems to confirm something I’ve long mused at: projections made in the past ‘disappear’ from the public record relatively quickly.”
By 2030 we will have artificial general intelligence, we would have ended aging, we will have a moon base, and a colony on Mars. Everything will be very cheap or free. Nations are more likely to be looking at the exploitation of space than exploiting each other.
Imagine that humans didn’t exist, and we were both apes having this discussion. Ape 1 claims that ape imagination and creativity is infinite, after all look at how far we advanced. Using ape science, we discovered what plants and animals were edible, we found that we could take sticks and sharpen them with rocks to create weapons, Some Apes even created knives from rocks by banging two rocks together, the pinnacle however was the discovery that banging two rocks together could create a fire. And then claims that the steady technological advancement proves that Apes will continue to discover new things, and build more and more advanced things. In the future ape’s will be able to create machines that can fly and things that will let you see far away and weapons that can kill apes from far distances. But of course we know the reality, the Ape’s never advance past the stone age. >You seem to be IQ expert here, do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans, newborns and elderly to IQ200? Yes but this is theoretical technology, we don’t know if theoretical technology can do this. What we do know 100% is that selective breeding works, and the humans that all managed to produce groundbreaking tech have all had extremely high IQ’s This is time tested and proven, all the evidence shows that IQ is heritable and genetic
Imagine that humans didn’t exist and we were both apes having this discussion. Ape 1 claims that ape imagination and creativity is infinite after all look at how far we advanced. Using ape science we discovered what plants and animals were edible we found that we could take sticks and sharpen them with rocks to create weapons Some Apes even created knives from rocks by banging two rocks together the pinnacle however was the discovery that banging two rocks together could create a fire. And then claims that the steady technological advancement proves that Apes will continue to discover new things and build more and more advanced things. In the future ape’s will be able to create machines that can fly and things that will let you see far away and weapons that can kill apes from far distances. But of course we know the reality the Ape’s never advance past the stone age. >You seem to be IQ expert here do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans newborns and elderly to IQ200? Yes but this is theoretical technology we don’t know if theoretical technology can do this.What we do know 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} is that selective breeding works and the humans that all managed to produce groundbreaking tech have all had extremely high IQ’s This is time tested and proven all the evidence shows that IQ is heritable and genetic
Computer’s and ai can be essentially seen as tools that increase the number of monkeys. Creating for instance Star Trek level tech for example, faster than light drive, energy shields and photon torpedo’s etc… is not because we don’t have enough monkey’s but because we are fundamentally too dumb. A single human advances technology faster than 5 billion monkey’s You may have more time, but you didn’t get any smarter. You still have no clue how to even build a faster than light drive.
Computer’s and ai can be essentially seen as tools that increase the number of monkeys. Creating for instance Star Trek level tech for example faster than light drive energy shields and photon torpedo’s etc… is not because we don’t have enough monkey’s but because we are fundamentally too dumb. A single human advances technology faster than 5 billion monkey’s You may have more time but you didn’t get any smarter. You still have no clue how to even build a faster than light drive.
The two hour workday has always been a myth. As technology advances more labor is required not less. One needs only to compare the wooden fighter planes of WW1 to a modern plane like the F-35 With just some wood, basic hand tools you could build a plane equivalent to what the military was using in your own backyard. A plane like the F-35 requires hundreds of thousands of parts from hundreds of thousands of companies all employing a small army of tech professionals. You need a specific machine to make every part, and each of those machines are created from parts made by hundreds of other specialized machines. The great technological achievement of creating the cloned sheep dolly, was not the idea that you could take DNA from one cell and putting it into a embryo of another. But rather it was in the process. A tiny needle was inserted into a cell, sucked out the nucleus then injected it into a embryo. The technological difficulty was in fact creating a needle so small made out of glass, and creating the mechanism that controlled its movement all at the nanometer level and the mechanism for sucking and ejecting all requiring nanometers of tolerance. Ergo making a smartphone requires more labor, not less even though it is a labor saving device. While automation has destroyed jobs in some area’s the increasing complexity of manufacturing and modern tech means more labor in other areas.
The two hour workday has always been a myth. As technology advances more labor is required not less. One needs only to compare the wooden fighter planes of WW1 to a modern plane like the F-35With just some wood basic hand tools you could build a plane equivalent to what the military was using in your own backyard. A plane like the F-35 requires hundreds of thousands of parts from hundreds of thousands of companies all employing a small army of tech professionals. You need a specific machine to make every part and each of those machines are created from parts made by hundreds of other specialized machines. The great technological achievement of creating the cloned sheep dolly was not the idea that you could take DNA from one cell and putting it into a embryo of another. But rather it was in the process. A tiny needle was inserted into a cell sucked out the nucleus then injected it into a embryo. The technological difficulty was in fact creating a needle so small made out of glass and creating the mechanism that controlled its movement all at the nanometer level and the mechanism for sucking and ejecting all requiring nanometers of tolerance. Ergo making a smartphone requires more labor not less even though it is a labor saving device. While automation has destroyed jobs in some area’s the increasing complexity of manufacturing and modern tech means more labor in other areas.
It is not just how smart we are, but how fast we can get our work done. I estimate that my productivity as an engineer has doubled compared to pre-internet days. I started working in 1981, so my career has spanned the change. I used to physically have to visit the company technical library in order to look something up that wasn’t in the few reference books at my desk. Drawing changes were done on drafting boards. Sending out documents for review meant physically circulating the sole original, or taking a few days to get copies made at the company print shop. Today, I have essentially the whole world’s knowledge available at my fingertips, changes can be sent out instantly, etc. It is all much easier and faster.
It is not just how smart we are but how fast we can get our work done.I estimate that my productivity as an engineer has doubled compared to pre-internet days. I started working in 1981 so my career has spanned the change. I used to physically have to visit the company technical library in order to look something up that wasn’t in the few reference books at my desk. Drawing changes were done on drafting boards. Sending out documents for review meant physically circulating the sole original or taking a few days to get copies made at the company print shop.Today I have essentially the whole world’s knowledge available at my fingertips changes can be sent out instantly etc. It is all much easier and faster.
The change over from centralized steam or water power to local electric motors in devices shows where the delay happens. Old factories used belt-drives and shafts for the machines, coming off the central power source. Therefore factories were built multi-story, to minimize the distance to the machines. Once electric motors were available, factories changed over to single-story structures, which made moving goods around much easier, especially since you didn’t need to work around the belts and shafts that cluttered the old buildings. The buildings became less expensive, since they didn’t need to support the weight of upper story equipment. They could become lightweight shells. These changes dramatically lowered costs and raised productivity, but they didn’t happen overnight. It took a generation or two for the old factory buildings to be replaced by new ones. I think the same sort of thing is happening with computers and the Internet, robots, and automation. They are enabling lower cost and higher productivity, but again, the changes are not instant. They are still playing out, and will be for another generation. Annual industrial robot production has reached 300,000, but that pales beside the ~40 million new low-wage workers we add each year. I assume half of population growth constitutes new available workers.
The change over from centralized steam or water power to local electric motors in devices shows where the delay happens. Old factories used belt-drives and shafts for the machines coming off the central power source. Therefore factories were built multi-story to minimize the distance to the machines.Once electric motors were available factories changed over to single-story structures which made moving goods around much easier especially since you didn’t need to work around the belts and shafts that cluttered the old buildings. The buildings became less expensive since they didn’t need to support the weight of upper story equipment. They could become lightweight shells.These changes dramatically lowered costs and raised productivity but they didn’t happen overnight. It took a generation or two for the old factory buildings to be replaced by new ones.I think the same sort of thing is happening with computers and the Internet robots and automation. They are enabling lower cost and higher productivity but again the changes are not instant. They are still playing out and will be for another generation. Annual industrial robot production has reached 300000 but that pales beside the ~40 million new low-wage workers we add each year. I assume half of population growth constitutes new available workers.
As someone who works on asteroid mining, they are one of the easiest resources to start with, but not the only off-planet ones. The big kicker is energy resources. Solar flux in high orbit is 4-10 times higher than various places on the ground. It is available 100% of the time, and can be used both for electric power and thermal power. The total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. In numerical terms, it is 632 million TW, or about 30 million times what our current civilization uses. Asteroids and other physical resources just provide something to do with all that energy. The high energy flux means the energy payback time will be short, and therefore your industry can rapidly grow. There would likely be some other rate-limiting item, like how fast you can supply materials for processing, but energy won’t be the limiting factor on growth.
As someone who works on asteroid mining they are one of the easiest resources to start with but not the only off-planet ones.The big kicker is energy resources. Solar flux in high orbit is 4-10 times higher than various places on the ground. It is available 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of the time and can be used both for electric power and thermal power. The total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. In numerical terms it is 632 million TW or about 30 million times what our current civilization uses. Asteroids and other physical resources just provide something to do with all that energy.The high energy flux means the energy payback time will be short and therefore your industry can rapidly grow. There would likely be some other rate-limiting item like how fast you can supply materials for processing but energy won’t be the limiting factor on growth.
We’re smart enough to invent CRISPR, genetic engineering, and some quite impressive AI algorithms. And we’re just starting. Advancing these tech should help in our journey into infinity and if we decide to increase our IQ potential in near future. But even without it I still think that human imagination and creativity is almost infinite. You seem to be IQ expert here, do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans, newborns and elderly to IQ200?
We’re smart enough to invent CRISPR genetic engineering and some quite impressive AI algorithms. And we’re just starting. Advancing these tech should help in our journey into infinity and if we decide to increase our IQ potential in near future. But even without it I still think that human imagination and creativity is almost infinite.You seem to be IQ expert here do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans newborns and elderly to IQ200?
See my reply to goat guy, AI’s are just advanced calculators, there is no evidence that they can think outside the box. And without some evolving algorithm capable of rewriting the base program the AI will forever be stuck in the box. At some point the earth being flat was a physical law, no different than the law of gravity or conservation of energy. Yes a AI can win at a game with a set number of rules and moves possible, but reality is different because you don’t know what the rules are and it could very well be that the rules you built everything on is a lie.
See my reply to goat guyAI’s are just advanced calculators there is no evidence that they can think outside the box. And without some evolving algorithm capable of rewriting the base program the AI will forever be stuck in the box. At some point the earth being flat was a physical law no different than the law of gravity or conservation of energy. Yes a AI can win at a game with a set number of rules and moves possible but reality is different because you don’t know what the rules are and it could very well be that the rules you built everything on is a lie.
Their science is hobbled by Communist ideology. Whatever goes against Party Doctrine is not allowed.
Like when Hitler hobbled the Nazi atomic bomb program by forbidding any ‘Jewish science’ to be used.
“Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita”
Not it isn’t. One is not causative of the other and vice versa.
“With further 10% growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP), we will see paradigm shift, because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years. ”
Tell me, are you a paid wu mau? Only they are pushing this 10% per year nonsense. There’s this economic problem called The Law of Diminishing Returns. And China is not immune. They won’t be making 10% per year. It will be lucky to be making 5%. 80% of Chinese financial capital each year is sucked up by insolvent, overly indebted SOEs. All they do is produce jobs and need constant cash flow, like the old Japanese keirestu and South Korean chaebol did. Totally unsustainable.
Science and technological progress isn’t measured in PPP or GDP or money at all. Nor should it be.
There’s no evidence that AI’s have a consciousness, AI’s just take in information and find patterns between the information, and then create their own systems of rules based on the patterns. Until there is evidence that the AI can evolve its own algorithm the AI apocalypse will never happen. For example AI’s like Alphago and Deepmind are taking in information and finding links between them. They are reliant on a learning algorithm that does not change hence it is merely using crystallized intelligence rather than fluid intelligence. The limitations are very clear, they might provide scientific answers that we can’t see through to the limitations of our brains. But they would not be able to produce anything truly groundbreaking.
There’s no evidence that AI’s have a consciousness AI’s just take in information and find patterns between the information and then create their own systems of rules based on the patterns. Until there is evidence that the AI can evolve its own algorithm the AI apocalypse will never happen. For example AI’s like Alphago and Deepmind are taking in information and finding links between them. They are reliant on a learning algorithm that does not change hence it is merely using crystallized intelligence rather than fluid intelligence. The limitations are very clear they might provide scientific answers that we can’t see through to the limitations of our brains. But they would not be able to produce anything truly groundbreaking.
The worlds smartest monkey is still a monkey, would having a billion monkey’s worldwide allow monkeys to escape the stone age? What about 5 billion? Out of 5 billion monkeys, would one monkey be smart enough to build a container out of clay, dry out wood by removing the moisture thus making charcoal, and then burn the charcoal in the clay container while throwing in a metallic looking rocks? At some point, adding more monkey’s no longer makes a difference, I can say with a 100% confidence interval that monkey’s will never invent bronze technology independently provided the intelligence of their species remains the same no matter how many monkey’s there are, and how well fed and educated they are. Likewise the same applies to humans, at some point we will reach a point where progress is no longer possible, where throwing more humans no longer makes a difference. But it could very well be possible that we have reached our limit, and something like faster than light travel will forever be beyond our reach. Techwise despite our number of researchers being drastically higher than 1970’s we have made little progress. For example our computers are pretty much the same the only difference is that we are packing the transistors tighter together but nothing groundbreaking. I have no doubt that China will dominate tech, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are still humans.
The worlds smartest monkey is still a monkey would having a billion monkey’s worldwide allow monkeys to escape the stone age? What about 5 billion? Out of 5 billion monkeys would one monkey be smart enough to build a container out of clay dry out wood by removing the moisture thus making charcoal and then burn the charcoal in the clay container while throwing in a metallic looking rocks?At some point adding more monkey’s no longer makes a difference I can say with a 100{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} confidence interval that monkey’s will never invent bronze technology independently provided the intelligence of their species remains the same no matter how many monkey’s there are and how well fed and educated they are. Likewise the same applies to humans at some point we will reach a point where progress is no longer possible where throwing more humans no longer makes a difference. But it could very well be possible that we have reached our limit and something like faster than light travel will forever be beyond our reach. Techwise despite our number of researchers being drastically higher than 1970’s we have made little progress. For example our computers are pretty much the same the only difference is that we are packing the transistors tighter together but nothing groundbreaking. I have no doubt that China will dominate tech but it doesn’t change the fact that they are still humans.
The ones in the 50s made the major blunder of not predicting the growth in debt-peonage eating up the income of the middle-class, both through debt or the debasing of the currency when we went off the gold standard. It was just inconceivable for that to happen when they lived in a world where usury laws kept debt levels in check and bank mortgage required 20% down payments and there were 20 year mortgages, max. Only when the government started to get involved in the mortgage market did we start to get the 30 year mortgage (“grip of death”). Had that not happened, then the future they predicted with two hour work days would have probably have came about. This is because the finance class would have been limited in how much the could extract in ‘human farming’ via debt-peonage. But today, debt is integrated into the cost of everything so much that even people not directly indebted pay into it, so to speak. The rise of such a system would not have entered the minds of economists back then.
The ones in the 50s made the major blunder of not predicting the growth in debt-peonage eating up the income of the middle-class both through debt or the debasing of the currency when we went off the gold standard. It was just inconceivable for that to happen when they lived in a world where usury laws kept debt levels in check and bank mortgage required 20{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} down payments and there were 20 year mortgages max. Only when the government started to get involved in the mortgage market did we start to get the 30 year mortgage (grip of death””). Had that not happened”” then the future they predicted with two hour work days would have probably have came about. This is because the finance class would have been limited in how much the could extract in ‘human farming’ via debt-peonage. But today debt is integrated into the cost of everything so much that even people not directly indebted pay into it”” so to speak. The rise of such a system would not have entered the minds of economists back then.”””
Almost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science, the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless.” I used to think that way also. And in a lot of cases, that is still the case, I bet. BUT…I’ve also found where they were justified. I have been a long time reader of NBF and other futurist sites/lore and I can tell you this isn’t the first time Brian or others have jumped on that bandwagon…only to not see it pan out as promised. See, accelerating growth in tech does NOT equate to the same in the economy/productivity. There’s a lag. Sometimes — especially in some economic sectors (like construction) — there’s a serious lag. To which the economists point to and say, “See, we were right! (not to drink the Techno-cornucopian Kool-Aid)” and with justification. But, at the same time, when they do see real influence…aka evidence of such in the economy..it is always after the fact, like they are seeing now. There’s a big movement of sorts in the economic statistician community right now to upgrade GDP growth, productivity levels in past reports. Expect some changes within the next 5 or so years in that.
Almost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science” the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless.””I used to think that way also. And in a lot of cases”” that is still the case I bet.BUT…I’ve also found where they were justified. I have been a long time reader of NBF and other futurist sites/lore and I can tell you this isn’t the first time Brian or others have jumped on that bandwagon…only to not see it pan out as promised.See accelerating growth in tech does NOT equate to the same in the economy/productivity. There’s a lag. Sometimes — especially in some economic sectors (like construction) — there’s a serious lag.To which the economists point to and say”” “”””See”””” we were right! (not to drink the Techno-cornucopian Kool-Aid)”””” and with justification.But”” at the same time when they do see real influence…aka evidence of such in the economy..it is always after the fact like they are seeing now. There’s a big movement of sorts in the economic statistician community right now to upgrade GDP growth”” productivity levels in past reports. Expect some changes within the next 5 or so years in that.”””
True. What’s the real kicker right now is: They are finally figuring it out along with means to not only measure it currently, but to go back and amend economic growth reports in the last 15 years or so, too. Which is currently the ‘big fight’ going on with economists right now. Not a ‘fight’ but there is resistance from an old guard, so to speak. Mainly, they are figuring out how to recognize economic activity they couldn’t before…and even down to the productivity measurement level, too. So, look for a major revamp in the next 5 or so years. It will show that economic growth is larger than we thought. Same for productivity. And, they will go back and apply this to past data and things will look more rosy for the past as well. Naturally, politicians will love this stuff…on a partisan case-by-case basis, of course.
True. What’s the real kicker right now is: They are finally figuring it out along with means to not only measure it currently but to go back and amend economic growth reports in the last 15 years or so too.Which is currently the ‘big fight’ going on with economists right now. Not a ‘fight’ but there is resistance from an old guard so to speak. Mainly they are figuring out how to recognize economic activity they couldn’t before…and even down to the productivity measurement level too.So look for a major revamp in the next 5 or so years. It will show that economic growth is larger than we thought. Same for productivity. And they will go back and apply this to past data and things will look more rosy for the past as well. Naturally politicians will love this stuff…on a partisan case-by-case basis of course.
NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth.” Note: NBF also said the same regarding other technologies and their influence on productivity during the 2000s as well. Not that I want to rag on NBF for doing so. That was NBF’s job and why we read it, after all. But I am just pointing out that things did not turn out so optimistically and that, I believe, was mainly do to an overly positive assumption of how fast/easy such new technologies and processes would penetrate the whole economy. Instead, that process in reality turns out to be more difficult and longer-drawn out than that. Different for different forms of tech, etc. And differences in economies (cell phone & wireless internet penetration was easier in countries with poor to non-existent land line coverage, for example). And some economic sectors have just been plain resistant to productivity change, like construction. Techno-cornucopians always, by their vary nature, discount the very real brick wall progress slams into called ‘end user adoption’. This is why I no longer assume that exponential growth in tech will mean equivalency such growth or even high growth translating into the real world economy. Oh, it will happen. And for those sectors the most resistant, like the aforementioned construction industry, it will be highly disruptive when it does. But it will take time before that happens. In some cases, a long time.
NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI biotech nanotech robotics” space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth.””Note: NBF also said the same regarding other technologies and their influence on productivity during the 2000s as well.Not that I want to rag on NBF for doing so. That was NBF’s job and why we read it”” after all. But I am just pointing out that things did not turn out so optimistically and that I believe was mainly do to an overly positive assumption of how fast/easy such new technologies and processes would penetrate the whole economy. Instead that process in reality turns out to be more difficult and longer-drawn out than that. Different for different forms of tech etc. And differences in economies (cell phone & wireless internet penetration was easier in countries with poor to non-existent land line coverage for example). And some economic sectors have just been plain resistant to productivity change like construction.Techno-cornucopians always by their vary nature discount the very real brick wall progress slams into called ‘end user adoption’. This is why I no longer assume that exponential growth in tech will mean equivalency such growth or even high growth translating into the real world economy. Oh it will happen. And for those sectors the most resistant like the aforementioned construction industry it will be highly disruptive when it does. But it will take time before that happens. In some cases”” a long time.”””
And no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years, The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years.” Pisa, I agree with most of your thoughts like eugenics, idiocracy and mental diseases but no with this one. Keep in mind that, in basically all XIX and XX century, only small fraction of humanity (less than 10%) – USA, advanced Europe and Japan was engaged in cutting edge, world changing innovation and science R&D, so rate of advancement was decent but still wayyy below humanity potential. Recently Korea, Taiwan and few other tiny nations joined. The RISE OF CHINA, awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop, which should take them another 8-10 years, additional 20% of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D. Until recently, in most people minds it was always USA and parts of Europe + few decades later Japan + several decades later Korea, Taiwan, Singapore. The fact that 30% of humanity will be engaged in innovation research, instead of just mere 10% should speed up the rate of advancement 3 fold. Many western trolls and ignorants were and are still complaining that China wasn’t contributing in innovation in XX century and still isn’t in 2000’s. They forgot that even as recent as in 1970’s China was extremely poor country with PPP per capita level lower than in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because they started from such low level, even with 10% growth per year, average Wang remain poor until literally last few years. Even today with $18 000 PPP per capita, they’re still on average on Botswana level. Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita. It is not coincidental that most innovative countries (Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Finland, Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Germany) are those with highest PPP per capita. Because they were always on top in modern times, they were always most inn
And no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years” The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years.””Pisa”” I agree with most of your thoughts like eugenics idiocracy and mental diseases but no with this one.Keep in mind that in basically all XIX and XX century only small fraction of humanity (less than 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12}) – USA advanced Europe and Japan was engaged in cutting edge world changing innovation and science R&D so rate of advancement was decent but still wayyy below humanity potential.Recently Korea Taiwan and few other tiny nations joined. The RISE OF CHINA awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop which should take them another 8-10 years additional 20{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D.Until recently in most people minds it was always USA and parts of Europe + few decades later Japan + several decades later Korea Taiwan Singapore.The fact that 30{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of humanity will be engaged in innovation research instead of just mere 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} should speed up the rate of advancement 3 fold.Many western trolls and ignorants were and are still complaining that China wasn’t contributing in innovation in XX century and still isn’t in 2000’s. They forgot that even as recent as in 1970’s China was extremely poor country with PPP per capita level lower than in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because they started from such low level even with 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} growth per year average Wang remain poor until literally last few years. Even today with $18 000 PPP per capita they’re sti”
Gee that’s negative, Pisa. I rather think that “the problem” is that Humans only live so long, and in particular, only have a fairly limited time-span in which their brains are plastic enough to learn the myriad of relationships of facts, forces, high-and-low level descriptions of “how things work” in detail to become working experts in select domains; and then how short lived their careers in those domains are before the degradation of ageing diminishes their intellectual vitality and creativity. Its sad, that. Without a shred of evidence to the otherwise, the most lucky and talented amongst us spend the first 25–30 years of our lives “growing into our gifts”. Then the next 25–30 plying them, and for a very rare few, actually forwarding their special domain. The rest of us… which is to say just about everyone below IQ 150… get as educated as we might aspire to, and DO NOT forward much of anything. We just ply our learned trades. Its is depressing. Yet… it is The Human Condition. As it has ALWAYS been. _______ Thing is, if you look at this objectively, it infers why-and-how the coming AI revolution will really be a crisis-of-mankind moment in history. For, unlike humans, with the astounding speed of communication methods that we’ve created digitally, entire libraries of knowledge and inference-decoded craft can be squirted over a 10 gigabit telephone-type cable in a minute or ten. When one can “teach a lifetime’s worth of craft” in less than an hour to “the next AI”, it starts off without that 30 year cost-of-being-human learning curve. Very probably, the knowledge imparted is VASTLY greater in detain than what we people ever actually learn. Computers do NOT forget, unless programmed to. Then, multiplied upon itself, the mass-production of efficient AIs will in turn cause an inflorescense of never-explored pure ‘mentation’ on subjects far and wide. Which can — and WILL — be cross communicated at terabit speeds between the AIs. The timeless ques
Gee that’s negative Pisa. I rather think that “the problem” is that Humans only live so long and in particular only have a fairly limited time-span in which their brains are plastic enough to learn the myriad of relationships of facts forces high-and-low level descriptions of “how things work” in detail to become working experts in select domains; and then how short lived their careers in those domains are before the degradation of ageing diminishes their intellectual vitality and creativity. Its sad that. Without a shred of evidence to the otherwise the most lucky and talented amongst us spend the first 25–30 years of our lives “growing into our gifts”. Then the next 25–30 plying them and for a very rare few actually forwarding their special domain. The rest of us… which is to say just about everyone below IQ 150… get as educated as we might aspire to and DO NOT forward much of anything. We just ply our learned trades.Its is depressing.Yet… it is The Human Condition.As it has ALWAYS been._______Thing is if you look at this objectively it infers why-and-how the coming AI revolution will really be a crisis-of-mankind moment in history. For unlike humans with the astounding speed of communication methods that we’ve created digitally entire libraries of knowledge and inference-decoded craft can be squirted over a 10 gigabit telephone-type cable in a minute or ten. When one can “teach a lifetime’s worth of craft” in less than an hour to “the next AI” it starts off without that 30 year cost-of-being-human learning curve. Very probably the knowledge imparted is VASTLY greater in detain than what we people ever actually learn. Computers do NOT forget unless programmed to. Then multiplied upon itself the mass-production of efficient AIs will in turn cause an inflorescense of never-explored pure ‘mentation’ on subjects far and wide. Which can — and WILL — be cross communicated at terabit speeds between the AIs. The timeless
Economists normally do not consider technological innovation in their projections because it is so hard to predict. They usually go with what they know today. This is not an unreasonable assumption providing it is accepted as a low baseline of what future economic growth will have in store.
Economists normally do not consider technological innovation in their projections because it is so hard to predict. They usually go with what they know today. This is not an unreasonable assumption providing it is accepted as a low baseline of what future economic growth will have in store.
Saw an article a few years ago on the American Society of Civil Engineers site talking about the costs (manageable) involved in asteroid mining and how it would support an industrial complex something on the order of ten thousand times the size of what mankind currently has. Pretty confident there will be breakthroughs in other areas, too, cheap power, desalinization, recycling (to the point we sell off landfills to outfits looking to reprocess them), etc., automation, strong AI, etc. Hard for economists to take it all in as they base projections on what has gone before and we are constantly entering new territory these days.
Saw an article a few years ago on the American Society of Civil Engineers site talking about the costs (manageable) involved in asteroid mining and how it would support an industrial complex something on the order of ten thousand times the size of what mankind currently has.Pretty confident there will be breakthroughs in other areas too cheap power desalinization recycling (to the point we sell off landfills to outfits looking to reprocess them) etc. automation strong AI etc. Hard for economists to take it all in as they base projections on what has gone before and we are constantly entering new territory these days.
No, eugenics isn’t necessary. We’re basically on the precipice of making computers that can out-think us, creativity will be offloaded to server farms like all other mental tasks. We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.
No eugenics isn’t necessary. We’re basically on the precipice of making computers that can out-think us creativity will be offloaded to server farms like all other mental tasks. We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.
It’s their job be realistic in economic growth projections and hence, conservative. Of course, when there are crises, growth projections (faint as they may be) become unrealistic. But in general, they base their projections in past trends and data.
It’s their job be realistic in economic growth projections and hence conservative.Of course when there are crises growth projections (faint as they may be) become unrealistic.But in general they base their projections in past trends and data.
They do take into account exponential growth, look at the GDP predictions of the 1950’s they predicted a Jetson’s like future by the year 2,000 That’s how economic projections work And no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years, The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years. This is because human intelligence has limits, and we are seeing humans hitting it. A monkey may have the intelligence to make a wheel or a spear, but they will never be smart enough to build furnaces and making swords nevermind transistors and computers. Humans have hit our intellectual limit, we are just apes proud that they made wheels and swords Already we are succumbing to idiocracy, mass dysgenics caused by decades of social policies have led to deleterious mutations in our genome. Mass mental and physical disorders are already present. The only way to break this would be implementing eugenics on a massive scale.
They do take into account exponential growth look at the GDP predictions of the 1950’s they predicted a Jetson’s like future by the year 2000 That’s how economic projections workAnd no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years. This is because human intelligence has limits and we are seeing humans hitting it. A monkey may have the intelligence to make a wheel or a spear but they will never be smart enough to build furnaces and making swords nevermind transistors and computers. Humans have hit our intellectual limit we are just apes proud that they made wheels and swords Already we are succumbing to idiocracy mass dysgenics caused by decades of social policies have led to deleterious mutations in our genome. Mass mental and physical disorders are already present. The only way to break this would be implementing eugenics on a massive scale.
You may have different opinion and do not believe in China.
My bet is on innovative China. They have(young generation) similar, nerdy, geeky culture like in Japan and South Korea, why wouldn’t they be able to come with new ideas?
Period of catching up is ending very fast.
I am sure that number of articles on NBF about new and original developments from China will be growing rapidly.
Like I wrote earlier
Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita. It is not coincidental that most innovative countries (Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Finland, Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Germany) are those with highest PPP per capita. Because they were always on top in modern times, they were always most innovative. But once again, China will change that in next few years.
With further 10% growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP), we will see paradigm shift, because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years.
You may be sceptic now, but are you 100% sure that when China will reach South Korea/Japan level of development, nothing will change and it will be still the same China as in 1980’s?
Let’s simply wait and see.
NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth” Fully agree Almost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science, the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless. World in 10 years will be alien in terms of tech, scientific capabilities, business models. That’s why futurists like Brian who have grasp not only on economy but also tech and science do way better analysis than economists working in their economy departments in universities etc.
NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI biotech nanotech robotics” space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth””Fully agreeAlmost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science”” the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless.World in 10 years will be alien in terms of tech scientific capabilities”” business models.That’s why futurists like Brian who have grasp not only on economy but also tech and science do way better analysis than economists working in their economy departments in universities etc.”””
F-35 is not a good example to use. It is overly complicated by (bad) design.
“The RISE OF CHINA, awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop, which should take them another 8-10 years, additional 20% of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D. ”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahah!
No, it won’t.
China has rapidly developed simply as a giant, macroeconomic act called ‘playing catchup’. But going forward, it is hard slugging just as it is for the first world nations. And there will be nobody to steal the tech from, either.
Nice.
Except you COULD say the same thing about earth’s surface. Solar energy is everywhere, it’s free, and its definitely abundant. Sure, it is bedeviled by dust, clouds, diurnal motion, and all that, but hey… its definitely free, abundant, ubiquitous and trustworthy.
So why isn’t solar power being used to mine ores, to smelt them into metals, to take inert rock and make the most amazing assortment of raw materials and finished product? Mmmm… because solar power turns out to be hard to harness in most intense ways.
Saying that “the total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves every minute” is a bit of dramatic overrepresentation. You could say that of ANY large area in space. Has nothing to do with the Moon.
It also has nothing to do with the Scale of the Earth↔Moon distance: one would not be using an appreciable amount of the solar power between these two astronomical bodies in any case. For any purpose. (πR² of Earth:Moon distance, 400,000,000 meters mean, and 1360 watts per m² gives 185,000,000 TW)
But I feel where you’re coming from: there IS abundant solar energy “up there” which, tapped, harnessed, tamed, “invested in”, might have a whole host of uses. Not least of which will be vaporizing hapless asteroids that just seem to be ambling by. Catch ’em, bake ’em, smoke ’em until they glow. Gather the volatiles, and see what the husk has left. Refine that into other stuff. And so on.
I just don’t see it happening in my remaining lifetime. Maybe yours!
Just saying,
GoatGuy
Hey Mr. Wang…
Perhaps we could do a side-by-side? You know, projections of the next 42 years from 42 years ago compared to our projections of the next 42 years.
Just to see how well the producers of projections generally do.
As it were.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
______
There’s the 1975 World Economic Survey PDF from the United Nations… http:\\www.un.org\en\development\desa\policy\wess\wess_archive\1975wes.pdf (change backslashes \ to slashes /), but it isn’t very useful. I went a’googling, and couldn’t find much. Seems to confirm something I’ve long mused at: projections made in the past ‘disappear’ from the public record relatively quickly.
Imagine that humans didn’t exist, and we were both apes having this discussion.
Ape 1 claims that ape imagination and creativity is infinite, after all look at how far we advanced.
Using ape science, we discovered what plants and animals were edible, we found that we could take sticks and sharpen them with rocks to create weapons, Some Apes even created knives from rocks by banging two rocks together, the pinnacle however was the discovery that banging two rocks together could create a fire.
And then claims that the steady technological advancement proves that Apes will continue to discover new things, and build more and more advanced things. In the future ape’s will be able to create machines that can fly and things that will let you see far away and weapons that can kill apes from far distances.
But of course we know the reality, the Ape’s never advance past the stone age.
>You seem to be IQ expert here, do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans, newborns and elderly to IQ200?
Yes but this is theoretical technology, we don’t know if theoretical technology can do this.
What we do know 100% is that selective breeding works, and the humans that all managed to produce groundbreaking tech have all had extremely high IQ’s
This is time tested and proven, all the evidence shows that IQ is heritable and genetic
Computer’s and ai can be essentially seen as tools that increase the number of monkeys.
Creating for instance Star Trek level tech for example, faster than light drive, energy shields and photon torpedo’s etc… is not because we don’t have enough monkey’s but because we are fundamentally too dumb.
A single human advances technology faster than 5 billion monkey’s
You may have more time, but you didn’t get any smarter. You still have no clue how to even build a faster than light drive.
The two hour workday has always been a myth.
As technology advances more labor is required not less.
One needs only to compare the wooden fighter planes of WW1 to a modern plane like the F-35
With just some wood, basic hand tools you could build a plane equivalent to what the military was using in your own backyard.
A plane like the F-35 requires hundreds of thousands of parts from hundreds of thousands of companies all employing a small army of tech professionals. You need a specific machine to make every part, and each of those machines are created from parts made by hundreds of other specialized machines.
The great technological achievement of creating the cloned sheep dolly, was not the idea that you could take DNA from one cell and putting it into a embryo of another.
But rather it was in the process.
A tiny needle was inserted into a cell, sucked out the nucleus then injected it into a embryo.
The technological difficulty was in fact creating a needle so small made out of glass, and creating the mechanism that controlled its movement all at the nanometer level and the mechanism for sucking and ejecting all requiring nanometers of tolerance.
Ergo making a smartphone requires more labor, not less even though it is a labor saving device.
While automation has destroyed jobs in some area’s the increasing complexity of manufacturing and modern tech means more labor in other areas.
It is not just how smart we are, but how fast we can get our work done.
I estimate that my productivity as an engineer has doubled compared to pre-internet days. I started working in 1981, so my career has spanned the change. I used to physically have to visit the company technical library in order to look something up that wasn’t in the few reference books at my desk. Drawing changes were done on drafting boards. Sending out documents for review meant physically circulating the sole original, or taking a few days to get copies made at the company print shop.
Today, I have essentially the whole world’s knowledge available at my fingertips, changes can be sent out instantly, etc. It is all much easier and faster.
The change over from centralized steam or water power to local electric motors in devices shows where the delay happens. Old factories used belt-drives and shafts for the machines, coming off the central power source. Therefore factories were built multi-story, to minimize the distance to the machines.
Once electric motors were available, factories changed over to single-story structures, which made moving goods around much easier, especially since you didn’t need to work around the belts and shafts that cluttered the old buildings. The buildings became less expensive, since they didn’t need to support the weight of upper story equipment. They could become lightweight shells.
These changes dramatically lowered costs and raised productivity, but they didn’t happen overnight. It took a generation or two for the old factory buildings to be replaced by new ones.
I think the same sort of thing is happening with computers and the Internet, robots, and automation. They are enabling lower cost and higher productivity, but again, the changes are not instant. They are still playing out, and will be for another generation. Annual industrial robot production has reached 300,000, but that pales beside the ~40 million new low-wage workers we add each year. I assume half of population growth constitutes new available workers.
As someone who works on asteroid mining, they are one of the easiest resources to start with, but not the only off-planet ones.
The big kicker is energy resources. Solar flux in high orbit is 4-10 times higher than various places on the ground. It is available 100% of the time, and can be used both for electric power and thermal power. The total energy flow inside of the Moon’s distance is equal to the whole world’s fossil fuel reserves *every minute*. In numerical terms, it is 632 million TW, or about 30 million times what our current civilization uses. Asteroids and other physical resources just provide something to do with all that energy.
The high energy flux means the energy payback time will be short, and therefore your industry can rapidly grow. There would likely be some other rate-limiting item, like how fast you can supply materials for processing, but energy won’t be the limiting factor on growth.
We’re smart enough to invent CRISPR, genetic engineering, and some quite impressive AI algorithms. And we’re just starting.
Advancing these tech should help in our journey into infinity and if we decide to increase our IQ potential in near future. But even without it I still think that human imagination and creativity is almost infinite.
You seem to be IQ expert here, do you believe it is possible to increase IQ in all humans, newborns and elderly to IQ200?
See my reply to goat guy,
AI’s are just advanced calculators, there is no evidence that they can think outside the box.
And without some evolving algorithm capable of rewriting the base program the AI will forever be stuck in the box.
At some point the earth being flat was a physical law, no different than the law of gravity or conservation of energy.
Yes a AI can win at a game with a set number of rules and moves possible, but reality is different because you don’t know what the rules are and it could very well be that the rules you built everything on is a lie.
There’s no evidence that AI’s have a consciousness, AI’s just take in information and find patterns between the information, and then create their own systems of rules based on the patterns.
Until there is evidence that the AI can evolve its own algorithm the AI apocalypse will never happen.
For example AI’s like Alphago and Deepmind are taking in information and finding links between them. They are reliant on a learning algorithm that does not change hence it is merely using crystallized intelligence rather than fluid intelligence.
The limitations are very clear, they might provide scientific answers that we can’t see through to the limitations of our brains. But they would not be able to produce anything truly groundbreaking.
The worlds smartest monkey is still a monkey, would having a billion monkey’s worldwide allow monkeys to escape the stone age?
What about 5 billion?
Out of 5 billion monkeys, would one monkey be smart enough to build a container out of clay, dry out wood by removing the moisture thus making charcoal, and then burn the charcoal in the clay container while throwing in a metallic looking rocks?
At some point, adding more monkey’s no longer makes a difference, I can say with a 100% confidence interval that monkey’s will never invent bronze technology independently provided the intelligence of their species remains the same no matter how many monkey’s there are, and how well fed and educated they are.
Likewise the same applies to humans, at some point we will reach a point where progress is no longer possible, where throwing more humans no longer makes a difference. But it could very well be possible that we have reached our limit, and something like faster than light travel will forever be beyond our reach.
Techwise despite our number of researchers being drastically higher than 1970’s we have made little progress. For example our computers are pretty much the same the only difference is that we are packing the transistors tighter together but nothing groundbreaking.
I have no doubt that China will dominate tech, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are still humans.
The ones in the 50s made the major blunder of not predicting the growth in debt-peonage eating up the income of the middle-class, both through debt or the debasing of the currency when we went off the gold standard.
It was just inconceivable for that to happen when they lived in a world where usury laws kept debt levels in check and bank mortgage required 20% down payments and there were 20 year mortgages, max. Only when the government started to get involved in the mortgage market did we start to get the 30 year mortgage (“grip of death”).
Had that not happened, then the future they predicted with two hour work days would have probably have came about. This is because the finance class would have been limited in how much the could extract in ‘human farming’ via debt-peonage. But today, debt is integrated into the cost of everything so much that even people not directly indebted pay into it, so to speak.
The rise of such a system would not have entered the minds of economists back then.
“Almost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science, the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless.”
I used to think that way also. And in a lot of cases, that is still the case, I bet.
BUT…I’ve also found where they were justified. I have been a long time reader of NBF and other futurist sites/lore and I can tell you this isn’t the first time Brian or others have jumped on that bandwagon…only to not see it pan out as promised.
See, accelerating growth in tech does NOT equate to the same in the economy/productivity. There’s a lag. Sometimes — especially in some economic sectors (like construction) — there’s a serious lag.
To which the economists point to and say, “See, we were right! (not to drink the Techno-cornucopian Kool-Aid)” and with justification.
But, at the same time, when they do see real influence…aka evidence of such in the economy..it is always after the fact, like they are seeing now. There’s a big movement of sorts in the economic statistician community right now to upgrade GDP growth, productivity levels in past reports. Expect some changes within the next 5 or so years in that.
True. What’s the real kicker right now is: They are finally figuring it out along with means to not only measure it currently, but to go back and amend economic growth reports in the last 15 years or so, too.
Which is currently the ‘big fight’ going on with economists right now. Not a ‘fight’ but there is resistance from an old guard, so to speak. Mainly, they are figuring out how to recognize economic activity they couldn’t before…and even down to the productivity measurement level, too.
So, look for a major revamp in the next 5 or so years. It will show that economic growth is larger than we thought. Same for productivity. And, they will go back and apply this to past data and things will look more rosy for the past as well. Naturally, politicians will love this stuff…on a partisan case-by-case basis, of course.
“NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth.”
Note: NBF also said the same regarding other technologies and their influence on productivity during the 2000s as well.
Not that I want to rag on NBF for doing so. That was NBF’s job and why we read it, after all.
But I am just pointing out that things did not turn out so optimistically and that, I believe, was mainly do to an overly positive assumption of how fast/easy such new technologies and processes would penetrate the whole economy. Instead, that process in reality turns out to be more difficult and longer-drawn out than that. Different for different forms of tech, etc. And differences in economies (cell phone & wireless internet penetration was easier in countries with poor to non-existent land line coverage, for example). And some economic sectors have just been plain resistant to productivity change, like construction.
Techno-cornucopians always, by their vary nature, discount the very real brick wall progress slams into called ‘end user adoption’.
This is why I no longer assume that exponential growth in tech will mean equivalency such growth or even high growth translating into the real world economy. Oh, it will happen. And for those sectors the most resistant, like the aforementioned construction industry, it will be highly disruptive when it does. But it will take time before that happens. In some cases, a long time.
“And no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years, The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years.”
Pisa, I agree with most of your thoughts like eugenics, idiocracy and mental diseases but no with this one.
Keep in mind that, in basically all XIX and XX century, only small fraction of humanity (less than 10%) – USA, advanced Europe and Japan was engaged in cutting edge, world changing innovation and science R&D, so rate of advancement was decent but still wayyy below humanity potential.
Recently Korea, Taiwan and few other tiny nations joined.
The RISE OF CHINA, awakening of the dragon will change everything very soon. When they fully develop, which should take them another 8-10 years, additional 20% of humanity will be engaged in world changing innovation and science R&D.
Until recently, in most people minds it was always USA and parts of Europe + few decades later Japan + several decades later Korea, Taiwan, Singapore.
The fact that 30% of humanity will be engaged in innovation research, instead of just mere 10% should speed up the rate of advancement 3 fold.
Many western trolls and ignorants were and are still complaining that China wasn’t contributing in innovation in XX century and still isn’t in 2000’s.
They forgot that even as recent as in 1970’s China was extremely poor country with PPP per capita level lower than in Sub-Saharan Africa. Because they started from such low level, even with 10% growth per year, average Wang remain poor until literally last few years. Even today with $18 000 PPP per capita, they’re still on average on Botswana level.
Innovation is neatly corelated with PPP per capita. It is not coincidental that most innovative countries (Switzerland, Sweden, USA, Finland, Netherlands, Singapore, Denmark, Germany) are those with highest PPP per capita. Because they were always on top in modern times, they were always most innovative. But once again, China will change that in next few years.
With further 10% growth per year(btw. technologial and scientific progress of a country should be measured in PPP not in nominal GDP), we will see paradigm shift, because they will reach today’s South Korea or UK level in only 8 years.
Just because China awakening, situation from 2020’s onwards will be much different than it was during 1800’s- 2010’s.
Gee that’s negative, Pisa.
I rather think that “the problem” is that Humans only live so long, and in particular, only have a fairly limited time-span in which their brains are plastic enough to learn the myriad of relationships of facts, forces, high-and-low level descriptions of “how things work” in detail to become working experts in select domains; and then how short lived their careers in those domains are before the degradation of ageing diminishes their intellectual vitality and creativity.
Its sad, that.
Without a shred of evidence to the otherwise, the most lucky and talented amongst us spend the first 25–30 years of our lives “growing into our gifts”. Then the next 25–30 plying them, and for a very rare few, actually forwarding their special domain. The rest of us… which is to say just about everyone below IQ 150… get as educated as we might aspire to, and DO NOT forward much of anything. We just ply our learned trades.
Its is depressing.
Yet… it is The Human Condition.
As it has ALWAYS been.
_______
Thing is, if you look at this objectively, it infers why-and-how the coming AI revolution will really be a crisis-of-mankind moment in history. For, unlike humans, with the astounding speed of communication methods that we’ve created digitally, entire libraries of knowledge and inference-decoded craft can be squirted over a 10 gigabit telephone-type cable in a minute or ten.
When one can “teach a lifetime’s worth of craft” in less than an hour to “the next AI”, it starts off without that 30 year cost-of-being-human learning curve. Very probably, the knowledge imparted is VASTLY greater in detain than what we people ever actually learn. Computers do NOT forget, unless programmed to.
Then, multiplied upon itself, the mass-production of efficient AIs will in turn cause an inflorescense of never-explored pure ‘mentation’ on subjects far and wide. Which can — and WILL — be cross communicated at terabit speeds between the AIs.
The timeless question remains.
Will our remarkably smart near-future AIs be our partners, or our masters?
Just saying,
GoatGuy
Economists normally do not consider technological innovation in their projections because it is so hard to predict. They usually go with what they know today. This is not an unreasonable assumption providing it is accepted as a low baseline of what future economic growth will have in store.
Saw an article a few years ago on the American Society of Civil Engineers site talking about the costs (manageable) involved in asteroid mining and how it would support an industrial complex something on the order of ten thousand times the size of what mankind currently has.
Pretty confident there will be breakthroughs in other areas, too, cheap power, desalinization, recycling (to the point we sell off landfills to outfits looking to reprocess them), etc., automation, strong AI, etc. Hard for economists to take it all in as they base projections on what has gone before and we are constantly entering new territory these days.
No, eugenics isn’t necessary. We’re basically on the precipice of making computers that can out-think us, creativity will be offloaded to server farms like all other mental tasks. We don’t have to get all Hitler-y about it.
It’s their job be realistic in economic growth projections and hence, conservative.
Of course, when there are crises, growth projections (faint as they may be) become unrealistic.
But in general, they base their projections in past trends and data.
They do take into account exponential growth, look at the GDP predictions of the 1950’s they predicted a Jetson’s like future by the year 2,000
That’s how economic projections work
And no the world won’t be radically different in 10 years, The reality is that scientific development has mostly stalled since the 1970’s life is pretty much no different in 2020 from 1970 a gap of 50 years.
This is because human intelligence has limits, and we are seeing humans hitting it.
A monkey may have the intelligence to make a wheel or a spear, but they will never be smart enough to build furnaces and making swords nevermind transistors and computers.
Humans have hit our intellectual limit, we are just apes proud that they made wheels and swords
Already we are succumbing to idiocracy, mass dysgenics caused by decades of social policies have led to deleterious mutations in our genome. Mass mental and physical disorders are already present.
The only way to break this would be implementing eugenics on a massive scale.
“NextBigfuture think this scenario will not happen. There will be big developments with AI, biotech, nanotech, robotics, space and other technoloies which will boost productivity and growth”
Fully agree
Almost none of economists writing his/her predictions take into account exponentially growing technology and science, the law of accelerating returns. Because of this fact I never take their growth predictions seriously. They’re clueless.
World in 10 years will be alien in terms of tech, scientific capabilities, business models.
That’s why futurists like Brian who have grasp not only on economy but also tech and science do way better analysis than economists working in their economy departments in universities etc.