⤴ What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and exponential economic growth?
Also: 5 Quick Questions for … chronicler of techno-pessimism Louis Anslow
"If we are no more than animals — we must snatch at our little scraps of happiness and live and suffer and pass, mattering no more — than all the other animals do — or have done." (He points out at the stars). It is that — or this? All the universe — or nothingness. . . . Which shall it be, Passworthy?" - The Shape of Things to Come by H.G. Wells)
The Essay
⤴ What's so funny 'bout peace, love, and exponential economic growth?
Bill Gates says he waits for the next book by academic and scientist Vaclav Smil “the way some people wait for the next Star Wars movie." Smil’s works are data-dense deep dives. (Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities is the book I’m most familiar with.) Unsurprisingly, then, Smil’s recent essay for The Wall Street Journal, “Tech Progress Is Slowing Down,” is an exploration of the numbers, excerpted from his new book Invention and Innovation: A Brief History of Hype and Failure.
And the numbers, according to Smil, suggest the notion of “exponential growth — at least in anything other than information technology — as hype that is likely to fail. To make this point, Smil does something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before. He points to the downside of Moore’s Law. Of course, Moore’s Law — the long-term growth of computing power from the regular doubling of the number of transistors on a microchip — is famous real-world examples of exponential growth.
Let the data dump begin: Smil notes that “microchip capacity has increased about 35 percent annually since 1970” and by “2020, microchips had more than 10 million times as many components as the first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, released in 1971.” And that exponential growth in digital computer power “was the foundation for the rapid rise of businesses based on electronic data processing, from PayPal to Amazon to Facebook. It made it possible to go in a lifetime from bulky landline phones to palm-size smartphones.”
Well, great! What’s not to like? Smil:
Nothing has affected, and warped, modern thinking about the pace of technological invention more than the rapid exponential advances of solid-state electronics. … These gains are widely seen today as harbingers of similarly impressive gains in other realms, such as solar cells, batteries, electric cars and even urban farming. … The problem is that the post-1970 ascent of electronic architecture and performance has no counterpart in other aspects of our lives. Exponential growth has not taken place in the fundamental economic activities on which modern civilization depends for its survival—agriculture, energy production, transportation and large engineering projects. Nor do we see rapid improvements in areas that directly affect health and quality of life, such as new drug discoveries and gains in longevity.
Smil then provides the data to support each of his assertions. For example: “In 1900 the best battery had an energy density of 25 watt-hours per kilogram; in 2022 the best lithium-ion batteries deployed on a large commercial scale had an energy density 12 times higher, corresponding to growth of just 2% a year.” So very much not exponential.
The notion of exponential growth is perhaps of particular interest right now because of the emergence of generative AI, the shockingly good machine-learning models that seem almost sentient, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E. Some techno-optimists think we may now be firmly on the path toward AGI, or artificial general intelligence. AGI could master any intellectual task that a human could. These brilliant synthetic brains could not only solve computational problems, but understand language, reason abstractly, and engage in creative endeavors.
And with AGI as a powerful new tool for scientific discovery and technological advance, growth across a wide range of endeavors — and thus the broad economy — would hugely accelerate and maybe turn exponential. So instead of growth at the typical 3 percent pace seen since World War II ( granted, a pace seen infrequently of late), think maybe 30 percent annual growth. Again Smil:
Bestselling tech prophets like Ray Kurzweil and Yuval Noah Harari argue that exponential growth will allow us to disrupt our way into a future devoid of disease and misery and abounding in material riches. In the words of investor Azeem Azhar, creator of the popular newsletter Exponential View, “We are entering an age of abundance. The first period in human history in which energy, food, computation and much else will be trivially cheap to produce.”
I’ll let folks named in the above quote defend themselves. My take is this: We can have a healthier future of vast material abundance that is widely shared without a Moore’s Law for Everything. A sci-fi future without sci-fi economics. For example: What amount of economic growth would it take to increase the per capita income of Ethiopia ($3.30 a day) to that of, say, Denmark ($55 a day)? It would take a nearly 17-fold increase in per capita income, according to Our World in Data. So, a pretty big increase. But for context, OWID points out, “the average income in Denmark grew by more than that over the last few generations, and such growth is not rare in recent economic history. ... South Koreans are on average 32-times richer than in 1950; Romanians 20-times; Chinese 16-times.” Not science fiction, economic fact.
Sure, very poor countries can temporarily experience exponential growth, but what about already rich countries such as the United States? Imagine what America would look like if it was able again to generate the sort of growth it had from the early 1990s to mid-2000s, or about twice as fast as the Fed and CBO see the economy growing in coming decades. If the US economy were able to repeat that trick, it would have a $55 trillion economy in 2052 rather than a $33 trillion economy. (Moore’s Law meet the Power of Compounding.) No easy task, but a couple of percentage points in faster growth is a whole lot more doable than a couple dozen. That, especially given both recent technological advances and the potential to fix some really bad economic policy in areas such as immigration, science investment, and trade.
Lots and lots of policy tweaks can really ad up. Like this one:
All those tweaks together might not equal the impact of AGI or a Technological Singularity, but the results would be pretty spectacular nonetheless.
5QQ
💡 5 Quick Questions for … chronicler of techno-pessimism Louis Anslow
I’ve long argued that science fiction matters. Whether our TV shows, films, and novels inspire hope or dread about the future affects the technologies we pursue — or don’t! But techno-pessimism predates America’s 21st-century zombie craze. In the 19th century, textile workers known as Luddites famously rebelled against (productivity-enhancing) machines. In the early 20th century, the typewriter was sure to kill romance. More recently, the decline of the slide rule was lamented. Today, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence are sure to usher in widespread unemployment. History’s predictions of doom were largely wrong, as is likely to be true of today’s hysterics. A great place to get some historical context on 21st-century techno-pessimism is the Pessimists Archive Newsletter, here on Substack. I highly recommend checking it out!
Louis Anslow is a writer, technologist, and curator of Pessimists Archive: a project exploring technophobia throughout history.
1/ Is techno-pessimism an ideology or a psychology?
It is a psychological fallacy/vulnerability that makes people vulnerable to an malthusianism/Luddite ideology. Fear of the unfamiliar and a yearning for the past is easy to radicalize. Technophobia is very similar to xenophobia in that regard.
2/ What role do movies, news media, etc. play in creating fear about technology?
Science fiction has become a form of folk flaw in society, fables for a secular world. They aren't taken literally, but they are taken seriously. They frame technology.
3/ What's the most hysterical or poorly aged example of technophobia that you've covered in Pessimists Archive?
Impossible to answer, too many to pick.
4/ You've kept a running “Blackmirror Fallacy” thread on Twitter for nearly two years. What is this fallacy, and why are we so susceptible to that way of thinking?
The blackmirror fallacy is when people overestimate the risk of technological acceleration and underestimate the risk of technological stagnation. We're seeing this play out today, with nuclear power in Europe, organic farming in Sri Lanka, and the vaccine hesitancy in the pandemic.
5/ How do fears about AI correspond with past fears about technology? Is this just a replay of old hysterics, or something new?
What is interesting is that 'Butlerian Jihad' of the Dune series, was named after Samuel Butler who in 1863 wrote a screed against thinking machines — what we now call AI. AI doomers hold this up as prescient, without realizing it shows just how old this line of thinking is. It also has a religious moral panic quality to it. Elon Musk has talked about it 'releasing the demon' — perhaps in a secular world this is the new evil sprits.
6/ What is the cost of techno-pessimism? Why does it matter?
The cost of techno-pessimism is large, but invisible. People will pat themselves on the back for averting a theoretical tech dystopia, while living in a no-tech dystopia of stagnation.
7/ Do you think that the popularity of dystopian science fiction is responsible for the level of techno pessimism in American society?
Yes, it has become a gospel for the secular world. Anything futuristic is called 'a bit blackmirror' — meanwhile we live in a dystopia of technological stagnation.
8/ Have people become more techno-pessimistic in the past 50 years?
I've started to realize that regular people are generally very open to new technologies — unless it threatens their livelihood (Luddites) or children. The rise of the internet, social media, and smartphones proves this out. It is the rapid embrace of new technologies by normal people that has seen the establishment and their surrogates get more hysterical. Luddites and technophobes aren't the same; Luddites are generally trying to protect their livelihoods, technophobes are trying to protect their power.
Powerful technophobes will often use luddites as an noble excuse to protect their livelihoods.
9/ Do you think the pandemic changed how people think about technology?
I do. I think that in many ways, the COVID vaccines were also a vaccine against fear of emerging biotechnology. Once you've had an mRNA vaccine, eating a GMO tomato perhaps seems less strange. On the other hand, it feels like right wingers across the world really pivoted to technophobia, in a world where closed boarders made xenophobia less appealing. It feels like DeSantis and a post-Trump Republican party is heavily leaning into technophobia. Some have even praised the Unabomber, whose manifesto interestingly began as a culture war rant against wokeness.
10/ What is the role of conspiracy theories in perpetuating techno pessimism?
What is interesting is all technologies are conspiracies, benevolent ones. A group of people come together and conspire that change and influence the future. Sometimes this is done in secret. I think open-source tech is a way to help deal with this. Part of why GMOs were so controversial was that large corporations were easy to frame in this way. OpenAI is seeing the same thing happening. Social media did too.
Micro Reads
▶ ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution - Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher, WSJ Opinion | The long-term importance of generative AI transcends commercial implications or even noncommercial scientific breakthroughs. It is not only generating answers; it is generating philosophically profound questions. It will infuse diplomacy and security strategy. Yet none of the creators of this technology are addressing the problems it will itself create. Nor has the U.S. government addressed the fundamental changes and transformations that loom.
▶ It’s Time to Fall in Love With Nuclear Fusion—Again - Virginia Heffernan, Wired | Fusion will, of course, rescue the environment and decarbonize planet Earth in a cool afternoon. It will also—don’t stop me now—render irrelevant all the dead-eyed petroleum kleptocracies and trade wars and real wars waged in their name. When energy can be produced anywhere, with common household ingredients, authoritarian states will no longer derive despotic authority by accidents of geography, but will, whoosh, become secular democracies, the better to share fusion-reactor tips and tricks in happy glasnost and savor the collective joy and peaceHOMETECHNOLOGY NEWS
▶ Limitless Possibilities – AI Technology Generates Original Proteins From Scratch - SciTechDaily |
▶ Meet the space billionaire who is interested in something other than rockets - Eric Berger, Ars Technica |
▶ The Build-Nothing Country - Noah Smith, Noahpinion | Specifically, what’s frustrating me is America’s seeming inability to build the things it needs to build in order to prosper and flourish in the 21st century. From housing to transit to solar power to transmission lines to semiconductor fabs, the U.S. has little trouble marshalling the financial and physical capital to create what it needs, but ends up stymied by entrenched local interests who exploit a thicket of veto points to preserve the built environment of the 1970s.