To zoom out is useful. It puts the events networks of our spacetime in perspective. Including on what the great Jorje Luis Borges was calling the Orbis Tertius [1]:
''ORBIS TERTIUS. "Tertius" (Latin = third) is an allusion to: World 3: the world of the products of the human mind, defined by Karl Popper.''
Poetically stated, ''retrodiction studies'' [2], [3], [4] enables us to get a glimpse on the "clear, cold lines of eternity".
Back in 20th century Prof Robin Hanson put together this extremely insightful and strong document [5].
Long-Term Growth As A Sequence of Exponential Modes,
First Version 9/11/98, Revised 5/03/00, Substantially renewed 12/00
Economy grows. [see: Footnote]. Unstoppable.
Hanson's unprecedented contribution was to provide us with systematic orientation tool on how and why economy grows.
It accelerates. See:
Mode Doubling Date Began Doubles Doubles Transition
Grows Time (DT) To Dominate of DT of WP CES Power
---------- --------- ----------- ------ ------- ----------
Brain size 34M yrs 550M B.C. ? "16" ?
Hunters 224K yrs 2000K B.C. 7.3 8.9 ?
Farmers 909 yrs 4856 B.C. 7.9 7.6 2.4
Industry 6.3 yrs 2020 A.D. 7.2 >9.2 0.094The model identifies the past economy accelerators as.:
- neural networks, evolving into doubling brain size each 30-ish megayears (hinting that human level of intelligence is an inevitability: +/-30 millions of year around the Now, by the virtue of the good old 'coin-toss' Darwinian algorithm alone.)
- human as the top-of-the-foodchains predator since around 2 000 000 BC. (maybe the human mastering of the Fire and the Blade to blame), compressing the doubling time with over two orders of magnitude down to a quarter of a million of years.
- Food production, ecosystem manipulation (or rather the collimation of farming, horse domestication and writing as accelerator components), leading to less than 40 human generations per economy doubling.
- All we know as division of labor, specialization, systematized Sci-Tech... industry - the centralized ways for production and control of knowledge leading to another hundreds-fold compression down to mere ~decade of economy doubling time.
Recommended: digest each Hanson (economy accelerator drive or) Engine with the Bob Hettinga's 'ensime' [3]:
My observation about networks in general is a rather obvious one when you think about it: our social structures map to our communication structures. As intuitive as it is to understand, this observation provides great insight into where the technology of computer assisted communication will take us in the years ahead.
Connectivity specs as indicator and drive.
Now, when we leave the past and use these models to gaze into the future, the really interesting stuff comes out.
Aside from giving explanation to the, detected by Brad DeLong in his also monumental paper [6], overall trajectory of the economy, the nucleus of meaning in the Rob Hanson's paper is:
Typically, the economy is dominated by one particular mode of economic growth, which produces a constant growth rate. While there are often economic processes which grow exponentially at a rate much faster than that of the economy as a whole, such processes almost always slow down as they become limited by the size of the total economy. Very rarely, however, a faster process reforms the economy so fundamentally that overall economic growth rates accelerate to track this new process. The economy might then be thought of as composed of an old sector and a new sector, a new sector which continues to grow at its same speed even when it comes to dominate the economy.
Visualize: a Petri dish and sugar being expanded in size and quantity by the accelerating growth of the bacterial culture in it.
Hanson actually predicted nearly quarter of century ago, ... something that is relentlessly coming.
In the CES model (which this author prefers) if the next number of doubles of DT were the same as one of the last three DT doubles, the next doubling time would be ... 1.3, 2.1, or 2.3 weeks. This suggests a remarkably precise estimate of an amazingly fast growth rate. ... it seems hard to escape the conclusion that the world economy will likely see a very dramatic change within the next century, to a new economic growth mode with a doubling time perhaps as short as two weeks.
An economy accelerator avalanche is roaring down the slope of time towards us.
A brand new Hanson Engine is about to leave the assembly line.
Tau, is that you?
FOOTNOTE: To wrap up the above statements in the flesh of the deep thesaurus of content onto which they lie, would conservatively consume hundreds of pages. Even if only briefed. I promise to come back to these subtopic meaning expansions (by referring back to here) with series of posts in the months to come to tie up with the notions of.: economy as a network, network as computer, what exactly it processes and outputs, economy (like the universe or life) being endogenously driven positive feedback loop self-amplifying non-equilibrium entropic combinatorial explosion system, the wealth as economy complexity growth in relation with GDP size and the intimate connection of dollars-joules in energy intensity, physical and economic limits of growth, self-reinforcing predator-pray models, knowledge as synonymous with skill and so forth, economic cycles upon the DeLong curve ... to name a few. Readers questions and comments will of course help a lot with the subtopics prioritization, and will boost (incl. mine) understanding. Thank you in advance!
NOTE: I currently have the pleasure and honor to be part of the Tau Team, but this post contains ONLY my personal views.
18qSKUUTAGw1uL53simrSiZ6pJpfxKACvj for research support. Thanks.
Copyright © 2018 Georgi Karov. All rights reserved.
