If you look at the graph at the 1700 mark, GWP is seemingly on the same trend it had been on since antiquity. The industrial revolution is said to have started in 1760, and GWP growth really started to pick up steam around 1850. But by 1700 most of the Americas, the Philippines and the East Indies were directly ruled by European powers
I think European GDP was already pretty crazy by 1700. There’s been a lot of recent arguing about the particular numbers and I am definitely open to just being wrong about this, but so far nothing has changed my basic picture.
After a minute of thinking my best guess for finding the most reliable time series was from the Maddison project. I pulled their dataset from here.
Here’s UK population:
1000AD: 2 million
1500AD: 3.9 million (0.14%/year growth)
1700AD: 8.6 million (0.39%)
1820AD: 21.2 million (0.76%)
A 0.14%/year growth rate was already very fast by historical standards, and by 1700 things seemed really crazy.
Here’s population in Spain:
1000AD: 4 million
1500AD: 6.8 million (0.11%)
1700AD: 8.8 million (0.13%)
1820AD: 12.2 million (0.28%)
The 1500-1700 acceleration is less marked here but still seems like growth was fast.
Here’s the world using the data we’ve all been using in the past (which I think is much more uncertain):
10000BC: 4 million
3000BC: 14 million (0.02%)
1000BC: 50 million (0.06%)
1000AD: 265 million (0.08%)
1500AD: 425 million (0.09%)
1700AD: 610 million (0.18%)
1820AD: 1 billion (0.41%)
This puts the 0.14%/year growth in the UK in context, and also suggests that things were generally blowing up by 1700AD.
I think that looking at the country-level data is probably better since it’s more robust, unless your objection is “GWP isn’t what matters because some countries’ GDP will be growing much faster.”
Thanks for the reply—Yeah, I totally agree that GDP of the most advanced countries is a better metric than GWP, since presumably GDP will accelerate first in a few countries before it accelerates in the world as a whole. I think most of the points made in my post still work, however, even against the more reasonable metric of GDP-of-the-most-technologically-advanced-country.
Moreover, I think even the point you were specifically critiquing still stands: If AI will be like the Industrial Revolution but faster, then crazy stuff will be happening pretty early on in the curve.
Here’s the data I got from Wikipedia a while back on world GDP growth rates. Year is the column on the left, annual growth rate (extrapolated) is in the column on the right.
1700
320
99.8
0.40%
1650
370
81.74
0.12%
1600
420
77.01
0.27%
1500
520
58.67
0.27%
1400
620
44.92
0.21%
1350
670
40.5
0.47%
1300
720
32.09
-0.21%
1250
770
35.58
-0.10%
1200
820
37.44
-0.06%
1100
920
39.6
0.11%
1000
1020
35.31
0.11%
900
1120
31.68
0.23%
800
1220
25.23
0.07%
700
1320
23.44
0.12%
600
1420
20.86
0.05%
500
1520
19.92
0.08%
400
1620
18.44
0.06%
350
1670
17.93
-0.02%
200
1820
18.54
0.03%
14
2006
17.5
-0.43%
1
2019
18.5
0.04%
-200
2220
17
0.03%
-400
2420
16.02
0.16%
-500
2520
13.72
0.12%
-800
2820
9.72
0.21%
On this data at least, 1700 is the first time an observer would say “OK yeah maybe we are transitioning to a new faster growth mode” (assuming you discount 1350 as I do as an artefact of recovering from various disasters). Moreover, it seems to contradict your claim that 0.14% growth was already high by historical standards. (Your data was for population whereas mine is for GWP, maybe that accounts for the discrepancy.)
EDIT: Also, I picked 1700 as precisely the time when “Things seem to be blowing up” first became true. My point was that the point of no return was already past by then.
Scaling down all the amounts of time, here’s how that situation sounds to me: US output doubles in 15 years (basically the fastest it ever has), then doubles again in 7 years. The end of the 7 year doubling is the first time that your hypothetical observer would say “OK yeah maybe we are transitioning to a new faster growth mode,” and stuff started getting clearly crazy during the 7 year doubling. That scenario wouldn’t be surprising to me. If that scenario sounds typical to you then it’s not clear there’s anything we really disagree about.
Moreover, it seems to contradict your claim that 0.14% growth was already high by historical standards.
0.14%/year growth sustained over 500 years is a doubling. If you did that between 5000BC and 1000AD then that would be 4000x growth. I think we have a lot of uncertainty about how much growth actually occurred but we’re pretty sure it’s not 4000x (e.g. going from 1 million people to 4 billion people). Standard kind of made-up estimates are more like 50x (e.g. those cited in Roodman’s report), half that fast.
There is lots of variance in growth rates, and it would temporarily be above that level given that populations would grow way faster than that when they have enough resources. That makes it harder to tell what’s going on but I think you should still be surprised to see such high growth rates sustained for many centuries.
(assuming you discount 1350 as I do as an artefact of recovering from various disasters
This doesn’t seem to work, especially if you look at the UK. Just consider a long enough period of time (like 1000AD to 1500AD) to include both the disasters and the recovery. At that point, disasters should if anything decrease growth rates. Yet this period saw historically atypically fast growth.
OK, thanks. I’m not sure how you calculated that but I’ll take your word for it. My hypothetical observer is seeming pretty silly then—I guess I had been thinking that the growth prior to 1700 was fast but not much faster than it had been at various times in the past, and in fact much slower than it had been in 1350 (I had discounted that, but if we don’t, then that supports my point) so a hypothetical observer would be licensed to discount the growth prior to 1700 as maybe just catch-up + noise. But then by the time the data for 1700 comes in, it’s clear a fundamental change has happened. I guess the modern-day parallel would be if a pandemic or economic crisis depresses growth for a bit, and then there’s a sustained period of growth afterwards in which the economy doubles in 7 years, and there’s all sorts of new technology involved but it’s still respectable for economists to say it’s just catch-up growth + noise, at least until year 5 or so of the 7-year doubling. Is this fair?
There definitely wasn’t 0.14% growth over 5000 years. But according to my data there was 12% in 700, 0.23% in 900, 11% in 1000 and 1100, 47% in 1350, and 21% in 1400. So 14% fits right in; 14% over a 500-year period is indeed more impressive, but not that impressive when there are multiple 100-year periods with higher growth than that worldwide (and thus presumably longer periods with higher growth, in cherry-picked locations around the world)
Anyhow, the important thing is how much we disagree, and maybe it’s not much. I certainly think the scenario you sketch is plausible, but I think “faster” scenarios, and scenarios with more of a disconnect between GWP and PONR, are also plausible. Thanks to you I am updating towards thinking the historical case of IR is less support for that second bit than I thought.
Some thoughts on the historical analogy:
I think European GDP was already pretty crazy by 1700. There’s been a lot of recent arguing about the particular numbers and I am definitely open to just being wrong about this, but so far nothing has changed my basic picture.
After a minute of thinking my best guess for finding the most reliable time series was from the Maddison project. I pulled their dataset from here.
Here’s UK population:
1000AD: 2 million
1500AD: 3.9 million (0.14%/year growth)
1700AD: 8.6 million (0.39%)
1820AD: 21.2 million (0.76%)
A 0.14%/year growth rate was already very fast by historical standards, and by 1700 things seemed really crazy.
Here’s population in Spain:
1000AD: 4 million
1500AD: 6.8 million (0.11%)
1700AD: 8.8 million (0.13%)
1820AD: 12.2 million (0.28%)
The 1500-1700 acceleration is less marked here but still seems like growth was fast.
Here’s the world using the data we’ve all been using in the past (which I think is much more uncertain):
10000BC: 4 million
3000BC: 14 million (0.02%)
1000BC: 50 million (0.06%)
1000AD: 265 million (0.08%)
1500AD: 425 million (0.09%)
1700AD: 610 million (0.18%)
1820AD: 1 billion (0.41%)
This puts the 0.14%/year growth in the UK in context, and also suggests that things were generally blowing up by 1700AD.
I think that looking at the country-level data is probably better since it’s more robust, unless your objection is “GWP isn’t what matters because some countries’ GDP will be growing much faster.”
Thanks for the reply—Yeah, I totally agree that GDP of the most advanced countries is a better metric than GWP, since presumably GDP will accelerate first in a few countries before it accelerates in the world as a whole. I think most of the points made in my post still work, however, even against the more reasonable metric of GDP-of-the-most-technologically-advanced-country.
Moreover, I think even the point you were specifically critiquing still stands: If AI will be like the Industrial Revolution but faster, then crazy stuff will be happening pretty early on in the curve.
Here’s the data I got from Wikipedia a while back on world GDP growth rates. Year is the column on the left, annual growth rate (extrapolated) is in the column on the right.
On this data at least, 1700 is the first time an observer would say “OK yeah maybe we are transitioning to a new faster growth mode” (assuming you discount 1350 as I do as an artefact of recovering from various disasters). Moreover, it seems to contradict your claim that 0.14% growth was already high by historical standards. (Your data was for population whereas mine is for GWP, maybe that accounts for the discrepancy.)
EDIT: Also, I picked 1700 as precisely the time when “Things seem to be blowing up” first became true. My point was that the point of no return was already past by then.
To be fair, maybe my data is shitty.
Scaling down all the amounts of time, here’s how that situation sounds to me: US output doubles in 15 years (basically the fastest it ever has), then doubles again in 7 years. The end of the 7 year doubling is the first time that your hypothetical observer would say “OK yeah maybe we are transitioning to a new faster growth mode,” and stuff started getting clearly crazy during the 7 year doubling. That scenario wouldn’t be surprising to me. If that scenario sounds typical to you then it’s not clear there’s anything we really disagree about.
0.14%/year growth sustained over 500 years is a doubling. If you did that between 5000BC and 1000AD then that would be 4000x growth. I think we have a lot of uncertainty about how much growth actually occurred but we’re pretty sure it’s not 4000x (e.g. going from 1 million people to 4 billion people). Standard kind of made-up estimates are more like 50x (e.g. those cited in Roodman’s report), half that fast.
There is lots of variance in growth rates, and it would temporarily be above that level given that populations would grow way faster than that when they have enough resources. That makes it harder to tell what’s going on but I think you should still be surprised to see such high growth rates sustained for many centuries.
This doesn’t seem to work, especially if you look at the UK. Just consider a long enough period of time (like 1000AD to 1500AD) to include both the disasters and the recovery. At that point, disasters should if anything decrease growth rates. Yet this period saw historically atypically fast growth.
OK, thanks. I’m not sure how you calculated that but I’ll take your word for it. My hypothetical observer is seeming pretty silly then—I guess I had been thinking that the growth prior to 1700 was fast but not much faster than it had been at various times in the past, and in fact much slower than it had been in 1350 (I had discounted that, but if we don’t, then that supports my point) so a hypothetical observer would be licensed to discount the growth prior to 1700 as maybe just catch-up + noise. But then by the time the data for 1700 comes in, it’s clear a fundamental change has happened. I guess the modern-day parallel would be if a pandemic or economic crisis depresses growth for a bit, and then there’s a sustained period of growth afterwards in which the economy doubles in 7 years, and there’s all sorts of new technology involved but it’s still respectable for economists to say it’s just catch-up growth + noise, at least until year 5 or so of the 7-year doubling. Is this fair?
There definitely wasn’t 0.14% growth over 5000 years. But according to my data there was 12% in 700, 0.23% in 900, 11% in 1000 and 1100, 47% in 1350, and 21% in 1400. So 14% fits right in; 14% over a 500-year period is indeed more impressive, but not that impressive when there are multiple 100-year periods with higher growth than that worldwide (and thus presumably longer periods with higher growth, in cherry-picked locations around the world)
Anyhow, the important thing is how much we disagree, and maybe it’s not much. I certainly think the scenario you sketch is plausible, but I think “faster” scenarios, and scenarios with more of a disconnect between GWP and PONR, are also plausible. Thanks to you I am updating towards thinking the historical case of IR is less support for that second bit than I thought.