It seems worth mentioning the possibility that progress can also be bottlenecked by events external to our civilization. Maybe we need to wait for some star to explode for some experiment or for it to reach some state to exploit it. Or maybe we will wait for the universe to cool to do something (like the aestivation hypothesis for aliens). Or maybe we need to wait for an alien civilization to mature or reach us before doing something.
And even if we don’t “wait” for such events, our advancement can be slowed, because we can’t take advantage of them sooner or as effectively along with our internal advancement. Cumulatively, they could mean advancement is not lasting and doesn’t make it to our end point.
But I suppose there’s a substantial probability that none of this makes much difference, so that uniform internal advancement really does bring everything that matters forward roughly uniformly (ex ante), too.
And maybe we miss some important/useful events if we don’t advance. For example, the expansion of the universe puts some stars permanently out of reach sooner if we don’t advance.
Yes, it could be interesting to try to understand the most plausible trajectory-altering things like this that will occur on the exogenous calendar time. They could be very important.
It seems worth mentioning the possibility that progress can also be bottlenecked by events external to our civilization. Maybe we need to wait for some star to explode for some experiment or for it to reach some state to exploit it. Or maybe we will wait for the universe to cool to do something (like the aestivation hypothesis for aliens). Or maybe we need to wait for an alien civilization to mature or reach us before doing something.
And even if we don’t “wait” for such events, our advancement can be slowed, because we can’t take advantage of them sooner or as effectively along with our internal advancement. Cumulatively, they could mean advancement is not lasting and doesn’t make it to our end point.
But I suppose there’s a substantial probability that none of this makes much difference, so that uniform internal advancement really does bring everything that matters forward roughly uniformly (ex ante), too.
And maybe we miss some important/useful events if we don’t advance. For example, the expansion of the universe puts some stars permanently out of reach sooner if we don’t advance.
Yes, it could be interesting to try to understand the most plausible trajectory-altering things like this that will occur on the exogenous calendar time. They could be very important.