If the economy were to grow by 1% annually for a mere 20,000 years (which is a blink of an eye on a geologic timescale), then the economy would grow by a factor of 10^86, which is more than the number of atoms in the observable universe.
Of course this won’t happen, but when talking with people outside of EA about the question of how soon we might create AGI or how soon we might reach technological maturity or how soon we might create a civilization with more value in it each year than the value of all life that has ever lived on Earth so far, I sometimes find that peoples’ intuition is that the answer to each question is a very long time, e.g. millions of years.
However, when I give these exponential growth numbers in this context it often acts as an intuition pump, such that whoever I’m talking to immediately sees that “millions of years” is too long, “thousands of years” is a lot more reasonable seeming than moments before, and “a few centuries or less” suddenly seems plausible.
My favorite exponential growth numbers:
1.01^20,000 = 10^86
1.03^7000 = 10^89
1.05^4000 = 10^84
If the economy were to grow by 1% annually for a mere 20,000 years (which is a blink of an eye on a geologic timescale), then the economy would grow by a factor of 10^86, which is more than the number of atoms in the observable universe.
Of course this won’t happen, but when talking with people outside of EA about the question of how soon we might create AGI or how soon we might reach technological maturity or how soon we might create a civilization with more value in it each year than the value of all life that has ever lived on Earth so far, I sometimes find that peoples’ intuition is that the answer to each question is a very long time, e.g. millions of years.
However, when I give these exponential growth numbers in this context it often acts as an intuition pump, such that whoever I’m talking to immediately sees that “millions of years” is too long, “thousands of years” is a lot more reasonable seeming than moments before, and “a few centuries or less” suddenly seems plausible.