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.
Cool, really looking forward to add them to my Anki!
Re: How many big power transitions ended in war
I had the work from Graham Allison in mind here, not sure how set in stone it is but I had the impression it is a sufficiently solid rough estimate:
(2) In researching cases of rising powers challenging ruling powers over the last 500 years, Allison and the Thucydides Trap Project at Harvard University found 12 of 16 cases resulted in war.
Re: roughly how much they value their own time
I would do a card where people are able to fill in their number, e.g. something like
“Given my current schedule, to get me to do a task that I don’t intrinsically value for one hour I’d need to by payed ___ €/$/...”
how many big power transitions ended in war
exponential growth numbers (e.g. rule of 72)
how many studies on average replicate in some important fields
roughly how much they value their own time
life expectancy range across all countries
average economic growth of the last decades of Europe, US, China, India
number of billionaires and millionaires in a few countries
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.
Added most of these, but would appreciate suggestions for the following:
how many big power transitions ended in war
roughly how much they value their own time
Cool, really looking forward to add them to my Anki!
Re: How many big power transitions ended in war
I had the work from Graham Allison in mind here, not sure how set in stone it is but I had the impression it is a sufficiently solid rough estimate:
Re: roughly how much they value their own time
I would do a card where people are able to fill in their number, e.g. something like
“Given my current schedule, to get me to do a task that I don’t intrinsically value for one hour I’d need to by payed ___ €/$/...”
And you might put Clearer Thinking’s calculator as a link, so people can calculate it if they don’t already know about this idea: https://programs.clearerthinking.org/what_is_your_time_really_worth_to_you.html
Thanks!