your post seems to be arguing that current trends don’t suggest a coming explosion, but not that they establish a super-high burden of proof for expecting one.
I’m not sure what you mean by a “super-high burden of proof”, but I think the reasons provided in that post represent fairly strong evidence against expecting a future growth explosion, and, if you will, a fairly high burden of proof against it. :)
Specifically, I think the points about the likely imminent end of Moore’s law (in the section “Moore’s law is coming to an end”) and the related point that hardware has already slowed down for years in a pattern that’s consistent with an imminent (further) slowdown (see e.g. the section “The growth of supercomputers has been slowing down for years”) count as fairly strong evidence against a future computer-driven growth explosion, beyond the broader economic trends, and I think they count as being among the main reasons to be skeptical.
Perhaps I can ask: What are your reasons for believing that we’ll see an unprecedented growth explosion in computer hardware in this century, despite the observed slowdown in Moore’s law and related metrics? Or do you think a future growth explosion would generally not require a hardware explosion?
(I suspect my main disagreement with your takes on likely future scenarios comes down to expectations about hardware. I don’t see why we should expect a hardware explosion, and I’m keen to see a strong case for why we should expect it.)
I’m not sure what you mean by a “super-high burden of proof”, but I think the reasons provided in that post represent fairly strong evidence against expecting a future growth explosion, and, if you will, a fairly high burden of proof against it. :)
Specifically, I think the points about the likely imminent end of Moore’s law (in the section “Moore’s law is coming to an end”) and the related point that hardware has already slowed down for years in a pattern that’s consistent with an imminent (further) slowdown (see e.g. the section “The growth of supercomputers has been slowing down for years”) count as fairly strong evidence against a future computer-driven growth explosion, beyond the broader economic trends, and I think they count as being among the main reasons to be skeptical.
Perhaps I can ask: What are your reasons for believing that we’ll see an unprecedented growth explosion in computer hardware in this century, despite the observed slowdown in Moore’s law and related metrics? Or do you think a future growth explosion would generally not require a hardware explosion?
(I suspect my main disagreement with your takes on likely future scenarios comes down to expectations about hardware. I don’t see why we should expect a hardware explosion, and I’m keen to see a strong case for why we should expect it.)