“To take something potentially analogous, it’s not clear what someone in the 1500s could have done to influence the industrial revolution, even if they had strong reasons to think it would take off.”
At the same time though, if you’re living in 1750 or something and you’re trying to think, “How do I make the industrial revolution go well? How do I make the world better… let’s say in the year 2000, or even after that”, knowing that industrialization is going to be very important… it’s not really clear what you do to make things go different in a foreseeably positive way.
So he’s talking about the start of the Industrial Revolution, not two centuries before.
“To take something potentially analogous, it’s not clear what someone in the 1500s could have done to influence the industrial revolution, even if they had strong reasons to think it would take off.”
Detail—Ben says:
So he’s talking about the start of the Industrial Revolution, not two centuries before.