Thanks for all the thoughts on this point! I don’t think the comparison to currency is fair (the size of today’s economy is a real quantity, not a nominal one), but I agree with William Kiely that the “several economies per atom” point is best understood as an intuition pump rather than an airtight argument. I’m going to put a little thought into whether there might be other ways of communicating how astronomically huge some of these numbers are, and how odd it would be to expect 2% annual growth to take us there and beyond.
One thought: it is possible that there’s some hypothetical virtual world (or other configuration of atoms) with astronomical value compared to today’s economy. But if so, getting to that probably involves some sort of extreme control and understanding of our environments, such as what might be possible with digital people. And I’d expect the path to such a thing to look more like “At some point we figure out how to essentially escape physical constraints and design an optimal state [e.g., via digital people], causing a spike (not necessarily instantaneous, but quite quick) in the size of the economy” than like “We get from here to there at 2% growth per year.”
Thanks for all the thoughts on this point! I don’t think the comparison to currency is fair (the size of today’s economy is a real quantity, not a nominal one), but I agree with William Kiely that the “several economies per atom” point is best understood as an intuition pump rather than an airtight argument. I’m going to put a little thought into whether there might be other ways of communicating how astronomically huge some of these numbers are, and how odd it would be to expect 2% annual growth to take us there and beyond.
One thought: it is possible that there’s some hypothetical virtual world (or other configuration of atoms) with astronomical value compared to today’s economy. But if so, getting to that probably involves some sort of extreme control and understanding of our environments, such as what might be possible with digital people. And I’d expect the path to such a thing to look more like “At some point we figure out how to essentially escape physical constraints and design an optimal state [e.g., via digital people], causing a spike (not necessarily instantaneous, but quite quick) in the size of the economy” than like “We get from here to there at 2% growth per year.”