[ExI] Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit

[Anders Sandberg]

On 18/06/2012 22:37, Giovanni Santostasi wrote:
> The article is good, even if does silly mistakes in terminology. 

I am not convinced. Look at this passage:

> Why did the projected explosion of technological growth everyone was 
> expecting—the moon bases, the robot factories—fail to happen? There 
> are two possibilities. Either our expectations about the pace of 
> technological change were unrealistic (in which case, we need to know 
> why so many intelligent people believed they were not) or our 
> expectations were not unrealistic (in which case, we need to know what 
> happened to derail so many credible ideas and prospects).

It completely misses the possibility that past expectations about the 
*direction* of technology was wrong. The old future was all 
macrotechnology: spacecraft, fusion, flying cars and soaring buildings. 
But what we got was microtechnology: biotech, computers, Internet, 
nanotechnology. This is important and powerful stuff, yet it is 
dismissed as mere simulation.

I think the article meshes nicely with Tyle Cowen's "The Great 
Stagnation" and Thiel's worries. I do think we have a problem. But I 
don't think the diagnosis is right. The reason we don't have antigravity 
shoes is not that we academics spend too much time writing grant 
proposals. It is because we have no clue how to do it. Bureaucracy and 
risk aversion *are* problems, but they are hardly due to capitalism - 
just check the distribution of uncertainty avoidance as per Hofstede in 
the world and crosscorrelate with economic freedom.

I think Tyler Cowen gets closer to the point. We have picked all the 
low-hanging fruit, found ways of expanding our world that doesn't 
necessarily equate to economic growth or progress, and indeed set up 
incentive structures that do not promote radical or long-term change. 
But the later problem is in many ways local to the developed countries: 
there is a real chance that the BRICs will just ignore it (and make 
their own interesting mistakes).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University