'The Next Really Big Enormous Thing' by Robin Hanson

From: Marc Geddes (marc_geddes@yahoo.co.nz)
Date: Sat Oct 09 2004 - 01:59:19 MDT


Hanson has written an essay for 'Future Brief' giving
a good sumamry of some economic arguments for a coming
Singularity.

Some interesting points. Hanson points out that each
new economic 'mode' in history resulted in a sudden
increase in the percentage rate of economic growth by
about 150x. (During each mode economic growth is
exponential in absolute terms but is constant in
*percentage* terms)

For instance the beginning of the 'farming' mode, saw
a sudden jump in the economic growth rate by 150x.
Then the beginning of the 'industrial' mode saw
another sudden jump in growth rates by 150x. Since
the onset of the 'industrial' mode, world economic
growth has been constant in percentage terms (about 3%
over the last couple of centuries, or a doubling of
the world economy every 15-20 years).

Hanson equates the next 'mode' with SAI. If he's
right we can actually estimate how fast the world
economy will grow once RPOP is operational. He points
out another 150x increase in economic growth rates at
Singularity would result in the world economy doubling
every 10 days or so!

I have listed the estimated multiplication of wealth
once RPOP is operational

Days after Singularity/Increases in real world wealth

10/2x
20/4x
30/8x
40/16x
50/32x
60/64x
70/128x

Only 70 days after Singularity, the total wealth in
existence in the world is expected to have increased
128 fold!

Link to Hanson article:

http://www.futurebrief.com/robinhanson.asp

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