Low-hanging fruit alone doesn’t explain stagnation, because our ability to pick the fruit has also been improving. To explain stagnation, you have to explain why the former is happening faster than the latter, and why this only started happening in the last ~50 years.
Let me outline a very simple model of technological progress.
Innovations get exponentiably harder. As the lower-hanging fruits get picked, one needs to combine and master more and more previously understood scientific knowledge to get higher. Moreover, fruits higher up in knowledge tree may be intrinsically harder to pick.
As an example, see the ever increasing material complexity and size of particle colliders. I.e. LHC to earlier backyard garage colliders.
Our ability to pick fruit does still increase but that ability may not necessarily increase comparably fast.
Between ~1850-1950 the effective amount of brain power increased substantially. More important than just population growth is probably increased literacy, urbanization, formal education, improved nutrition, improved communication methods to facilliate knowledge etc etc. It might have increased the total effective amount of brain power applied by ~ two orders of magnitude.
By comparison in the period ~1950-2020 the total amount of brain power may have only increased ~a couple times.
One has to be cognizant of the fact that innovations are made by a tiny percentage of highly excentric and talented individuals. This may not always line up with the mean of the population.
We see substantially more collaboration in Science, and a much larger number of scientists, and a greatly increased amount of specialization. The sum of human scientific expertise does not fit comfortably in the skull of an unedited Homo Sapiens, and this capacity difference is increasing over time.
Low-hanging fruit alone doesn’t explain stagnation, because our ability to pick the fruit has also been improving. To explain stagnation, you have to explain why the former is happening faster than the latter, and why this only started happening in the last ~50 years.
See also my post here and this interview.
Let me outline a very simple model of technological progress.
Innovations get exponentiably harder. As the lower-hanging fruits get picked, one needs to combine and master more and more previously understood scientific knowledge to get higher. Moreover, fruits higher up in knowledge tree may be intrinsically harder to pick.
As an example, see the ever increasing material complexity and size of particle colliders. I.e. LHC to earlier backyard garage colliders.
Our ability to pick fruit does still increase but that ability may not necessarily increase comparably fast.
Between ~1850-1950 the effective amount of brain power increased substantially. More important than just population growth is probably increased literacy, urbanization, formal education, improved nutrition, improved communication methods to facilliate knowledge etc etc. It might have increased the total effective amount of brain power applied by ~ two orders of magnitude.
By comparison in the period ~1950-2020 the total amount of brain power may have only increased ~a couple times.
One has to be cognizant of the fact that innovations are made by a tiny percentage of highly excentric and talented individuals. This may not always line up with the mean of the population.
We see substantially more collaboration in Science, and a much larger number of scientists, and a greatly increased amount of specialization. The sum of human scientific expertise does not fit comfortably in the skull of an unedited Homo Sapiens, and this capacity difference is increasing over time.