A pre-abundance precedent about X offers poor framing for thinking about the consequences of discovering a scalable process of producing X. Before abundance, it’s artisanal and quirky and path-dependent, the extremes are rare and dysfunctional, so people don’t worry about it too much. There is security in it looking like an equilibrium, but not being truly settled, so that people can influence things.
Abundance brings maturity, changes the character of the equilibrium. So not foom necessarily, just a promise of maturity at some point, which wouldn’t have been as salient before there is a scalable process of production. And there is an excuse of ignoring the possibility even longer, because of the total lack of historical precedent (of the associated problems).
Are you trying to say that for any X, instead of X-maturity, we should instead expect X-foom until the marginal returns get too low?
A pre-abundance precedent about X offers poor framing for thinking about the consequences of discovering a scalable process of producing X. Before abundance, it’s artisanal and quirky and path-dependent, the extremes are rare and dysfunctional, so people don’t worry about it too much. There is security in it looking like an equilibrium, but not being truly settled, so that people can influence things.
Abundance brings maturity, changes the character of the equilibrium. So not foom necessarily, just a promise of maturity at some point, which wouldn’t have been as salient before there is a scalable process of production. And there is an excuse of ignoring the possibility even longer, because of the total lack of historical precedent (of the associated problems).