Knowledge development feeds back on itself. So when you have a little knowledge you get a slow speed of further development, and when you have a lot of knowledge you get a fast speed. The more knowledge we get, the faster we go.
Yes, but that’s only one of many flywheels. If we lost all of our wealth, infrastructure, and institutions, but kept all of our knowledge, growth would slow way down. The only way to fully understand long-term growth is to understand all of these overlapping, interacting flywheels.
I’d add that “our knowledge” is heavily physically embodied in objects. An example is computer code. At some point, somebody wrote every line. Years later, nobody may really know why or how certain parts of the codebase was written, but the software still works.
Likewise, much knowledge is contingent on the physical structure of the world. I have knowledge of my relationship with my colleagues, of my lab’s layout, etc. Take away the specific people and objects and my knowledge is useless.
Why was progress so slow in the past?
Knowledge development feeds back on itself. So when you have a little knowledge you get a slow speed of further development, and when you have a lot of knowledge you get a fast speed. The more knowledge we get, the faster we go.
Yes, but that’s only one of many flywheels. If we lost all of our wealth, infrastructure, and institutions, but kept all of our knowledge, growth would slow way down. The only way to fully understand long-term growth is to understand all of these overlapping, interacting flywheels.
I’d add that “our knowledge” is heavily physically embodied in objects. An example is computer code. At some point, somebody wrote every line. Years later, nobody may really know why or how certain parts of the codebase was written, but the software still works.
Likewise, much knowledge is contingent on the physical structure of the world. I have knowledge of my relationship with my colleagues, of my lab’s layout, etc. Take away the specific people and objects and my knowledge is useless.