• Overview
• Speed Up Gospel
• Slowdown Gospel
• My Analysis
• Technological Paradigms
• Ecological Carrying Capacity
• Cultural Preferences
• Regulation
• Systemic Bottlenecks
• The Big List
• Speeding Up
• Technology
• Media & Culture
• Sports
• Other
• Slowing Down

Overview

There are interesting contradicting accounts of the future. On the one hand, if you follow people like Ray Kuzweil and Peter Diamandis, you walk away feeling that everything is accelerating to an inevitable singularity. On the other hand, if you read people like Peter Thiel, Tyler Cowen, and Danny Dorling, you see many people making the opposite case. Some groups believe we are accelerating to a utopia where everyone has their material needs met, where work is not necessary, and nearly everything is possible. Others believe we are accelerating to a world with existential risks that could end humanity (nuclear war, environmental collapse) or that end in a nihilistic, materialist world.

So what's the reality?

The goal of this page is to create a nuanced view of both sides of the equation. Focusing on just one side is overly simplistic.

Speed Up Gospel

Slowdown Gospel

My Analysis

I think arguing either that we are 100% accelerating or decelerating is misleading. Rather, the patterns of growth are often cyclical. It's critical to have this nuanced view in order to be able to better predict the future.

Below are some of the key nuances to understand...

Technological Paradigms

Sometimes something accelerates for a long time, but then hits a technological limit. At that point, the only way to continue accelerating is for there to be a new paradigm. We see this right now with Moore's Law. Moore's Law is made up of hundreds of S-Curves. Many of those curves have hit plateaus, but we are still making improvements overall. Simultaneously, we see the emergence of quantum computing. While this new paradigm isn't as good as the transistor paradigm, it's catching up and likely will overtake it.

We also see this S-Curve model with longevity. Life span in developed countries has plateaued. But that doesn't mean that it won't grow in the future. From what I know from following Harvard researcher, David Sinclair, the future of longevity is very, very bright and there are a lot of promising breakthroughs in the pipeline.

Ecological Carrying Capacity

Many things grow within a certain context. For example, a product grows based on the number of people in the world. That's the limit. The carrying capacity of a population of organisms is determined by the number of resources in that environment. Carrying capacity can be increased by technological interventions and increased efficiencies.

For example, as we switch from nonrenewable sources of energy to renewable sources and create more efficient mechanisms of carbon capture, we will see that the planet can hold way more people.

Cultural Preferences

It is fascinating that right now, we live in a culture where adults in developed countries who have the money are choosing not to have enough children to grow the overall population.

We also see ideological "slow" movements that focus on savoring life. This includes things like spas, retreats, meditation, slow cooking, slow science, and so on.

We also see that it is hard for humans to change their fundamental paradigms of how reality works—even if they are confronted with huge amounts of evidence. The following quote captures the sentiment:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. —Max Planck (physicist)

Regulation

We see regulation slowing down growth to avoid harms to the system overall. We also see this with literal speed limit on cars or regulations in the blockchain industry which is a little bit like the wild west. At a more fundamental level, democracies purposely add latency in the form of checks and balances in order to prevent abuse of power.

Systemic Bottlenecks

Systems are made up of parts. Those parts have limits. When we push the speed of the whole system, certain parts of that system get congestion or reach a breaking point.

The Big List