Dwarkesh Patel

There was always technological change happening.

I'm in the middle of reading an amazing book about when you look at the paintings of Raphael and the few paintings we have by Michelangelo, the colors look like they're really glowing.

like like gemstones uh how did that happen when you compare them to paintings from just 100 years earlier where somehow the colors are flatter i'm not talking about the anatomy being more realistic that's separate but the colors are flatter and the answer is there was a sequence of revolutionary adaptations and how to process oil and how to process colors and how to mix them together and then

those were used to create fake gemstones.

And there was a major industrial leap forward in the fake gemstone industry.

And then people who were making picture frames realized they could use the same techniques from the fake gemstones to make fake gold by painting yellow over the surface of tinfoil.

And then those were used by artists who were like, wait, I want to make things that look like they glow like fake gemstones.

So that there were 11 major technical revolutions over the course of 120 years that led to those colors changing.

It clearly seems like the pace was... Yeah, I mean, it's hard to figure out, like, when are we lying and when are we right where we say the pace picked up?

And one thing that makes the pace pick up in modern day is simply the population grew and grew and grew and is now much, much larger.

And the majority of people who ever lived in the entire history of since humans have been humans and not hominids have lived in the last 200 years because the population became massive.

How did the population become massive?

Our agriculture and our hygiene changed.

Right.

Enabled it.

Had our agriculture and our hygiene improve.

Half of that is continuing to, on the artisanal level, to invent new things in the same way that the artists invented better colors, agricultural workers invented better technologies, and agriculture was constantly improving.

In the other, though, you're correct that with the arrival of the systematic scientific method in just after 1600, there is a deliberate societal desire to create intentional anthropogenic progress.

So I'll zoom in on the arguments made in 1600.

Then I'll zoom out and unpack them.