Dwarkesh Patel

I've invented a thing that goes like this.

I'm going to come patent it.

And he would realize that it was workers and workmen and handicraftsmen who were inventing the really useful tools.

He wanted to make this systematic.

And so what we would say is there was always anthropogenic progress.

In 1630, they realize there is anthropogenic progress.

They think there hasn't been.

They think they're beginning.

And that history up until this point has been stagnant.

But now it's going to suddenly be full of invention as for the first time there will be deliberate anthropogenic progress.

Really, we would say there always was and that it's accelerating.

And at this point, we realize it.

and articulate and describe it.

But you've probably seen lots of graphs of history with the hockey stick graph structure, right, where it's sort of flat for a long time and then zwoops up.

And they'll put that zwoop after the invention of the scientific method.

And it depends on what we're graphing whether that zwoop kind of is appropriate.

And it also depends on how much you zoom in or zoom out.

Because it's true, we do, 150 years after Bacon, get to inventions that result in enormous increases in population.

Would we have any way, even if it hadn't been systematized?

Probably a bit later, and we would have a slightly flatter hockey stick.