Dwarkesh

And you discuss the complexity of the Roman economy, the fact that millions of tons of

wheat and other products have to make their way to Rome and the trade networks and everything.

And then I think you basically say, like, look, they were experiencing productivity gains.

The wages were increasing.

Population was increasing.

But they were still not at the level at which it was plausible that, say, for these climactic and biological factors, they might have had an industrial revolution.

And so I'm curious why you think, like, basically, yeah, paint a picture for me of what, like, the Roman world looked like as of this happy period and why that was still, like, counterfactually not, you know, couldn't have just saved us a thousand years of history if they were on the right track.

If you're like Augustus or some other Roman emperor and you're like, look, we've got this big economy, but I want to see productivity gains and you want to make it happen somehow.

What is it exactly?

Is there something you like from it?

top-down perspective you could have done.

I mean, in Britain, you know, the government subsidizes the royal arts and so forth.

That's what I was going to say.

Yeah, the longitude prize and so forth.

That's right.

Yeah.

So a previous guest of mine, Nat Friedman,

I don't know if you saw this, but he launched this challenge called the Vesuvius Challenge.

Oh, yeah.

This library of Herculaneum in 79 AD was buried under the ashes of Mount Vesuvius when the volcano erupted.