Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

In a message dated 4/11/98 6:00:22 PM, bostrom@ndirect.co.uk wrote:

>Robin says that on his model, one of the necessary
>conditions for an economic singularity is that the population growth
>remains less than the discount factor ~3%. But suppose that
>population growth rate were to rise to, say, 5% for the next 50
>years. If in 20 years we develop superintelligence plus full
>Drexlerian nanotechnology, why should it make any difference whether
>the average couple has 2.1 children or 2.4 children? This doesn't
>look like the sort of thing that could stop the singularity from
>happening. What am I missing?

A Drexlerian singularity will alter discount rates. If people know that their
income will increase by a factor of 100 in the next year, it will take an
enormous interest rate to make them save. I believe Robin's model doesn't
account for the effects of insanely high growth rates
on discount rates.

A Drexlerian singularity looks rather odd in Robin's model. Basically
the savings/productivity function goes almost vertical at the singularity.

Robin: In your model, what happens if savings have increasing returns to scale
all the way out to infinity?
Received on Sun Apr 12 02:28:46 1998