文章探讨了科技进步速度与当前技术水平成正比的原因。虽然重大创新越来越难，但现有技术的微小改进所带来的收益会随着技术规模的扩大而增加，形成类似复利效应。例如，节省硅晶圆厂的成本或降低电路功耗，都会随着生产规模和后续技术改进而持续增值。如果技术发展停滞不前，缺乏连续的复合改进，那么它可能无法取得显著进展。因此，技术进步并非线性增长，而是基于现有基础的累积和增益。

💡科技进步与当前技术水平成正比，意味着虽然重大创新日益困难，但现有技术的微小改进所带来的收益会随着技术规模的扩大而增加，形成类似复利效应。

💰任何成本降低、速度提升或质量改进都是在现有基础上实现的。例如，节省硅晶圆厂的成本或降低电路功耗，都会随着生产规模和后续技术改进而持续增值。

📈如果技术发展停滞不前，缺乏连续的复合改进，那么它可能无法取得显著进展。技术进步并非线性增长，而是基于现有基础的累积和增益。

Published on February 27, 2025 3:55 AM GMT

(Mostly taken from my old comment.)

Memes and genes are obvious enough, but why is the rate of technological improvement^[1] proportional to the current technological level (or basically zero)? Don't ideas get harder to find?

Well Big Ideas do get harder to find, but if you make a 1% improvement to the US's steel production, then you get an extra 800,000 tons of steel. That doesn't help you think up new improvements but it does mean that the next 1% improvement will yield 808,000 tons.

Basically, any cost reduction or speedup or quality improvement is on top of what you have. How would you save a silicon foundry $500,000 flat, without saving them more money as they expand? Maybe you could get a one-time government grant or a one-time supplier discount. You have to do a lot of one-time things like this for it to add up to anything significant.

Let's consider a technological improvement that appears to be a linear improvement. Say you improve the voltage regulator within a particular circuit to use 1 microwatt less. There's two reasons this isn't actually so linear. First, the total power consumption reduction is proportional to the number of times that circuit is used across all chips/devices. Second, if someone later finds a 1% power save across all transistors, then your little circuit will probably get that improvement too. It ends up being like a deposit into a savings account with interest.

If your savings account doesn't have interest, then you probably will never be a millionaire from small deposits. If some branch of technology hasn't found a few sequential compounding improvements then it probably won't go anywhere.

1. ^{^}

   You can't use "technology" as a y-axis; pick some more specific measure like "number of nails i can buy with one inflation-adjusted dollar" or "number of int32 multiplies I can do with $1 of compute" or "joules of electricity per $1" or "average life expectancy in country X" or "average travel time between city A and city B" or "how many 2018-coding-jobs can a single software developer do"

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