Why Do Ideas Get Harder to Find?

Leopold Aschenbrenner says ideas get harder to find because each next discovery takes a log-scale jump in cumulative research effort. On a log-log plot the pattern is a straight line, with log cumulative research effort on the horizontal axis and log output on the vertical axis. The first discovery is easy. Later discoveries show up only after total research effort has multiplied again.

Dwarkesh Patel cites the point Patrick Collison and others have made. Compared with 100 years ago, the world has 100 times more researchers, and progress is not happening 100 times faster. Leopold Aschenbrenner says the hundred-times figure is easy to inflate and the increase is probably at least 10 times. A 10-times rise in research effort is, for him, an extremely natural story. The same straight line fits GDP, algorithmic progress, transistors per square inch, and the price of a gigawatt of solar.