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Comment by darkerside | Hacker News Reader

There an upper bound created by the limits of possible human time spent. You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

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You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

Population growth, yes, but technology? Why can't technology continue to improve in terms of efficiency and environmental impact as well as productivity?

There are physical limits to efficiency. In different technologies were are different distances away, but there are always limits that we cannot exceed. We can get creative about not needing to get close to the limit, but the limits are always there stopping us.

We might migrate to other planets. Also time and space are relative.

I doubt it. Maybe mars and venus, but even there getting self sustaining is going to be hard. There is no reason to suspect that we will ever be able to get anywhere else with less than a generation ship, and no reason to believe we can make one them them that will work long enough...

Edit: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21207011 which coincidentally happened to be in new articles when I checked...

Technology is the primary lever of pushing limits back.

Productivity growth is in that equation, which is also in admittedly short supply. Probably the most underrated essential factor of growth in a mature economy.

I don't doubt there is, but we really don't know when we'll hit the limits technology allows for. Present and future technological plateaus may just be temporary.

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