>If technology does plateau and did so near where we are now, it would be extremely unlikely, because it would require two unlikely but unrelated events both happening.

Yeah, I don't buy this argument.

First, regarding "technology plateau" being unlikely, that presupposes what it oughta prove [1]. We can discuss it as a counter-assertion to mine, but it can't be part of an argument that proves that we're unlikely to be in a plateau, because that would be circular reasoning.

Second, even if that "technology plateau" is low probability was a legit argument, and even given that "technology plateaus now" is also low probability, and thus their chances of happening together being even lower probability (the multiplication of those two low probabilities) -- that would just prove that "technology plateaus now" is low probability. It wouldn't mean it's impossible, much less that it's not happening.

And my assumption wasn't based on probabilities, but on empirical observations. Winning the lottery is low probability. Your first script getting accepted to be made into a major movie is too. But if you have the lottery ticket in your hands, have verified the winning numbers, and you just got a call from a Hollywood director that want's to buy your script, the fact that those two events occurring together are "low probability" doesn't matter. They are reality.

(Besides, for any two events with low probability that have happened in history, somebody could have made the exact same argument you've made, to "prove" that they didn't happen).

Plotting the outline of inventions on a timescale, and their impact, one can see that there's a big boom in the 18th century, continues to 19th century, peaking in 20th to mid 20th century. For 60+ years we haven't found anything as big as electricity (Maxwell and co), electric light, combustion engine, telephone, television, internet, photography, AD/DA conversion, nuclear power, transistors, DNA, Quantum Mechanics, penicillin, antibiotics, Relativity, flight, plastics, rockets, etc. Even computers and the internet herald back to 30s and 60s respectively. Where are those equivalent impact theories or inventions (as opposed to mere optimizations and marginal improvements to existing theories/inventions) in the last 60 years?

I'm sure you'll find a few. I doubt you'll find 1/10th as many as in, say, 1900-1950.

(High impact items, equivalent to the ones listed above. Not e.g. string theory -- compared to the advent of Relativity or QM it's small incremental peanuts).

[1] Of course, me saying that "technology does plateau" is also an assertion that I haven't proven. So, sure, one could argue in favor or against it. But one can't start from asserting that technology plateau is an "unlikely event" to disprove that technology plateaus, because that would be a circular argument. So at best your argument is not an induction, but just an unproved assertion itself).