[mrwh]

Is the idea that technological improvements are tied to _increasing_ population somehow? What's the mechanism there?

Being only slightly facetious, but if everyone had no more than one child, that leaves a lot more time in which to invent stuff. And true, over time there will be fewer people doing the inventing, but a world with ~a billion people in it still managed to invent flight, and one with billions fewer than today still got to the Moon.

[Nasrudith]

I think it is a lesser driver if anything but can help some. If the current demand can be met then there is less of a need to develop anything new. Why farm if there is an abundance of fruit essentially. But if demand grows there is more reason to try something new instead of waiting for the existing to wear out completely.

Previously population growth was essentially a prerequisite for specialization in order to but well that has been broken for a while now.

Education, research funding, trade, cross pollination of ideas and similiar would have more of an influence but population growty does drive some.

[satyrnein]

I think the idea is that progress (at this point, anyway) is the cross pollination of different ideas, so there is a kind of Metcalf's Law in effect. The more people, the many more combinations of ideas.

[newyankee]

If it was true India and China would've been much more successful ( i know China is now due to the miracle they had) a lot earlier

[imtringued]

They are much more successful than a China or India with only 10 million people.

[htns]

Exponential population growth leads into hyperbolic economic growth.