[mjfl]

Imagine a world with 1 trillion people on it. A new Einstein is born every 10 years. Better access to information, the ability to augment their minds with computers makes them 10x smarter than Einstein was. Is it so hard to imagine that the economy would be 50x bigger in that situation?

[randmeerkat]

It’s not just Einstein being born, it’s Einstein being born in a place where the person has access to education, funds, and an environment conducive to a civilization changing breakthrough.

For example Peter Higgs says that what he accomplished would no longer be possible today with how modern academia works: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...

Overall I’m pessimistic that another Einstein is possible in the timeframe that we need them and that they would have the motivations to solve the problems that we need solved.

My cynical view is that realistically another Einstein would probably just get sucked into figuring out how to use big data analytics to get users to click on ads all so they could buy a $2M three bedroom house in the Bay Area.

[yojo]

It is unclear if the Earth’s carrying capacity reaches a trillion, that’s certainly in the high side of forecasts. It does not look like we’re on a trajectory to hit anywhere near that.

I also question the value of genius at driving GDP growth indefinitely. Eventually you run into natural laws that are insurmountable; you can’t genius your way out of entropy.

That said, the GDP wall could well be millennia away and we still have tons of room for growth. Maybe we finally bring cheap fusion online, solve asteroid mining, and terraform anything remotely habitable around us. Or maybe we don’t, investment as a vehicle for income fails, and no one gets to retire in 50 years.

[PopeDotNinja]

I wonder if there’s even remotely enough phosphorus for that many people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_phosphorus

[pm90]

It’s been pretty clear for some time now that inability to inhabit anything besides earth is a huge failure mode for the species. It might possibly be the unifying goal for the species to put aside its petty differences and come together on a grand project.

I gotta say though, the chances seem extremely slim and it’s more likely that climate change would trigger a reduction in the production capacity of humanity triggering political changes that may make it impossible to solve these problems.

[antoineMoPa]

This assumes we can really empower brilliant people all over the globe.

[ravi-delia]

Unless more of the world falls out of economic development, the opposite of the trend we've seen for decades, the Einsteins born in areas that can empower them will increase in number proportionally. In fact, our current accounting of Einsteins is limited to the ones that were empowered, so if trends continue we should expect a larger than proportional increase.

[kiba]

Arguably there's less and less to discover, and revolutionary discoveries become less likely.