[Troll_Whisperer]

>What about energy?

>It's true that if you look at most areas of technology they are advancing rapidly. Except energy. Energy has stagnated since the 1950s.

This is demonstrably false. Solar power generation, for example, has been enjoyinging the same kind of Moore's Law exponential price/power over the past 15 years that computer processing power has. This is hardly surprising due to the fact that silicon wafer solar panels often use the same semi-conductor suppliers that computer hardware manufacturers do. Newer thin-film solar panels represent a jump in paradigm that promises even greater price performance.

I could have brought up similar points about the progress of wind-power, bio-fuel, or a number of other fields. Energy has anything but stagnated since the 1950s.

tldr: Stay off the peak oil scaremongering sites. They'll blind you.

[gaius]

OK, but this is not "real" until you have end-to-end solar, as in starting from sand and ending up with installed solar panels, with every step along the way solar-powered, no fossil fuels, not even in the truck to deliver them to the end user. Because what we do have right now is end-to-end fossil. The main use of fossil fuels now should be bootstrapping the next level, not everyday use.

[borism]

Newer thin-film solar panels represent a jump in paradigm

isn't this what Allen said in his critique? scientific achievement doesn't just grow exponentially - there are those "jumps in paradigm" that move us forward, but they're relatively rare and unpredictable.

[Troll_Whisperer]

As Kurzweil pointed out, Allen hadn't even read his book. In it Kurzweil provides copious volumes of data to support his claim that the overall trend is still exponential. As one paradigm starts to run out of steam, there is greater and greater research pressure to find the next. Much as vacuum tubes improved exponentially until nearing their limit upon which transistors and then later ICs took over, the same has been happening with energy.

For the past 400 years human energy consumption per person has been growing at a relatively smooth exponential curve, despite changes from wood-burning to coal to whale oil to petroleum. Even a cursory unbiased study on the subject will show that. Interestingly, for nearly the entire time, malthusian doomsday prophets have enjoyed more popularity than more rigorous analysts.