The map of future models

I like that this is a collection of graphs. Visual representation is excellent.

I think you're incorrect about the wave model when you say it doesn't take technological progress into account. I think what it assumes is that technology will either not progress fast enough to halt the downfall, or that the downfall itself will halt or hinder technological progress. After all, tech progress requires an environment with not only the luxury of time but also an abundance of materials. The exhaustion of certain material resources, the loss of trade with producers of certain resources, loss of communication with others in the field slowing the exchange of information, all these things could strangle the meaningful advancement of technology in the crib.

And all this also assumes that we could come up with and implement meaningful solutions in the first place. There is no guarantee of that. If, for instance, the downfall is triggered by a pandemic as is listed as one of the threats, there is no guarantee that we'll be able to manufacture a cure in time. And the loss of a significant portion of humanity would cripple our various industries. And this would cripple research and development by limiting the resources available to them.

Many people seem to forget that the advancement of technology depends on a complex web of supporting industries. Even something like an iphone requires materials and production steps that take place across the entire world, let alone the high tech components for something like an AI running supercomputer. I think the wave model is less a prophecy of doom that fails to take advancement of tech into account and more a prediction of the results of a truly catastrophic event. The idea that, as we struggle towards the singularity, something kneecaps us and we fall. And that this either prevents us from ever reaching that singularity or at least it greatly sets us back in our attempt to reach it.

Of course thats just my interpretation.

A 3% a year economic growth model is actually an exponential growth model as well, it's not linear at all. The exponential growth rate is a lot lower then Moore's law, 1.03^n instead of 2^n, but it's still exponential growth.

When the economy grows every year by 3% that's exponential growth and not linear growth.

Update: How to estimate validity of future's models?

• Refutability – check early predictions of the model. Popper's criteria. The model should allow falsification.
• Completeness – the model should include all known strong historic trends.
• Evidence base – “predict past” + built on large empirical base.
• Support – Who: thinkers and futurists. How: independently
• Is it planning (normative) model? No wishful thinking. Planning must be based on some model of the future.
• Complexity. Too complex = false. Too exact = false.
• Too strong predictions for near future contradict Copernican mediocracy. Because if we randomly chosen from the time when the model works, we should be somewhere in the middle of it. For example, if I predict that nuclear war will happen tomorrow, I bet against the fact that if didn’t happen for 70 years, and it’s a priory probability to happen tomorrow of very small.
• Principle: strongest process wins. We should choose the model that predict most powerful changes. For example nuclear war would have stronger effect on demographic than space exploration.
• Quickest process wins. Technological development predicts large changes in next 20 years and resource's depletion in, say, next 50 years. In this case tech, development is better prediction model than resource analysis.

While most of these models are intuitive to grasp, I noticed I was confused by the spiral. So I followed the link, but the article doesn't seem to explain it at all.
According to the text, we are living in an era of ever accelerating "yangization", whatever that might mean. But the picture instead shows history as a process with two ever-dwindling parameters (cockiness / horse-iness), which are never explained in the text.
Now I'm more confused than when I started.

Excellent. My view is that the future is either human extinction or unpredictable.