Comment Re:Until warp drive is invented... (Score 1) 292
Although your theory is neat and clean, the reality is probably different.
When things get too neat and clean, there are diminishing returns. Sciences stagnate under reduced funding, industries consolidate which cause trade secrets proliferate reducing the velocity of discoveries. When the situation is less ordered in the world (say after a war), the pace of discovery during rebuilding is greatly advanced.
Sometimes a tear down of some old stuff to make room for the latest shiny stuff. Thinking of a non-eventful plateau period waiting for some new Einstein to be born is a very sanitized way to think about it. Sometimes it takes a rebirth after a major world war.
Ironically (or perhaps fortunately), this reality isn't likely to be an efficient way to stimulate a renaissance in discoveries (as the net cost of wars generally put the whole thing in the red due to the effects captured in the parable/fallacy of the broken window).
Maybe it means we are often simply a complacent species that perhaps needs to be kicked in butt occasionally...
Or, maybe it just means that comparing the rate at two isolated points in history isn't the best measure of the pace progress.
Then again, excluding folks that like to draw graphs that linear extrapolate to the right in a hockey stick and have never heard of a double logistic function, there might be some other ways for statistical experts to interpret this data...