Historical Continuity of Progress – Page 2

Methodology for discontinuous progress investigation

AI Impacts’ discontinuous progress investigation was conducted according to methodology outlined on this page. Details Contributions to the discontinuous progress investigation were made over at least 2015-2019, by a number of different people, and methods

Historic trends in particle accelerator performance

Published Feb 7 2020 None of particle energy, center-of-mass energy nor Lorentz factor achievable by particle accelerators appears to have undergone a discontinuity of more than ten years of progress at previous rates. Details This

Historic trends in altitude

Published 7 Feb 2020 Altitude of objects attained by man-made means has seen six discontinuities of more than ten years of progress at previous rates since 1783, shown below. Year Height (m) Discontinuity (years) Entity

Cases of Discontinuous Technological Progress

We know of ten events which produced a robust discontinuity in progress equivalent to more than one hundred years at previous rates in some interesting metric. We know of 53 other events which produced smaller

Effect of nuclear weapons on historic trends in explosives

Nuclear weapons constituted a ~7 thousand year discontinuity in relative effectiveness factor (TNT equivalent per kg of explosive). Nuclear weapons do not appear to have clearly represented progress in the cost-effectiveness of explosives, though the