[Discussion] We are reaching the end point of conventional technology. What now?

Moore's law is going to be obsolete by 2036. LLM's increasing computation to develop new capabilities appears to have nearly reached its end point. Vertical farming appears to be a partial replacement for contemporary farming rather than an upgrade over it. Cultured meat never outcompeted normal meat prices, but appears to have become its own luxury meat market. Self driving vehicles appear to be improving linearly rather than exponentially. Same for Robotics. We were hoping for robot nurses by 2030 but it looks like it will be decades more before a humanoid robot can move faster than a human child in an uncontrolled environment.

Everything appears to be moving at the speed of "you will notice the difference in 30 years time." Which is exceptionally slow compared to the pace of the past century.

For all intents and purposes, we appear to be reaching the end point of what is possible in a species scaled up into nation-states.

Where does humanity go from here? It's not like we are technologically in a position to colonize the moon. We at current levels at best have the tech to set up one or two functioning moon bases. Space mining is still generations away.

We are stalling. What is the solution to this problem? It's not just a numbers issue. Research Productivity has been halving every 14 years. We would need to double the number of researchers globally every 14 years to balance it out. A 5% manpower growth rate for researchers globally annually. The world is very obviously not able to keep up with such extreme demands.

The only remaining solution is to increase human intelligence, but even in that the global population is nearing its peak point. In the developed world IQ growth appears to have stalled. Meanwhile in the developing world, IQ appears to be still growing at a rate of 1-3 IQ points per decade. A growth we can expect to stall by the end of the century, based on historical trends in the west.

Currently, the smartest man alive who can add to human knowledge is Terence Tao, and even he is barely able to solve maybe one or two unsolved math problems per decade at his best, then too collaborating with others.

Humanity does not just want intelligent AI, it NEEDS intelligent AI, to continue the growth that humanity has reached the peak of and cannot go any further.

Humanity is once again stuck in competition with one another for resources, until it can figure out a way to continue growing once again. A golden age for the species is coming to an end, unless it figures out a way to revolutionize growth once again.

Industry 4.0 isn't enough. All it did for the developed world was to take it out of the 2008 financial crisis, and that too barely. If the world is to grow any further, it needs something truly world altering. Something that would explode in its reach, and would keep scaling up at that same rate across generations.

So what is that something?

It's not AI. It's not transistor chips. It's not industrial automation, because South Korea is the most heavily automated country in the world, and they are still slowing down. So what is it?

What is the secret to rapid economic growth in the 21st century? Is it to just throw all the technological know how to the developing world? After all, the developing world is all that is growing now. Even so, global growth is still going down.

There is the answer. A problem without a solution. So what's your suggestion?