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The Experience Curve
Risk & Progress| A hub for essays that explore risk, human progress, and your potential. My mission is to educate, inspire, and invest in concepts that promote a better future. Subscriptions are free, paid subscribers gain access to the full archive, including the Pathways of Progress and Realize essay series.
What enables the “evaporation of everything?” What drives the incredible declines in the costs of goods that we have witnessed since the Industrial Revolution? As we have discussed, the accumulation of knowledge underpins all progress, but how exactly does knowledge accumulate? It turns out, there is a certain synergy that exists between innovation and production. It’s not enough for ideas to remain on pen and paper or their digital equipment. We learn best by doing: progress requires production. This phenomenon, known as the experience curve effect, explains how production improves quality and affordability.
Wrights Law > Moore’s Law
In 1965, Gordon Moore forecasted that the cost of transistors on a microchip would halve about once every 18 months. Moore’s Law, as it became known, is a household name. Moore’s Law held up quite well, but in some sense, this may have been a quirk of history. It can be argued that Moore was focused on the wrong variable, confusing why and how…