# Low Hanging fruit theory of stagnation # Low Hanging fruit theory of stagnation The low hanging fruit theory of stagnation is based on the assertion that there is a finite amount of knowledge to be gleaned about the universe and we have already gleaned that knowledge that can be acquired without massive teams, expensive equipment, or spending your life studying to get to the knowledge frontier ([[Ars Longa Vita Brevis - SSC]].) In this situation, knowledge is like a tree of fruit or a mine of gold. The evidence for this theory is straightforward. Benjamin Franklin could discover physics phenomena by flying a kite in a thunderstorm. Now a team of hundreds needs a billion dollar particle accelerator.Examples like this are legion. [[Physical experiments are expensive]]. [[Is Science Slowing Down? - SSC]] makes the point that since [[Connections create new knowledge]] , if new knowledge was *not* increasingly hard to find, we would have an immortal god-emperor Eisenhower, if not an immortal god-emperor Marcus Aurelius. The low hanging fruit theory feeds into the [[Human capital theory of stagnation]] through the mechanism that reaching new fruit requires more combinations of specialized skills than before, forcing people to specialize more and form larger teams. These large teams of hyper specialized individuals create inefficiency and cost. This note is much shorter than the descriptions of the [[Human capital theory of stagnation]] and the [[Systemic decay theory of stagnation]] because Low Hanging Fruit is just a simpler explanation. Instead of “there’s this issue on top of this issue on top of this issue” you can just say “well, there’s just less stuff - all of those explanations are [[Epicycles]].” On the one hand, simple explanations are appealing and tend to be right in physics. On the other hand, [[Simple explanations work well in physics but not in people]]. ### Counterarguments To abuse the analogy - there may be a difference between picking fruit and finding new trees and we may have become worse at the latter. S-curves in a discipline are definitely a thing, but it depends on how you define a discipline. So while all the low-hanging fruit in particle physics may have been picked, perhaps there an infinity of other areas we don’t even know about. [[Jason Crawford]] touches on this in [Teasing Apart the S-Curves](https://rootsofprogress.org/teasing-apart-the-s-curves). The [[Human capital theory of stagnation]] could create this situation through extreme specialization if creating new trees requires combinations of skills and the [[Systemic decay theory of stagnation]] could create this situation if the systems that promoted new skill discovery fell apart. Flippantly, people have asserted that knowledge has been tapped out repeatedly throughout history. Each time they were clearly wrong, which raises the question “why is this time different?” Generally, the burden of proof should be on the theory that is asserting “this time is different” and as far as I’ve seen the low-hanging fruit theory doesn’t have a precise answer. ### Related * [[Stagnation]] * [[Structural vs Contingent Causes]] <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Low+Hanging+fruit+theory+of+stagnation) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Low+Hanging+fruit+theory+of+stagnation)