A Child's Plaything
Toby Ord
Imagine if we could somehow show the people of the eighteenth century a simple child’s toy from today — say, a speaking doll.
The common folk would marvel at its ability to speak its few stock phrases. The scientists and engineers would marvel even more at its innards; at the minutely detailed silicon; at the bewildering complexity soon to be within their grasp.
But the economists would be amazed. For this design — so far beyond the peak of their world’s powers — was not a gift for a King or Queen, but clearly just a child’s toy. And not just that. The very banality of the toy, the artlessness of the sculpting and the way the paint doesn’t even quite line up with the contours of the doll’s face, prove that this is not the toy of a prince — but of poor child. And they would understand that the people of our time are so wealthy, so powerful, that every one of them has access to machines with thousands of parts working in concert, and that it is less effort to build such a wondrous machine than to simply paint a doll’s eyebrows in their right places.
27 March 2023