How Big a Deal Was the Industrial Revolution? - lukemuehlhauser.com  ## Metadata - Author: **lukemuehlhauser.com** - Full Title: How Big a Deal Was the Industrial Revolution? - Category: #articles - URL: https://lukemuehlhauser.com/industrial-revolution/ ## Highlights - The gains in human well-being observed since the industrial revolution are vastly larger than pre-industrial fluctuations in human well-being. No other transitions in recorded history, either positive or negative, are remotely similar in magnitude. When thinking about which future developments might be most important, we should not forget that the size of their likely impact may differ by orders of magnitude. For example, a universal cure for cancer would bring a huge benefit to human well-being, but its expected impact seems likely to be vastly smaller than (for example) the likely impact of AI systems capable of automating most human labor, or the counterfactual benefit of preventing large-scale nuclear war. - Tags: #innovation - After some searching, the long-run measures of human well-being I settled on for this report are: Subjective well-being: no long-run measure available. Physical health: life expectancy at birth. Economic well-being: GDP per capita and percent of people living in extreme poverty. Energy capture in kilocalories per person per day. Technological empowerment: Ian Morris’ score for war-making capacity. Political freedom: percent of people living in a democracy. Social well-being: no long-run measure available. - Tags: #effective altruism