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What does it mean for a technology to follow Wright's Law?

What does it mean for a technology to follow Wright's Law?

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·April 12, 2025
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gwern

> Most technologies do not follow Wright’s Law – the prices of bicycles, fridges, or coal power plants do not decline exponentially as we produce more of them.

I would bet Roser is wrong here and he can't provide a reference for his claims here. I'd predict that they do decline exponentially, it is just that (1) we have already produced a huge number of them so it's hard to observe the next doubling of cumulative production, and (2) the learning rate exponent is a lot worse than in the more obvious examples like solar panels or deep learning.