Futurist economist predicts permanent slowdown within one million years

Don't sell your stocks yet, but economist Robin Hanson says we're headed for a permanent economic slowdown in the next one million years.

Hanson discusses the far future in "The Age of Em" from Oxford University Press. He writes:

Unless we greatly misunderstand the nature of physical law, substantial useful innovation and economic growth must come to end "soon," at least on cosmological timescales of billions or more years. For example, if the economic growth rates of the last century were to continue for only a million more years, that would produce growth by a factor of 10 to the power of 3000, which seems physically impossible, at least for value gains of human-like psychologies in a universe such as ours.

Once all available physical matter is converted into very advanced artifacts there seems little room for further rapid growth in physical resources. Even if it becomes possible to create connections to new universes, that probably won't change the available resources left in our universe by much. Our search of the space of physically useful devices, algorithms, etc., should similarly eventually reach greatly diminishing returns. Although an effectively infinite space of possible designs would remain to be searched, the rate at which physically useful improvements are found should become astronomically slower.

Similarly, limits should also be reached, if perhaps a bit later, for plans, devices, algorithms, etc., that are useful for social, artistic, or entertainment purposes. Yes, the extent and detail of virtual realities could increase without limit, but the value that creatures similar to humans could gain from such increased detail should be far more limited.

In the nearer term, Hanson says the next 100 years could see the era-defining rise of emulated brains. He recommends investing in a financial portfolio of assets likely to retain value, such as stocks, real estate, and intellectual property.