This is a linkpost for a paper I wrote recently, “Endogenous Growth and Excess Variety”, along with a summary.
Two schools in growth theory
Roughly speaking:
In Romer’s (1990) growth model, output per person is interpreted as an economy’s level of “technology”, and the economic growth rate—the growth rate of “real GDP” per person—is proportional to the amount of R&D being done. As Jones (1995) pointed out, populations have grown greatly over the last century, and the proportion of people doing research (and the proportion of GDP spent on research) has grown even more quickly, yet the economic growth rate has not risen. Growth theorists have mainly taken two approaches to reconciling [research] population growth with constant economic growth.
“Semi-endogenous” growth models (introduced by Jones (1995)) posit that, as the technological frontier advances, further advances get more difficult. Growth in the number of researchers, and ultimately (if research is not automated) population growth, is therefore necessary to sustain economic growth.
“Second-wave endogenous” (I’ll write “SWE”) growth models posit instead that technology grows exponentially with a constant or with a growing population. The idea is that process efficiency—the quantity of a given good producible with given labor and/or capital inputs—grows exponentially with constant research effort, as in a first-wave endogenous model; but when population grows, we develop more goods, leaving research effort per good fixed. (We do this, in the model, because each innovator needs a monopoly on his or her invention in order to compensate for the costs of developing it.) Improvements in process efficiency are called “vertical innovations” and increases in good variety are called “horizontal innovations”. Variety is desirable, so the one-off increase in variety produced by an increase to the population size increases real GDP, but it does not increase the growth rate. Likewise exponential population growth raise
I endorse most of Max's recommendations.
Based on my own experience I would definitely recommend being very cautious about RSI, i.e. especially resting carefully, as well as investing in solutions like more ergonomic devices, voice control, reading different resources (e.g. about good posture and different solutions) and visiting physiotherapists and other specicialists. I was largely unable to type or use a computer for 2-3 years due to RSI and I attribute a lot of this not having rested enough early on (despite the fact that I actually did reduce my activity quite dramatically almost immediately upon experiencing symptoms).
Another thing I would note is that although I think it's good to seek help from different experts, I would treat this very critically. I received completely conflicting, but entirely confidently expressed, diagnoses and recommendations from a number of different GPs, physiotherapists and consultant rheumatologists. Some of the literature I read myself also explicitly suggested that tendinopathies tended to be poorly understood by frontline medics, though I'm not in a position to evaluate whether that is the case (or at least true relative to other conditions). Some of the things which were recommended seem to have some evidence suggesting potential for harm (e.g. strengthening exercises, anti-inflammatories and immobilising wrist braces), so there are some grounds for caution.
One of the few things I would recommend that wasn't mentioned in Max's post, so far as I recall, and isn't mentioned in a lot of resources was keeping your hands warm, but I see you mentioned that in your own comment. There also seems to be some evidence that nutrition can be relevant for tendon healing (assuming that your RSI is related to your tendons): see this review. The main things they point to are vitamin C, taurine, vitamin A, glycine, vitamin E
Aand leucine.I'm also happy to talk about this 1-1 if you like.
How did your pain eventually go away, David ?