A lot of this likely comes from the conflation of ‘formalized R&D’ as it is currently practiced, and ‘generally figuring things out’ which goes well beyond formalized R&D and will be turbocharged across the board. Yes, only ~20% of productivity gains look like they come from ‘R&D’ but that’s because we’re only counting formal R&D, and plausibly ignoring compounding effects.
No, the way they model R&D is meant to be quite general, just any dedication of resources toward improving software or hardware. They abstract away details by measuri...
Nevermind. I'm the inaccurate one here. What I said is true of the GATE model, but I now see that your paragraph was about a separate piece of Epoch commentary that was not based on the GATE model. And that separate piece definitely is talking specifically about formal R&D.
It's a separate question whether the Epoch commentary is accurately representing the papers it is citing---and whether your response applies---but I haven't delved into that.