>If you look at the rapid acceleration of progress and conclude this way
There's no "rapid acceleration of progress". If anything there's a decline, and even an economic decline.
Take away the financial bubbles based on deregulation and huge explosion of debt, and the last 40 years of "economic progress" are just a mirage filling a huge bubble with air in actual advancement terms - unlike the previous millenia.
Lol, wut?
The world can produce more things cheaper and faster than ever and this is an economic decline? I think you may have missed the other 6 billion people on the planet getting massive improvements in their quality of life.
That’s completely wrong. There was barely any progress in previous millennia. There was even economic Nobel prize for showing why!