4 ms·

And the real fun is when you apply this to humanity itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argumen

by tgb 9y ago

And the real fun is when you apply this to humanity itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

simonh 9y ago
Lots of interesting stuff in there. The problem I have with naive versions of this is that they assume as random people we don't live in a special time in human history, but if you look at human history so far the current era is both extremely short yet also spectacularly atypical in almost every conceivably way. It is also a period of still very rapid change. It's hard to get my head around what that means for estimating future trends or outcomes.
- indigochill 9y ago
  Funny thing with exponential curves, no matter where on the curve you are, everyone behind you seems mind-numbingly slow and everyone ahead seems mind-bogglingly fast.
  - grkvlt 9y ago
    This always confused me - people talk about an exponential explosion, but the rate of change of e^x is e^x, so there is no actual 'knee' in the curve with a huge speedup afterwards...
    - kenbellows 9y ago
      or, if you prefer, every point is a 'knee' in the curve with a huge speedup afterward
      - simonh 9y ago
        Except in reality, when samples are infrequent and there is significant 'noise' in the data, it can be far from clear what shape the graph is. This is usually particularly true in the early stages of the development of a trend. How do you know you're in the early stages? You don't, but it's a big mistake to think that trends which eventually turn out to be exponential must therefore be obviously so at all times.
  - simonh 9y ago
    You're betraying an extremely. And I mean extraordinarily, laughably modernistic world view. We were making accheulian hand axes for well over one million years. Plus. Technological development during that period really didn't look very exponential. How do you measure change when literally nothing new is developed for tens of thousands of generations? If you only look at development since agriculture then yes, but that's less than one percentof the time since the taming of fire.

by tgb 9y ago

And the real fun is when you apply this to humanity itself: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

simonh 9y ago

Lots of interesting stuff in there. The problem I have with naive versions of this is that they assume as random people we don't live in a special time in human history, but if you look at human history so far the current era is both extremely short yet also spectacularly atypical in almost every conceivably way. It is also a period of still very rapid change. It's hard to get my head around what that means for estimating future trends or outcomes.

indigochill 9y ago
Funny thing with exponential curves, no matter where on the curve you are, everyone behind you seems mind-numbingly slow and everyone ahead seems mind-bogglingly fast.
- grkvlt 9y ago
  This always confused me - people talk about an exponential explosion, but the rate of change of e^x is e^x, so there is no actual 'knee' in the curve with a huge speedup afterwards...
  - kenbellows 9y ago
    or, if you prefer, every point is a 'knee' in the curve with a huge speedup afterward
    - simonh 9y ago
      Except in reality, when samples are infrequent and there is significant 'noise' in the data, it can be far from clear what shape the graph is. This is usually particularly true in the early stages of the development of a trend. How do you know you're in the early stages? You don't, but it's a big mistake to think that trends which eventually turn out to be exponential must therefore be obviously so at all times.
- simonh 9y ago
  You're betraying an extremely. And I mean extraordinarily, laughably modernistic world view. We were making accheulian hand axes for well over one million years. Plus. Technological development during that period really didn't look very exponential. How do you measure change when literally nothing new is developed for tens of thousands of generations? If you only look at development since agriculture then yes, but that's less than one percentof the time since the taming of fire.