4 ms·
There are two forecasts at the end based on exponential growth. The thing to remember about exponential growth is that it is inherently unsustainable. Conside
by earenndil 9y ago
There are two forecasts at the end based on exponential growth. The thing to remember about exponential growth is that it is inherently unsustainable. Consider Moore's law. I once read part of a book from 2005-ish about the singularity whose basic premise was that by ~2050 or so we'd have enough computing power to stuff orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude more power into a now-sized CPU. And this was in a completely serious tone, mind you. Now we see the slow demise of Moore's law over the past 3-5 years and it seems ridiculous that we could have ever believed something like that just a decade ago!
The state of advancement in the fields of human society, technology, and science, at their current rates, is such that around 2500 all of human society will be overturned every week, day, hell, minute or so. Which obviously is nonsensical.
Note also, however, that forecast #2's best-fit line doesn't seem to fit the points very well...
- singularity2001 9y agoExponential growth can be sustained for millions of years, see life on earth. Moore's law lives on in GPUs and TPUs.
- w0utert 9y agoExcept that it doesn't. There are no forms of life on earth that have been growing exponentially for millions of years. Sooner or later growth and expansion always hits its limits and populations stabilize or decrease.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Sacho 9y agoBut this is the problem of exponential growth - you can sustain it without even noticing the detrimental effects, until suddenly you can't. The resource usage of all the doubling time periods until the last one would have used up only 50% of the resources available(this could be millions of years, depending on the exponent), and then suddenly the last one would use up all the resources left. This is repeatedly exemplified in Professor Allen Bartlett's talk "Arithmetic, Population and Energy"(video link at specific point: https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=1337 https://youtu.be/sI1C9DyIi_8?t=1337 transcript: http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_population_energy_transcript_english.html http://www.albartlett.org/presentations/arithmetic_populatio...)
- neel_k 9y agoTotal biomass actually peaked 540 million years ago, at the end of the Proterozoic era. See Figure 2 (on page 88) in Franck et al.: Causes and timing of future biosphere extinctions. Link: https://www.biogeosciences.net/3/85/2006/bg-3-85-2006.pdf https://www.biogeosciences.net/3/85/2006/bg-3-85-2006.pdf
- Jyaif 9y agoYou are not contradicting the parent at all.
- earenndil 9y agoNot really. Moore's law refers to the number of transistors that can fit on a die, and GPUs/TPUs haven't increased that.
- sdhgaiojfsa 9y agoWhat aspect of life on earth has been growing exponentially for millions of years? I'm not clear on what you mean here.
- earenndil 9y ago> see life on earth Notice how life on earth is plateauing...
- scrooched_moose 9y agoThe difference between exponential growth and sigmoidal growth [1] is extremely difficult to tell in the beginning. I tend to believe everything is actually the latter, we just haven't gotten to the point they diverge yet. 1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function
- alkonaut 9y agoI was under the impression that Moore’s law was still alive and well. Obviously game cost can’t sustain exponential growth if the market doesn’t grow exponentially (potential buyers times what they are able/willing to pay).
- earenndil 9y agoNope! Quantum tunneling has made it so that the size of transistors can only shrink so far before electrons start essentially teleporting one from the other. AFAIK we might be able to get to ~3nm lithography (TSMC is shooting for it but beyond by 2020 or 2023, IBM apparently already had 5 or 7nm (forget which) lithography but hasn't published it yet), but beyond that the future is much less clear.
- alkonaut 9y agoSo it already flattened below doubling every 18 months, or we think it will flatten because of barriers at 3-5nm? The trend graph here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law Shows little tendency to flatten. What I assume will happen when nVidia wants 10k stream processors on the same lithography as 5k are today, is that they will have to double the die area and struggle with yield instead? (Assuming the die can grow without communication problems)
- earenndil 9y agoI think it's some of each? There does appear to be a slight plateau towards the end, and the graph does seem to bear some similarity to a sigmoid function[1]. I know it's more theory, though, I saw an article in nature about it a while ago.
- earenndil 9y agoGah, typos! More THAN theory, and 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmoid_function
- jackmott 9y ago>I once read part of a book from 2005-ish about the singularity whose basic premise was that by ~2050 or so we'd have enough computing power to stuff orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude more power into a now-sized CPU. And this was in a completely serious tone, mind you I think by 2050 that will be more or less true compared to 2005 when you consider GPUs/TPUs etc