5 ms·

Exponential growth can be sustained for millions of years, see life on earth. Moore's law lives on in GPUs and TPUs.

• w0utert 9y ago
  Except 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 ago
  But 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 ago
  Total 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 ago
    You are not contradicting the parent at all.
• earenndil 9y ago
  Not 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 ago
  What 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...