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The pg response is particularly interesting because he's spent a good chunk of his life thinking about the startling implications of trends on exponential curve
by btilly 7y ago
The pg response is particularly interesting because he's spent a good chunk of his life thinking about the startling implications of trends on exponential curves. (With particular reference to helping startups get on and maintain exponential curves, and making a lot of money as a result.)
- appleiigs 7y agoHas pg spent a good chunk of his life studying viruses and infection rates? No. If he had, he'd note that exponential curves don't fit the real world... if it did why is China only at 80K after almost 2 months?
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- lern_too_spel 7y agoChina has taken drastic measures that the US is unwilling to take.
- Barrin92 7y agopg should have taken the time to study some biology and he would have seen that virtually all exponential looking functions in complex ecosystems are s-curves, or else we would have likely been wiped off the planet by now. PG and people in tech seem to be afflicted by what could be called "singularity brain disease", which routinely mistakes everything that goes up to the right on a graph too quickly for an exponential function. See also the club of rome paranoia about human overpopulation, the mentioned robot apocalypse, or whatever else is the fad of the year.
- btilly 7y agoPerhaps you should study some biology. What turns exponential functions into s-curves is a feedback loop. In the case of epidemics in the wild, the feedback loop is that people who have already had the disease tend not to get it again. Which means that, without external effort, a disease remains exponential until it has burned through a significant fraction of victims where it has already been. A disease that has affected thousands in regions with hundreds of millions should not yet be slowed by that kind of consideration.
- Barrin92 7y agothere are other exogenous factors like changes in temperature diminishing the spread of respiratory diseases over the summer, and avoidance of sick individuals happens quite naturally without having to stir up panic about exponential graphs on twitter. According to the WHO this virus, unlike influenza, does not seem to spread rapidly among asymptomatic people so the net effects of causing drama on twitter are probably going to create unnecessary anxiety in the population that will lead to mask hoarding or other unecessary behaviour.
- btilly 7y agoChina was on an exponential curve until they took public health measures at which they went on a different curve. And this is familiar territory. pg is very aware that "your current exponential curve is adjustable". So any country whose curve goes the wrong way needs to adjust their actions, and the sooner the better. But once behavior is adjusted, that projection stops being accurate. So his comment is that, based on current infection curves, the level of effort outside of China is way too little for the threat. Turning that around, if dramatic effort causes the disease to have a halving time of 3 weeks, then every day we wait to implement those changes is a week longer that we will have to live under a dramatic regime to limit total casualties.