5 ms·

I think this is accurate. However, this does not mean that the exponential isn't real, it just isn't sudden. We have been living through continuously accelerati

I think this is accurate. However, this does not mean that the exponential isn't real, it just isn't sudden. We have been living through continuously accelerating technological and economic growth our whole lives, and things really do happen much faster now than they did in the past. For example it took centuries for indoor plumbing to be widely adopted, and less than a decade for smartphones. It took hundreds of thousands of years to get the first billion people (~1800), but the eighth billion happened in eleven years (2011-2022).

javcasas 9mo ago
The initial part of an S-curve looks a lot like an exponential. The final part doesn't. Finding the second and the third antibiotic for non resistant bacteria may be fast and easy, finding another three antibiotics for resistant bacteria decades later is now crazy hard, as bacteria evolved to resist everything that doesn't also kill humans.
- Legend2440 9mo ago
  Eh, sure, we'll hit limits eventually. We appear to be pretty far off from hard limits like thermodynamics though, and the world after we hit those limits could look very science-fiction. For antibiotics specifically, we will probably find other ways to fight bacteria even if we never discover another chemical antibiotic. As one technology S-curves, another technology replaces it.
  - rbanffy 9mo ago
    > As one technology S-curves, another technology replaces it Even if for no other reason than us abandoning a diminishing returns approach looking for other alternatives. We have been kind of at the end of the rope for silicon for quite some time now and we found increasingly heroic ways to protect our investment in silicon based semiconductors, but silicon is not the only option - it’s just the one we have a lot of supply chains already set up.
jiggawatts 9mo ago
My example is lighting technology: Wood fires were the only option for something like a few hundred thousand years. Oil lamps for millennia. Tallow or beeswax candles are modern technology, appearing after the fall of the Roman Empire. Gas lighting was widespread for less than a century. Incandescent lightbulbs for another century, but were starting to get replaced by fluorescent tubes just decades later. Cold cathode fluorescents saw mainstream use for about two decades. LEDs completely displaced almost all previous forms of lighting in less than a decade. I recently read about a new form of lighting developed and commercialised in just a few of years: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737
- sempron64 9mo ago
  This is an excellent example to illustrate an S-curve. There is a certain amount of energy in a photon. It cannot be emitted with less energy. There is 100% efficiency barrier that cannot be surpassed no matter how smart you are.
  - rbanffy 9mo ago
    I think we can stop building new streetlights at the moment we have full daylight illumination on the visible spectrum 24x7 in urban areas. We’ll probably settle for much less and be happy with that. If we need more light, we can deploy more power generators.
  - jiggawatts 9mo ago
    Sure, but the technology lifetimes and adoption rates have compressed exponentially despite that. Efficiency is not the only relevant metric, there's also cost, flexibility, lifetime/durability, CRI, etc... For example, OLEDs are (literally) flexible, but burn out faster then LEDs and are less efficient. As another example, the light sources for televisions have undergone nearly annual changes! They started with CFL backlights, then side-illumination with white LEDs, then blue light with quantum dots, OLED panels, backlights as controllable grids of LEDs, mini-LED, micro-LED, RGB micro-LED, etc... We're up to something like 10K dimming zones with the latest TCL panels and 100K is just around the corner.
Zigurd 9mo ago
Population is a particularly good example: just decades ago it seemed like we were barreling toward an overpopulation crisis. I'm aware that some people think we're beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth long-term. But there seems to be a broad consensus that birth rates are declining everywhere without a food crisis or other immediately visible calamity. Population appears to be on a droopy S curve. The preposterousness of those space data centers and the fact that we don't have a theory of consciousness makes it seem plausible that AI could also not continue to rocket ahead.
- Legend2440 9mo ago
  >The preposterousness of those space data centers and the fact that we don't have a theory of consciousness makes it seem plausible that AI could also not continue to rocket ahead. The rate of datacenter construction in the last few years exceeds Moore's law and is almost certainly unsustainable. 'Only' 2x improvement every 2 years would seem relatively slow compared to what's happened recently. However, I expect AI will continue to advance over the coming decades even once the bubble pops. They're clearly on to something with neural networks.

javcasas 9mo ago

The initial part of an S-curve looks a lot like an exponential. The final part doesn't. Finding the second and the third antibiotic for non resistant bacteria may be fast and easy, finding another three antibiotics for resistant bacteria decades later is now crazy hard, as bacteria evolved to resist everything that doesn't also kill humans.

Legend2440 9mo ago
Eh, sure, we'll hit limits eventually. We appear to be pretty far off from hard limits like thermodynamics though, and the world after we hit those limits could look very science-fiction. For antibiotics specifically, we will probably find other ways to fight bacteria even if we never discover another chemical antibiotic. As one technology S-curves, another technology replaces it.
- rbanffy 9mo ago
  > As one technology S-curves, another technology replaces it Even if for no other reason than us abandoning a diminishing returns approach looking for other alternatives. We have been kind of at the end of the rope for silicon for quite some time now and we found increasingly heroic ways to protect our investment in silicon based semiconductors, but silicon is not the only option - it’s just the one we have a lot of supply chains already set up.

jiggawatts 9mo ago

My example is lighting technology: Wood fires were the only option for something like a few hundred thousand years. Oil lamps for millennia. Tallow or beeswax candles are modern technology, appearing after the fall of the Roman Empire. Gas lighting was widespread for less than a century. Incandescent lightbulbs for another century, but were starting to get replaced by fluorescent tubes just decades later. Cold cathode fluorescents saw mainstream use for about two decades. LEDs completely displaced almost all previous forms of lighting in less than a decade. I recently read about a new form of lighting developed and commercialised in just a few of years: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf3737

sempron64 9mo ago
This is an excellent example to illustrate an S-curve. There is a certain amount of energy in a photon. It cannot be emitted with less energy. There is 100% efficiency barrier that cannot be surpassed no matter how smart you are.
- rbanffy 9mo ago
  I think we can stop building new streetlights at the moment we have full daylight illumination on the visible spectrum 24x7 in urban areas. We’ll probably settle for much less and be happy with that. If we need more light, we can deploy more power generators.
- jiggawatts 9mo ago
  Sure, but the technology lifetimes and adoption rates have compressed exponentially despite that. Efficiency is not the only relevant metric, there's also cost, flexibility, lifetime/durability, CRI, etc... For example, OLEDs are (literally) flexible, but burn out faster then LEDs and are less efficient. As another example, the light sources for televisions have undergone nearly annual changes! They started with CFL backlights, then side-illumination with white LEDs, then blue light with quantum dots, OLED panels, backlights as controllable grids of LEDs, mini-LED, micro-LED, RGB micro-LED, etc... We're up to something like 10K dimming zones with the latest TCL panels and 100K is just around the corner.

Zigurd 9mo ago

Population is a particularly good example: just decades ago it seemed like we were barreling toward an overpopulation crisis. I'm aware that some people think we're beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth long-term. But there seems to be a broad consensus that birth rates are declining everywhere without a food crisis or other immediately visible calamity. Population appears to be on a droopy S curve. The preposterousness of those space data centers and the fact that we don't have a theory of consciousness makes it seem plausible that AI could also not continue to rocket ahead.

Legend2440 9mo ago
>The preposterousness of those space data centers and the fact that we don't have a theory of consciousness makes it seem plausible that AI could also not continue to rocket ahead. The rate of datacenter construction in the last few years exceeds Moore's law and is almost certainly unsustainable. 'Only' 2x improvement every 2 years would seem relatively slow compared to what's happened recently. However, I expect AI will continue to advance over the coming decades even once the bubble pops. They're clearly on to something with neural networks.