2 ms·
we had nearly 2 centuries of roughly exponential growth. ended in the 60s but not everyone got the memo
by disconcision 7mo ago
we had nearly 2 centuries of roughly exponential growth. ended in the 60s but not everyone got the memo
- pfdietz 7mo agoIs "roughly exponential growth" being used as a synonym for "growth"? Exponential is used as a scare word. It's not just growth, it's exponential growth! Run and scream in fright! Because if you don't do what I say you must do, we are exponentially doomed. Dooooomed!
- disconcision 7mo agoi can't speak for everyone, but in the above assertion am using 'roughly exponential' to mean that world population between say 1880 and 1960 followed a curve that is, roughly, exponential, in the technical sense. much of the discourse 50 years ago, e.g. the population bomb, was predicated on this observation.
- pfdietz 7mo agoRough is doing heavy lifting there, so much so that I suggest it doesn't have any meaning except to say the population was growing. The growth from 1980 to 1960 certainly was not exponential: the percentage growth per year was all over the place, varying on the same time scale as the doubling time (or even faster). https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8yG0N6HnOy8g/2d3c25c3-b784-4c9c-454f-14d8d304ee00/w=1350 https://ourworldindata.org/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/qLq-8BTgXU8... I suspect it's not a coincidence that the population bomb scare occurred right after the collapse of European colonialism, although teasing out the causation could be interesting.
- Aurornis 7mo agoI've done enough computer science work to be afraid of exponential growth.