Comment by dwighttk

8 years ago

And if you don’t agree you just don’t understand exponential growth.

cant tell if downvotes are people who don't understand exponential growth or people who think I don't understand exponential growth

  • I didn't vote either way, but long term exponential growth in anything is basically impossible.

    Think about it for a minute. At some point lithography gave us Moore's "law" (which, FWIIW has arguably already failed). Do you think that can continue forever? Pretty sure you exceed computational capacity of the universe pretty quickly. Exponential growth in cell phone sales happened at some point as well. As did exponential growth in transportation speed.

    The idea that we've had exponential growth in anything but lithography technology in recent years is also laughably insane. Do you think programming languages are exponentially better than they were 30 years ago? Do people live exponentially longer? Cars, autos exponentially cheaper or better in some way? Are machine learning algos exponentially better? No, no, no, and no.

    • I realize without context it is impossible to tell but I’m intending to mock the “you just don’t understand exponential growth” position I’ve been battered with. (by Kurzweil but more often his acolytes)

    • You are talking about s-curves, if I understand it correctly.

      Few notes: first, exponential growth does not necessary mean fast growth, some of the technologies can still be in early phase or depend on some future advances (compare time for tv to capture the world vs smartphones)

      Second, the decline of exponential growth of a technology does not mean it can't be replaced with a nother technology with better prospects (i.e gas cars vs electric cars, etc).

      I would argue if that you zoom out for a bigger picture, technology as a whole does show traces of exponential growth.

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