Comment by tsimionescu
10 hours ago
While this is very fun as a mathematical exercise, it's completely irrelevant as a real tool for getting a better understanding of unknown processes in the real world.
The law only applies for certain types of processes, and is completely wrong for other types (e.g. a human who has lived 50 years may live 50 more, but one who has lived 100 years will certainly not live 100 more). So the question becomes: what type of process are you looking at? And that turns out to be exactly the question you started with: is there a fundamental limit to this growth curve, or not.
But if you met an alien who said they'd been alive for 100 years you wouldn't assume they're on the verge of dropping dead: you would assume they live longer. It's a rough rule for when you don't have other information, and if you're arguing against it you need to specify what other information you're using to make that argument.
> The law only applies for certain types of processes
Did you even read the post? It’s an estimate in the context where you have zero information on which to base an accurate estimate. The author’s point is that if you’re making a different estimate you need to actually say what information is informing that.
Human lifespan is obviously not a case where we have zero information, so what is your point in bringing that up?
The lifespan argument shows how important it is to have more than zero information.
Yes, it is valuable to have more than zero information.
But often we don't have the information that we wish. Even more often, the information that we have leads us to a story, that severely misleads us. Reminding ourselves of the zero information version of the story, can be an antidote to being mislead that way.
Therefore it is valuable to know how to make the most out of zero information. And if we have information, to think about exactly why it leads to a different conclusion.
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