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Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

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Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#81

Post by wazoox »

dagw wrote: post #75
wazoox wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far they have always turned out to be spectacularly wrong. So far, there weren't 7 billions humans neither. > Nuclear power, both fission and fusion, is currently in a renaissance Absolutely not. This is GE and AREVA PR, but doesn't reflect the truth. We aren't building enough nuclear plants now to compensate for the future closing of the old ones. The numbers aren't even ramping up fast enough. As time goes by,…

I totally agree that we aren't building enough nuclear power plants, but that is purely for political reasons. The research is still happening and once there is a change in the political climate we'll be able to ramp up nuclear power over a few decades. Also if we look back at the past 1000 (or even just 100) years of human history, we've been pretty good at discovering and harvesting 'magic ponies' of all shapes and…

> we'll be able to ramp up nuclear power over a few decades.

Maybe if thorium comes on the radar.

> we've been pretty good at discovering and harvesting 'magic ponies' of all shapes and sizes.

Well, not that much. By the end of the roman republic, most of what made the industrial revolution possible was available, but it didn't happen until 18 centuries later.

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#82

Post by ericb »

fleitz wrote: post #18
jackowayed wrote: post #3

I've thought about his point that lowering the death rate makes the problem of population growth worse a lot, especially in the context of Africa and the like. "Oh they're starving because they get almost no rain, so that land really shouldn't support anywhere near as many people as are there. Let's give them food aid." 10 years elapse, and say they're getting 7% per year growth thanks to food aid keeping them from s…

"We" won't need to give "them" food aid forever, population growth levels off as wealth increases. Possibly the best thing that could be done for Africa is to end farm subsidies and argicultural tarrifs in the developed world. Here is a great link to the farm subsidies recieved in Manhattan, it's odd how one never notices the wealth of family farms surrounding central park. http://wildgreenyonder.wordpress.com/2007/1…

Possibly the best thing that could be done for humanity in the next hundred years is to solve the lack of empathy for individuals and groups of people we have not met. I think if you had some friends in Africa that would be affected by your solution, you would feel very differently.

I am not picking on you here--I think this is a failing in the way we're wired that some part of us (including me) can consider tragedy at that scale as a possible solution.

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#83

Post by eru »

sesqu wrote: post #79
eru wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but why use it, when you can do a logarithm?

Few people can do logarithms in their heads - and those that can, usually do it using similar tricks. I realize that "doing math in your head" is well on the decline, but it is pretty essential for speedy approximations, which are what many decisions tend to be based on.

Yes. I was more on the line of suggesting taking out your calculator, if you want to know when your investment doubles.

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#84

Post by [deleted] »

skybrian wrote: post #44
ModelCitizen wrote: post #17

A note on the rest of the series: He spends the remaining time outlining some impending Malthusian catastrophe / peak oil scenario. For a counterpoint, check out anything by Julian Simon.

Actually, he doesn't think much of Julian Simon and says why.

[deleted]

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#85

Post by ModelCitizen »

skybrian wrote: post #44
ModelCitizen wrote: post #17

A note on the rest of the series: He spends the remaining time outlining some impending Malthusian catastrophe / peak oil scenario. For a counterpoint, check out anything by Julian Simon.

Actually, he doesn't think much of Julian Simon and says why.

Which is why I offer Simon as a counterpoint.

Simon believed that there is more than simple arithmetic (as Bartlett calls it) when it comes to growth. You have to throw something like technology into the mix, which is difficult to predict.

The Simon-Erlich bet is a good, real-world illustration of their disagreements.

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#86

Post by effn »

ericb wrote: post #82
fleitz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We" won't need to give "them" food aid forever, population growth levels off as wealth increases. Possibly the best thing that could be done for Africa is to end farm subsidies and argicultural tarrifs in the developed world. Here is a great link to the farm subsidies recieved in Manhattan, it's odd how one never notices the wealth of family farms surrounding central park. http://wildgreenyonder.wordpress.com/2007/1…

Possibly the best thing that could be done for humanity in the next hundred years is to solve the lack of empathy for individuals and groups of people we have not met . I think if you had some friends in Africa that would be affected by your solution, you would feel very differently. I am not picking on you here--I think this is a failing in the way we're wired that some part of us (including me) can consider tragedy…

Do you seriously believe that subsidies of western farmers is helping people in Africa? What is the "tragedy as a possible solution" you are speaking of?

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#87

Post by mhartl »

rsheridan6 wrote: post #77
mhartl wrote: post #37

Before people freak out about exponential growth, please consider John McCarthy's Slogan. (Yes, that John McCarthy; Lisp isn't the only thing he's done.) He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/index.html Based on reactions to this video (among other things), I'd add Hartl's Counterpoint: Just because you're willing to do arithmetic doesn't mean you're n…

In the context of population growth, the logistic function means that something has made it stop. He dealt with this is the second video - he says we'll get zero population growth one way or another, because exponential growth forever is impossible. Around minute 7 of the second video (did you actually watch it?) he points out that many of the checks on population growth are generally considered bad things - war, fam…

did you actually watch it?

Yes.

many of the checks on population growth are generally considered bad things - war, famine, disease

The countries with the lowest population growth (e.g., Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Japan) are among those with the least war, famine, and disease. Something else is going on.

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#88

Post by Daniel_Newby »

wazoox wrote: post #74
Daniel_Newby wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At some point, we'll have to do with /less/." This part of the long business cycle always produces a lot of arguments for austerity. So far they have always turned out to be spectacularly wrong. "Nuclear fission is currently on decline." Nuclear power, both fission and fusion, is currently in a renaissance and we appear to be laying the groundwork for the next stage of advances: gas- and metal-cooled reactors, super…

> So far they have always turned out to be spectacularly wrong. So far, there weren't 7 billions humans neither. > Nuclear power, both fission and fusion, is currently in a renaissance Absolutely not. This is GE and AREVA PR, but doesn't reflect the truth. We aren't building enough nuclear plants now to compensate for the future closing of the old ones. The numbers aren't even ramping up fast enough. As time goes by,…

"We aren't building enough nuclear plants now to compensate for the future closing of the old ones."

Which is an intentional choice, arising from a combination of ennui, defeatism, and witch hunting. Those political movements seem to have run their course.

"Fusion research is blooming, but it didn't make much progress, particularly compared to the huge effort (see ITER)."

Most of the tokamak megaprojects were done to give academics a safe way to demonstrate activity. ITER is the plasma physics version of string theory. In my opinion, the real progress has come from small quiet projects involving vacuum physics and power electronics.

"'Space ore' simply can't happen unless you find the way to harvest the power from some magic ponies yet to discover."

It's metal, not ore. If you can lay your hands on asteroidal metal, you can turn it into useful articles with a blacksmith's forge. Fancy alloys and precious metals are more effort, but often easier than dealing with crappy terrestrial ores.

The magic pony is to cancel the failed Shuttle, yet another stagnant megaproject. And avoid replacing it with other doomed megaprojects. The barrier to space activity is heavy lift capability to get there at all. Once you can get above the atmosphere cheaply enough, the solar system is your oyster. (It's like Fed Ex. The capital investment to build Fed Ex is ludicrous, but once somebody has the balls to do it, entire industries rise up from nowhere to exploit it.)

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#89

Post by JBiserkov »

chrischen2 wrote: post #39

Well one benefit of increasing population is that we increase the chances of geniuses being born, and increase the diversity of the population.

There's an old joke that says:

  The intellect of the planet is a constant, the population is increasing.
genius != intelligence, but still :)

Re: Our greatest shortcoming is our inability to understand the exponential function

#90

Post by thangalin »

pmiller2 wrote: post #27

People don't understand exponentials very well because human perception is scaled logarithmically. For example, both the apparent magnitude scale for celestial objects and the loudness scale for sounds (measured in decibels) are logarithmic.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Star-sizes.jpg - Scale of celestial objects.
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