2026-10-19 05:54 UTC
That ‘superexponential’ thing annoys me so much. Just the most blatant ‘the line goes up because I really really want it to’, while all their rationalisations for it are just describing exponential behaviour.
We talk about the importance of humanities but it’d be nice if they learnt a bit of maths too.
Replies (1)
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@Soyweiser@awful.systems 2026-10-19 10:44
Not sure if the book also did super exp lines, but the graphs in the singularity is near also have various issues that never got to much deep thought. Always found it funny that the book admits basically (no direct quote): “sure tech follows an S-curve normally, and that looks exponential at first, but if you take the rate of all historic new techs together on a timeline that clearly is exponential”. And I just thought, you cant know if it is, thats the point with the S-curve as well, and it messes people up. (Like Disco Stew from the Simpsons), and your N=1, it might not even be a S-curve, it could just have a sudden ceiling. Despite wanting to believe, I was less convinced.