Hiroob
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2019–2021
1:14:16 · 84K views · Jun 9, 2015
A recording of physicist Albert Bartlett's well-known lecture on the arithmetic of exponential growth, applied to population and energy use. He argues that steady percentage growth in a finite world cannot continue and sneaks up suddenly.
Treated as the classic lecture on why people misjudge exponential growth, and pulled out in threads on compound growth, epidemics, crypto and resource limits.
7 comments from Hacker News
The problem is that we cannot comprehend how fast things can shift. I just came across this video in another thread that I think illustrates the problem very well: this video Basically, we can’t see something growing exponentially for the disaster they it will unleash until the last minute (literally) For instance, if something doubles every hour, we don’t realize there is any problem until the very last moment: one hour before, half the resources were free, and the hour before, 3/4. But two hours later, it’s 0% and we never saw it coming. The point is well illustrated in the talk, I highly recommend it.
> Energy consumption in itself is not a problem My main point on that was that the exponential function grows quickly. If it's all of Sweden today, then it's just a couple of doublings before it's literally everything. If you graph the current use this is not the far away future. I don't have absolute proof, but you cannot hide the kind of electricity use without driving up demand noticeably, so actually people are already today paying more for electricity in order for someone to profiteer from hashing. We're all paying for this. > 1. The energy source is not renewable Or it displaces otherwise-renewable use into non-renewable. Which (at this scale) of course it has. > To sum it up, it's not as bad as the headlines say, and rapidly improving for the better. I disagree on both points. The waste graph (and that's just electricity. Where do you think non-economical mining rigs go?) is growing exponentially. Have you seen this guy talk about our inability to understand the exponential function? this video > Keeping devices powered on/plugged in costs more energy and serves no purpose, It's a problem, yes. But it's not true that it serves no function. "It's easier to keep it plugged in than not" is convenience. I'm not justifying it, but yes actually it does have a purpose. Just like idling a diesel car outside my window while I'm trying to sleep does have a purpose. > Bitcoin's supply is entirely predictable Not really since an unknown amount is lost forever every year due to crashe
A requisite response to those who mention compound growth (interest) and the fallacy of it "never" ending: this video (Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett)
While not specifically about the exponential growth of pandemics I've always liked the lecture "Exponential Growth, Population and Energy" by Dr. Albert Bartlett. this video
Check this one out: this video "Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett"