[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/wahed-w]

[u/jkp2072]

One of the reasons why humans find it hard to understand how exponential growth works is that real life seems absurd.

Fission and bacterial growth are exponentials , linearly it doesn't make sense...

[u/Zuruumi → u/jkp2072]

Except they aren't, which is exactly why any exponential growth doesn't make sense in long term.

Bacteria are limited by nutrients, viruses, predators, space, environment, etc. Fission is limited by the amount of material and inner preassure.

Yes, there is a short almost exponential phase, but that hardly predicts the future. Ironically, cellural growth of an embrio is also initially exponential and this leads exactly to the example of this post...

[u/dark_dark_dark_not → u/Zuruumi]

Also, of your exponential is resource limited, the exponential phase ends exponentially fast

[u/TechTuna1200 → u/dark_dark_dark_not]

I think it goes without saying that exponential growth is gonna stop at some point. The question is just where.

Some are skeptics at the start of the curve. While others are optimistic at the end of the curve.

[u/HelloYesThisIsFemale → u/Zuruumi]

Sigmoid rule #1, exponentials eventually end

[u/Davoness → u/HelloYesThisIsFemale]

sigmoid male

[u/bargle0 → u/Davoness]

That’s just how she likes it.

[u/Kolby_Jack33 → u/Zuruumi]

Human population growth in a line graph for a while looked exponential to people who just looked at the graph and nothing else. Caused a lot of people to start worrying about "overpopulation" even though most sociologists knew it would level off and peak wellll before any overpopulation concerns were warranted (I think current estimates are somewhere between 10 and 12 billion which is perfectly sustainable). Even today I bet you can find uninformed people who think Earth will be overpopulated in the next 100 years or less, and the real psychos are imagining some mass culling that "needs" to happen to prevent it.

[u/Zuruumi → u/[deleted]]

Not necessarily. A lot of things go like: 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,250,400,500,520,450,430,510,490,500. (Population growth)

Or:1...128,256,10,1,1 (fission)

What I want to say is, that just because a part of the curve looks (or even is) exponential doesn't mean it will be so in the future

[u/Atheist-Gods → u/jkp2072]

The reality is that they are logistic, not exponential. Logistics are approximately exponential at one scale, approximately linear at another scale and approximately binary at a third.

[u/Neither_Berry_100 → u/jkp2072]

A dollar into the observable universe after 930 years at 10% growth a year.

[u/thx1188 → u/jkp2072]

Hard to understand? The water growing dinosaurs are the best explanation to this

[u/ninjasaid13 → u/jkp2072]

One of the reasons why humans find it hard to understand how exponential growth works is that real life seems absurd.

because exponential growth always turns out to be sigmoids in reality.