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Why everyone missed solar's exponential growth

(www.exponentialview.co)
46 points xbmcuser | 2 comments | 21 Nov 24 01:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.414s | source
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tim333 ◴[21 Nov 24 14:27 UTC] No.42204602[source]▶
>Why everyone missed solar’s exponential growth

As someone who follows Kurzweil that seems odd as he predicted it accurately well ahead of time (eg https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/futurist-ray-k... )

For me the more interesting question is why are people in denial about Kurzweil's tech predictions? And this author presumably unaware of them. Even if you personally think the man's a crank, his basic procedure of plotting tech growth on a log scale and doing an extrapolation isn't really rocket science.

And most are still in denial about the singularity/immortality stuff. Prepare for a lot of 'why everyone missed' articles on that in a decade or two. (https://www.wired.com/story/big-interview-ray-kurzweil/)

replies(1): >>42214068 #
1. SAI_Peregrinus ◴[22 Nov 24 14:26 UTC] No.42214068[source]▶
The main issue I have with Kurzweil's predictions is that they assume exponential growth, instead of sigmoid. Exponential growth doesn't really happen in physical processes, eventually they run out of inputs & level off. The hard part of predictions is figuring out where they level off.
replies(1): >>42214715 #
2. tim333 ◴[22 Nov 24 15:43 UTC] No.42214715[source]▶
Fair enough. I find he mostly tries to stick to the exponential bits and avoid things that are about to level out. Like he focuses on compute per dollar that can run a lot and not on Moore's transistors per unit area which is already getting close to atomic limits.

Where I find him to go off the rails a bit is anything that's not an exponential extrapolation, like I've never really seen the nanobots thing.