Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett
Why Hacker News recommends it
Treated as the classic lecture on why people misjudge exponential growth, and pulled out in threads on compound growth, epidemics, crypto and resource limits.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 5 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2019 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec pink_surfer · 2020-01 · on “The Future Is Grim”
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.
Recommends maerF0x0 · 2019-12 · on “What Is the Most Valuable Thing You Can Learn in One Hour?”
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)
Recommends voxadam · 2020-03 · on “Ask HN: What happens next after a successful lockdown?”
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]
Recommends knorker · 2021-06 · on “It's time for us in the tech world to speak out about cryptocurrency”
> 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
Recommends belfalas · 2021-12 · on “Ask HN: Long-form info-dense videos on YouTube you would recommend to anyone?”
Check this one out: [this video] "Exponential Growth Arithmetic, Population and Energy, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett"
Cites harshreality · 2019-05 · on “Advertising as a source of dissatisfaction: cross-national evidence”
Have you considered that maybe GP has a better intuition about the systems effects of advertising, that you haven't fully considered? - Advertising is a major driver of material consumption, much of which is unnecessary. - Material consumption drives economic growth. There's also intellectual property, and there's the service industry, but even those contribute indirectly to material consumption. - Economic growth and socioeconomic growth are unquestioned foundations of virtually every "civilized" society, but they make no sense. Growth works great... until at some point it doesn't. Obligatory Albert Bartlett video: [this video] Obligatory Eric Weinstein video segment, focusing more on what he ca
Cites jodrellblank · 2021-05 · on “LiveLeak shuts down after 15 years online”
> " People don't understand exponential phenomenon " "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" - Dr Albert Bartlett, part of his talk "Exponential Growth Arithmetic, population and energy" - [this video]