David’s post implied that we should only consider something to be a FOOM if it follows exponential growth and never sees diminishing returns. In that case, we cannot have a true foom if energy and matter are finite. No matter how intelligent a computer gets, it eventually will slow down and stop increasing capacity because energy and matter both are limiting factors.
I don’t recall seeing the definition of a foom anywhere on this site, but it seems there is some inconstancy in how people use the word.
Hmm, you must be reading David’s remarks differently. David’s observation about sigmoids seemed to be more of an observation that in practice growth curves do eventually slow down and that they generally slow down well before the most optimistic and naive estimates would say so.
David’s post implied that we should only consider something to be a FOOM if it follows exponential growth and never sees diminishing returns. In that case, we cannot have a true foom if energy and matter are finite. No matter how intelligent a computer gets, it eventually will slow down and stop increasing capacity because energy and matter both are limiting factors. I don’t recall seeing the definition of a foom anywhere on this site, but it seems there is some inconstancy in how people use the word.
Hmm, you must be reading David’s remarks differently. David’s observation about sigmoids seemed to be more of an observation that in practice growth curves do eventually slow down and that they generally slow down well before the most optimistic and naive estimates would say so.