Money. Interest and return on investment are linear at my current point in money-space.
Vacuum emptiness. Each tiny bit better vacuum we could make had a large increase in usefulness. Now we’ve hit diminishing returns, but there was definitely a historical foom in the usefulness of vacuum.
Physical understanding. One thing just leads to another thing, which leads to another thing… Multiple definitions of capability here, but what I’m thinking of is the fact that there are so many important phenomena that require a quantum-mechanical explanation (all of chemistry), so there are steady returns at least up to standard QM.
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.
Counterexample-thinking-of time.
What has capability that’s super-logarithmic?
Money. Interest and return on investment are linear at my current point in money-space.
Vacuum emptiness. Each tiny bit better vacuum we could make had a large increase in usefulness. Now we’ve hit diminishing returns, but there was definitely a historical foom in the usefulness of vacuum.
Physical understanding. One thing just leads to another thing, which leads to another thing… Multiple definitions of capability here, but what I’m thinking of is the fact that there are so many important phenomena that require a quantum-mechanical explanation (all of chemistry), so there are steady returns at least up to standard QM.
Oh, of course. Lifespan.
Most growth curves are sigmoid. They start off looking like a FOOM and finish with diminishing returns.
Most growth curves of things that grow because they are self-replicating are sigmoid.
“Capability functions” get to do whatever the heck they want, limited only by the whims of the humans (mostly me) I’m basing my estimates on.
If it is a finite universe, there will never be a “foom” (i love our technical lingo)
What does the size of the universe have to do with this?
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.