Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026 (1960)

Well ...

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Beautifully shows how most predictions that extrapolate from past data are too simplistic. We're approaching peak global population and almost all industrialized nations are more worried about population decline than overpopulation these days. Which is why I'm not worried about superintelligence or data centers in space.

Overpopulation was a big topic in the early 1970's, with competing dire predictions.

If you haven't watched it, Soylent Green with Edward G Robinson and Charlton Heston is an illustration of this (no spoilers please!) It was based on Harry Harrison's novel Make Room, Make Room where population growth was out of control, and human life was worth so little that the police used mechanical scoops to clear rioters from the streets.

And then on the other side, we have Blade Runner where Earth's population is declining because of off-world colonization and replicants are created for labor.

This trending on HN right now might tell us more about our current state of mind than the people in the 60s'.

Well they were not wrong about the sense of doom in the air.

Are we on the cusp of RSI? No one is being public about when RSI get started, and possibly the first few improvements will be very small. It's unclear if it can accelerate or not.

Anyone have any specific papers on RSI recent progress? What specific vectors of improvement it would focus on first?

Approaches infinity has little meaning. Every semimonotonous series of numbers approaches infinity: you can never say that you are a factor 100 off.

Anton Petrov had an episode on this 3 weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_aeB4TPxo

Relevant: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/04/22/1960-the-year-the-sing...

I thought the concept of sigmoid curves modeling population was well known at that point in 1960. Perhaps human exceptionalism meant people thought it wouldn't apply to us.

I seem to recall a recently submitted article about the dangers of extrapolation, related to population trends. Can't find it now. Anyone?

The lead author did some interesting work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_von_Foerster . I enjoyed this paper, it starts serious then goes a bit tongue-in-cheek (at least I interpret it like that). It would interesting to plot data from 1960 to now on their Figure 1 to see where the model diverges.

Year of publishing is 1960:

interesting, that even in 1960 some were thinking about that "there may be a fixed date of end of the world" - usually you would think those thoughts are exclusive to whatever religion, no: This 66 years ago, a time when there was already enough scientific breakthrough to reflect wisely on the idea of "a fixed end date for end of world"

:)

Genuine question: Is the displayed document the original typesetting, or a later reproduction?

Stein's Law: If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.

Apparently today would've also been his 115th birthday! I sometimes wonder what he would have thought about (*gesturing broadly at everything*) all this.

Wrong premise, but otherwise feels about right.

Wow pretty accurate, off by about a month only. It is 17th December.

Somehow I feel Marvel lost an opportunity here

Checking in!

We can only hope.

These scumbags helped to destroy the West through demographic collapse.

Villains of the first order!

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I posted this yesterday. 4 points. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50465582

As a biologist, in year 1 you learn why the world is not overgrown with bacteria that double every 30 mins. Restrictions. From there follow niches, evolution through natural selection on population levels working on existing variation and more slowly on new variation. Evolutionary arms races, etc.

Anyway, the question: "Why is there no Darwinian devil?" Is a nice starter for starting to understand the enormous variation found in our biosphere. Of course, we are as close to a Darwinian devil as any species ever came because we make our own niche by tearing other's down. Resistance is futile. Of course, tearing other's down will also tear our own niche down because they are all connected, at least, our old niche is. Can we build a new one fast enough? Or should we stop tearing our niche down?

I think we'd start to hit problems before the population got to infinity. Half infinity or even half of half of infinity would be a real issue.

Reminds me of the extrapolated predictions based on AI progress everyone is making.

> Under conditions which come close to being paradise—that is, no environmental hazards, unlimited food supply, and no detrimental interaction between elements—the fate of a biological population as a whole is completely determined at all times by reference to the two fundamental properties of an individual element: its fertility and its mortality.

(Emphasis mine)

The unreality of frictionless perfectly spherical cows strikes again...

Also, check out that lovely vintage emdash use!

If the paper was correct, we would have been overwhelmed by microbes or rats long before today, even the 60s. An almost deliberate joke is the choice of the date: it combines the classic unlucky couple with a rainy, odd month and a distant, even year. The next day, month or year break this evil combination although they contain almost the same population.

Well, this explains the Outlook and Claude outage, obviously.

Best way in the world to be wrong is putting a date on some future calamaty.

It's not true guys. Doomsday is 18 December

Marvel should have dropped the movie today; Thanksgiving memes write themselves...

"Thankful I survived Doomsday 2026."

ITT: doomers

> human population will approach infinity if it grows as it has grown in the last two millenia

Narrator: it didn't

Is there like a Rule 34 for doomsdates? )

Where’s the doom?

Does a population of infinity suggest “get off my lawn” no longer works?

Ahh, doomsday. They just keep coming don't they.

Another kind of Doomsday happened instead: the Outlook Outage, blocking companies on a global scale by sending/receiving emails

Electrical engineers doom prophesying about population dynamics? History repeats but not exactly

The day's not over yet!

Markets are up on Doomsday.

"Making accurate predictions is difficult. Especially about the future."

And yet NVIDIA ceo resigns, m$ is d0wn and Claude is having problems, we are still in time

Microsoft 364

it's true, the end is truely here, there is nothing left in existance to port doom to.