Thanks for reading the post, and your feedback! I think David Mears did a good job responding in a way aligned with my thinking. I will add a few additional points:
I don’t think we can really know how future population will grow. To name one scenario aligned with exponential growth I cite in my post, Greaves and MacAskill discuss the possibility of space colonization that could lead to expansion possibilities that could stretch on for millions or billions of years:
“As Greaves and MacAskill argue, it is feasible that future beings could colonize the estimated over 250 million habitable planets in the Milky Way, or even the billions of other galaxies accessible to us.[25] If this is the case, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious limit to human expansion until an unavoidable cosmic extinction event.”
Second, it’s possible that even if growth doesn’t exponentially grow, it could at various times have cyclic growth (booms and busts) or exponential decline. As I discuss, in both of these cases where there is not a carrying capacity, the Charlemagne Effect would still hold.
Third, we can’t know how long humanity will continue on. For example, the average mammal species has a “lifespan” of 1 million years. Plus humans are uniquely capable of creating existential catastrophe that could greatly shorten our species lifespan. In these cases, exponential growth may not be unrealistic.
Last, I will point out that you could very well be right that in the future population growth follows a logistic curve, and/or humans continue on for billions of years. But there is some significant probability these conditions don’t hold, just as we can’t be certain that working to mitigate existential risk from AI, pandemics, etc. will prevent human extinction. Thus, within an expected value calculation of long term value, the Charlemagne Effect should still apply as long as there is some chance that the necessary conditions for it would exist.
Hi Greg,
Thanks for reading the post, and your feedback! I think David Mears did a good job responding in a way aligned with my thinking. I will add a few additional points:
I don’t think we can really know how future population will grow. To name one scenario aligned with exponential growth I cite in my post, Greaves and MacAskill discuss the possibility of space colonization that could lead to expansion possibilities that could stretch on for millions or billions of years:
“As Greaves and MacAskill argue, it is feasible that future beings could colonize the estimated over 250 million habitable planets in the Milky Way, or even the billions of other galaxies accessible to us.[25] If this is the case, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious limit to human expansion until an unavoidable cosmic extinction event.”
Second, it’s possible that even if growth doesn’t exponentially grow, it could at various times have cyclic growth (booms and busts) or exponential decline. As I discuss, in both of these cases where there is not a carrying capacity, the Charlemagne Effect would still hold.
Third, we can’t know how long humanity will continue on. For example, the average mammal species has a “lifespan” of 1 million years. Plus humans are uniquely capable of creating existential catastrophe that could greatly shorten our species lifespan. In these cases, exponential growth may not be unrealistic.
Last, I will point out that you could very well be right that in the future population growth follows a logistic curve, and/or humans continue on for billions of years. But there is some significant probability these conditions don’t hold, just as we can’t be certain that working to mitigate existential risk from AI, pandemics, etc. will prevent human extinction. Thus, within an expected value calculation of long term value, the Charlemagne Effect should still apply as long as there is some chance that the necessary conditions for it would exist.