[JcP]

Originally Posted by farmergiles

I know that wasn`t your point.

I thought your point about exponential growth was a good one.

What I was trying to say was that other factors will tend to check the exponential nature of growth in the situations like you describe in reality.

For example the classic foxes and rabbits algorithm (see graph below).
The number of rabbits starts out increasing exponentially but is then slowed by the increasing no. of foxes (who increase because of abundant food) until it decreases, starving the foxes who then decrease resulting in a pair of sine like curves.

The checks may be abrupt or more likely cyclical rather than logarithmic (as other people have pointed out in this thread) no- one knows for sure. We seem to have been on a period of exponential growth of rate of increase of technology since the second world war (which ties in with Ted`s argument) but something is going to check this- probably lack of oil.

The fact that we write stuff down for future generations means technology tends to keep increasing on the whole rather than staying static on average like the foxes and rabbits example.

Writing is relatively recent which explains why ancient civilizations like the Egyptians created stuff like batteries but then lost them without building on those technologies. I know the Egyptians had hieroglyphics but not all the knowledge they had was passed on to their immediate successors- hieroglyphics were a limited form of writing and until the Rosetta stone was found we couldn`t translate them. Civilzations like the Egyptians and ancient South Americans worked by monopolizing technology. I don`t think we need to explain their seemingly advanced technologies by means of aliens or other deus ex machina- these technologies were simply lost for a while.

lol, check out the reason I edited my first post.

In order to make it make it clearer, I changed bell-curve to exponential curve.

I agree with you.