From: Robin Hanson (hanson@econ.berkeley.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 25 1998 - 13:29:41 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky writes:
>> Mere mention of the work "feedback" is not sufficient to argue for a sudden
>> and sustained acceleration in growth rates, which is what you seem to claim.
>
>I didn't just "mention" it; I talked about the behavior of the sum of the
>series of I'1 = C(O, P, I), I'2 = C(P, O, I + I'1), I'3 = C(P, O, I + I'1 +
>I'2), etc. I don't see any realistic way to get steady progress from this
>model. Flat, yes, jumps, yes, but not a constant derivative.
You just keep repeating your claim about the behavior of the sum, without
elaborating why one thing is more "realistic" than another. If C is concave
in its third argument, you get subexponential growth. If C is convex instead,
you get superexponential growth (which may still be very slow for a long time).
And lots of functions are neither concave nor convex. Why is a strongly
convex C more realistic?
Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
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