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A comment on The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook?. Parent comment

Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by alanh on Thursday November 18, 2010 @02:15PM (#1918906)
If the number active (alive) Facebook users grows at a sufficient exponential rate, e.g. each new generation has at least 2× the users of the last generation, then the answer would be “never”

Edit: Um, humans do grow in population in an exponential pattern… how long do you think the population has been at 6.8 billion?

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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by tmorgan on Thursday November 18, 2010 @04:15PM (#1919282)
Well, populations are typically modeled as a sigmoid function, they only appear to be growing exponentially. I think it's fair to assume total population will stabilise whilst we are still resource limited to Earth.
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by jules on Thursday November 18, 2010 @05:17PM (#1919507)
It seems that we are at the inflection point of the sigmoid:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/World-Pop...

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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by j_baker on Thursday November 18, 2010 @08:02PM (#1919998)
The last estimate I seem to find on the subject said that the population should level off at 10 billion in 2200. Granted, this is from 1999: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/six...
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by shasta on Thursday November 18, 2010 @05:59PM (#1919660)
Reassuring to see that the UN doesn't predict any large discontinuities in that graph
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by Psyonic on Thursday November 18, 2010 @02:48PM (#1919005)
Last I checked humans are limited in supply. AI users though...
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by eru on Thursday November 18, 2010 @05:00PM (#1919443)
Currently there are many zero AIs, as far as we know.
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by ImperatorLunae on Thursday November 18, 2010 @04:37PM (#1919360)
Humans do not necessarily reproduce exponentially. Hans Rosling's TED talks feature, as a central theme, that the population can stabilize at 9 billion with the right initiatives and social changes. http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_g...
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Re:The rise of the dead: How many ghosts are on Facebook? by alanh on Thursday November 18, 2010 @04:47PM (#1919395)
My post starts with "If". (I imagine the possibility of a singularity and the consequent interstellar expansions and/or virtual entities.)
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