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A comment on How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?. Parent comment

Re:How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? by orra on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @08:05AM (#36599186)
I think it's precisely this. We see exponential population growth of population, so we naturally assume most humans are alive now. What this intuition fails to grasp is quite how long humans have been around: eventually that adds up.
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Re:How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? by planede on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @08:23AM (#36599381)
With a precise exponential the tail wouldn't really add up all that much. The integral to infinity is a finite number.
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Re:How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? by orra on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @09:12AM (#36599968)
True. Maybe the fallacy is seeing exponential(ish) growth now, and pretending it was always exponential. Maybe population was linear(ish), for a very, very, long time.
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Re:How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? by monomers on Wednesday July 05, 2023 @12:46PM (#36603064)
It can't be exponential. If in 1800 there was 1G people, in 1900 2G people and in 2000 6G people, and we fit an exponential curve thought that we get less than 10 people alive in the year 0.
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