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A comment on The Rise and Fall of Industrial Research Labs. Parent comment

Re:The Rise and Fall of Industrial Research Labs by aragot on Thursday December 25, 2014 @06:04PM (#8797449)
To explain this acceleration of technology, let's remind the exponential growth of population: There are more people on Earth than dead population since the birth of times

So there's as much potential for science advance in 1 lifespan as since the wake of Humanity.

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Re:The Rise and Fall of Industrial Research Labs by danieltillett on Thursday December 25, 2014 @06:17PM (#8797477)
>To explain this acceleration of technology, let's remind the exponential growth of population: There are more people on Earth than dead population since the birth of times

Actually there have been around 100 billion people born over this history of human kind. Given a bit over 7 billion people are still alive that suggests most people ever born are dead.

As an aside I have heard this suggested as an argument that the probability of death is not one. If only ~93% of all the people born have ever died then you can't be certain that everyone born will die.

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