X-Message-Number: 18986
From: 
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 12:05:58 EDT
Subject: Optimism (CP)

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>One must also be careful with trend curves. According to a piece written
by G. Harry Stine around 1960 ("Science Fiction is Too Conservative") I
should have acquired an amount of power equal to that of the Sun, sometime
in the 1980s. Stine was quite diligent in his curve fitting. Unfortunately
he fitted exponential curves to curves which, in reality, have turned out
to be S-shaped.

  Oh, they're not just S-shaped. They're actually turning down in some areas. 
Remember, in 1969, men could go to the Moon, had working nuclear rocket 
engines with 250,000-lb thrusts, etc. But this has nothing to do with the 
natural increase of technology, which is indeed exponential. It's just that 
Stine forgot to include the exponential growth of government power and its 
exponential ability to consume resources in his equations. "The fault lies 
not in our technology, Horatio, but in our selves."

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