1960 Science paper famously predicted doomsday on Nov 13, 2026
voxleone · hn · 2026-11-13
A Hacker News thread revisits the 1960 Science paper "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026," in which von Foerster et al. fitted human population growth to a super-exponential curve and extrapolated infinite population by that exact date. A classic case study in the perils of exponential extrapolation — an ironic read in today's era of AI scaling curves.
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