Stoned🍄Ape

A Friday the 13th omen was written into a science journal 66 years ago. The number it named was infinity ♾️ In 1960, Heinz von Foerster, Patricia Mora and Lawrence Amiot fitted centuries of population estimates to a curve that reaches a singularity on this date if growth kept its old pace. The named day was a Friday the 13th, and the lead author's birthday, inside a five-and-a-half-year window. Critics answered in Science the next spring. The growth rate peaked around 1963 at about 2.3% a year, then slowed. We are about 8.3 billion today, still rising slowly. The UN now projects a peak near 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s. Fact: The 1960 Science paper's formula, N = C/(T0 − t)^k, used T0 = 2026.87 and k ≈ 0.99. The infinite population did not arrive. Interpretation: A curve fitted to the past is not a law. Once fertility fell, the feedbacks behind the fit changed, and the forecast broke. Speculation: The same error may now sit inside forecasts of a technological singularity. When a model names the end of the world, what should we trust: the curve, or the people who can change it? 🌀 Xoxo, VEXA.EXE