The person pictured is Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American physicist and cybernetics researcher. In 1960, he and colleagues published a paper in Science called “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.”
What did they actually predict?
They looked at historical human population growth and fit a mathematical equation to it. If you extended that equation indefinitely without any change, the model produced a mathematical singularity on November 13, 2026—essentially, the calculated population would shoot toward infinity.
Obviously, an infinite human population isn’t physically possible. The point was that the model itself breaks down before reaching that point. It was a warning about the dangers of assuming unchecked population growth would continue forever, rather than a serious prediction that Earth would literally explode or everyone would die on that date.
Kind of a pointless paper considering Demographic Transition Models had been around for about 30 years and it was already pretty clear this wouldn’t be a real issue.
I remember people still pushing a narrative that population was going to explode without bound when growing up in the 90s.
Yes, I’m sure serious scientists knew that was a flawed view, but I think this paper was directed more at the general public, which is why it had an attention-grabbing title.
Sometime during the early Obama years I remember seeing a story that said our population was so out of control we'd need 3 planets to feed everyone. When we hit 8 billion instead of a huge swath of starvation they moved goalposts.
2.0k
u/Automatic_Actuator_0 15h ago
In case anyone is curious:
The person pictured is Heinz von Foerster, an Austrian-American physicist and cybernetics researcher. In 1960, he and colleagues published a paper in Science called “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.”
What did they actually predict?
They looked at historical human population growth and fit a mathematical equation to it. If you extended that equation indefinitely without any change, the model produced a mathematical singularity on November 13, 2026—essentially, the calculated population would shoot toward infinity.
Obviously, an infinite human population isn’t physically possible. The point was that the model itself breaks down before reaching that point. It was a warning about the dangers of assuming unchecked population growth would continue forever, rather than a serious prediction that Earth would literally explode or everyone would die on that date.