Isn’t the point more “it’s easy to fall into the trap to believe that predicting when the sigmoid is going to bend is possible and the right heuristic is to instead extrapolate locally”?
That aside, I’d question whether applying the Lindy effect in particular to something that’s not really a life expectancy but more a growth rate is credible… or perhaps a bit circular since it “assumes away” the ceiling.
Predicting when the sigmoid bends is difficult and predicting how long until it unbends is equally difficult.
The simpler assumption is that over enough time, the S functions stack together for long enough that working backwards from exponential is a better predictor of reality.
These stacked S curves have continually been true with most technology.
The author of that post is a prominent Bay Area "rationalist," who have had a quasi-theistic relationship with the concept of all-powerful AIs for a couple decades now.
All of the point of that article is that most people that think something is a sigmoid think it'll bend just as they are publishing their analysis. And the article says, don't do that, assume it'll be related to how long we've been on the "goes up" part.
I dunno. They've been saying this for decades, including in a very well read Harry Potter fanfic, and I'd always dismissed them as kooks, but maybe they're right in the end.
Saying the same thing for decades, when things progress over those decades along the general trend line that you were worried it would, is decent evidence of a prescient prediction. Climate scientists also seemed pretty kooky in the 80s when they sketched out their trendlines, but now their concerns are all over the headlines as reality caught up, and the same is becoming true of the AI safety people.
> https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-sigmoids-wont-save-you
The conclusion of this article seems to be "you should give ai the benefit of the doubt against all reason". Barf