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Heinz von Foerster argued that humanity's abilities to construct societies, civilizations and technologies do not result in self-inhibition. Rather, societies' success varies directly with population size. Von Foerster found that this model fits some 25 data points from the birth of Jesus to 1958, with only 7% of the variance left
The formula gave 2.7 billion as the 1960 world population and predicted that population growth would become infinite by Friday, November 13, 2026 – von Foerster's 115th birthday anniversary – a prediction that earned it the name "the Doomsday Equation."
The McKendrick–von Foerster equation is a linear first-order partial differential equation encountered in several areas of mathematical biology – for example, demography [1] and cell proliferation modeling; it is applied when age structure is an important feature in the mathematical model. [2]
It was founded on 1 January 1958, by then Professor of Electrical Engineering Heinz von Foerster. He was head of BCL until his retirement in 1975. He was head of BCL until his retirement in 1975. The focus of research at BCL was systems theory and specifically the area of self-organizing systems , bionics , and bio-inspired computing ; that is ...
Heinz von Foerster proposed Redundancy, R = 1 − H/H max, where H is entropy. [21] [22] In essence this states that unused potential communication bandwidth is a measure of self-organization. In the 1970s Stafford Beer considered this condition as necessary for autonomy which identifies self-organization in persisting and living systems.
The self-indication assumption doomsday argument rebuttal is an objection to the doomsday argument (that there is only a 5% chance of more than twenty times the historic number of humans ever being born) by arguing that the chance of being born is not one, but is an increasing function of the number of people who will be born.
Foerster, Heinz von. Observing Systems. Seaside, California: Intersystems Publications, 1981. OCLC 263576422; Foerster, Heinz von, Albert Müller, and Karl H. Müller. The Beginning of Heaven and Earth Has No Name: Seven Days with Second-Order Cybernetics. Translated by Elinor Rooks and Michael Kasenbacher. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.
In 1960 Heinz von Foerster published an article in Science showing that if demographic trends of the past two millennia continue, world population would go to infinity in approximately 2026. Although contested in the 1960s, the equation proved remarkably accurate, indeed even conservative, until the early 1990s. [ 15 ]