In 1960 the journal Science published a paper by Heinz von Foerster and colleagues that extrapolated population growth and set the date of collapse: Friday 13 November 2026. That is today. Writing in German for hpd, Paul Adrich explains why the forecast failed. Growth slowed from the early 1990s, and the world's eight billion people are expected to level off near ten billion. The authors mistook a one-off boom, driven by falling child mortality, for a law of nature.

Adrich's lesson is not to laugh off every warning, but to test it. Straight-line projections are tempting in debates about climate and AI too, and both panic and fatalism can fulfil themselves. A good Friday the 13th exercise in thinking about predictions.

Source: Paul Adrich, hpd (German) (2026-11-11)
https://hpd.de/index.php/artikel/doomsday-findet-nicht-statt-24556

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.