As a physicist I find this to be a trite argument. You can easily get to 'finite' simply by arguing that the number of digits required to represent a number cannot exceed the number of atoms in the Universe. That's a ridiculously loose bound, but it's still finite.
The practical question is will our lives be recognizable to someone alive today when we do hit a ceiling? The average person 100 years ago could hardly imagine the way we live. If the limits come in some unimaginable future, what good does it do to worry about it now?
There are plenty of problems that we can foresee in the near to medium term. The finitude of the Earth is not yet an issue.
> The average person 100 years ago could hardly imagine the way we live.
Serendipitously, Karel Capek's "R.U.R.", the book which popularised the concepts both of robots and of androids, was first published in 1921, 100 years ago this year.
I dunno. I think people from 100 years ago could likely imagine our current lifestyle just fine.
I mean, some of them are still alive, even, and many were involved in making our current lifestyle.
It might be because you're a physicist that you find the argument tiring! You already understand and accept the underlying assumptions. I think it's meant to be applied when someone really stands their philosophical ground on exponential growth continuing forever.
The practical question is will our lives be recognizable to someone alive today when we do hit a ceiling? The average person 100 years ago could hardly imagine the way we live. If the limits come in some unimaginable future, what good does it do to worry about it now?
There are plenty of problems that we can foresee in the near to medium term. The finitude of the Earth is not yet an issue.