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by dsymonds 3421 days ago
Your maths seems off. 600 years at, say, 25 years per generation, yields 24 generations. Doubling each generation gives a factor of 2^24, or around 16 million, not 1 billion.
1 comments

He just got to 2^30, which implies a 20 year generation time. Pretty reasonable before the 20th century.
This is hilarious. Given that the world's population is 7 billion today, we started with (7x2) people 600 years ago? LOL. Doesn't check out.
Hilarious indeed. Are you aware that people die? :D
It's not forgetting death that's the error; it's forgetting that people have 2^30 ancestors from 30 generations ago rather than just one. Everyone's family tree grows exponentially, but they all overlap.
There had been roughly 120 billion humanoids living (and dying) so far. Not sure where cut-off line between apes and homo sapiens exactly is though. The growth is +- exponential. So 1 billion doesn't mean much (and yes all overlaps with other trees, so voila we have present). Plus many people died before having kids, tough times it were.
Clearly just a rounding error... ;)