The most-upvoted rebuttal of the r/accelerate activity stats was a pseudo-sophisticated handwave, so I made the math harder to ignore
This is a response to the most-upvoted comments under the previous infographic.
They tried to explain away r/accelerate’s activity compared to r/singularity (the sub it was made as an alternative to) with the claim that “Early adopters are generally more engaged/passionate” That may be true up to a point, but it does not explain this gap:
- r/accelerate: 68K subscribers, 5.8K weekly contributions
- r/singularity: 3.3M subscribers, 14K weekly contributions
To blame the difference entirely on community size, you have to believe that:
- the first 68,000 people generate 5,800 contributions per week
- the next 3.23 million people add only 8,200 more
That is an absurd flattening curve, not an ordinary drop in engagement as a subreddit grows.
What frustrated me was seeing this become the most-upvoted response under the post, as though vague references to “data science” had debunked the original infographic.
They had not.
r/accelerate covers the same subject as r/singularity, but without allowing decels, luddites and anti-AI ideologues to dominate every discussion. Its growth and participation should not be dismissed by an explanation that falls apart once you examine it.
That is why I made this follow-up graphic.
Excluding decels didn’t kill discussion. It made discussion possible.