forum for week of 24 October: Inference to the Best Explanation

I wonder about the very premise of the earth's population growing indefinitely. Has this always been the case? Until agricultural inventions had been introduced, it seems that in history, the earth's population has experienced stabilization and then different rates of acceleration. The Inference to the Best Explanation would indeed say that the earth's population will continue to grow indefinitely based on the graph we saw in class but what would it say based on a graph that actually pre-dated 1800? From that the IBE could be that the earth's population simply experiences fluctuations. I too am finding the concept of IBE a bit tricky...