4 ms·

If you were to state what Verhulst’s insights were, you might start a conversation about this.

schoen 6y ago
Apparently they are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_modeling_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_...
Kim_Bruning 6y ago
The original conversation happened almost 2 centuries ago I think (1830's). But sure! I think we throw away the baby with the bathwater when we say "Malthus was wrong". I think it's better to say "Malthus inspired the beginning of an awesome idea". Malthus' original idea was where he plotted population growth and food production in the same graph. When the 2 lines crossed, that's bad. That's obviously not very realistic, but actually he had the gist of it; it just needed a bit of refinement. Not much later, another Belgian by the name of Verhulst did indeed improve on Malthus' model. He came up with a formula where at first the population grows exponentially; and then later it slows down before it reaches the limit (carrying-capacity). In Verhulst's model, you don't have a catastrophic line-crossing. At that point, you basically have an actual Minimal Viable Product that you can use to predict and think about real-world population dynamics, and a whole lot more besides. Over the last two centuries people have built a lot of discoveries on top of that. This Veritasium video is about one small (but awesome) bit of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk It's a good thing not everyone thought Malthus was (completely) wrong!
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  Hmmmmmmm! I didn't know about Feigenbaum's constant. That is interesting and mysterious...
  - 1123581321 6y ago
    That’s all you have to say? ;)
    - wombatmobile 6y ago
      It might take a lot of processing before my brain can integrate this information well enough to formulate the next question! What strikes me at first is that if this pattern is universal... then... well, it means that the THINGS that we think about - the exceptions, the problems that people encounter in their work and in their personal lives, come from fundamental aspects of numbers. e.g. the power engineer who has to deal with spikes and outages; the pcb designer who has to deal with interference and cross talk, the plumber who has to diagnose a shaky pipe in an old building; the network engineer who can't fully explain latency; the spouse who can't synch with their partners mood; the athlete who surprises every now and then; the baseball team that should be winning but isn't... And more specific to the topic, I wonder how world and country population forecasts are made. Do the models take account of Verhulst's dynamics? What do weather forecasters know about this?

Apparently they are these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_modeling_population_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_...

Kim_Bruning 6y ago

The original conversation happened almost 2 centuries ago I think (1830's). But sure! I think we throw away the baby with the bathwater when we say "Malthus was wrong". I think it's better to say "Malthus inspired the beginning of an awesome idea". Malthus' original idea was where he plotted population growth and food production in the same graph. When the 2 lines crossed, that's bad. That's obviously not very realistic, but actually he had the gist of it; it just needed a bit of refinement. Not much later, another Belgian by the name of Verhulst did indeed improve on Malthus' model. He came up with a formula where at first the population grows exponentially; and then later it slows down before it reaches the limit (carrying-capacity). In Verhulst's model, you don't have a catastrophic line-crossing. At that point, you basically have an actual Minimal Viable Product that you can use to predict and think about real-world population dynamics, and a whole lot more besides. Over the last two centuries people have built a lot of discoveries on top of that. This Veritasium video is about one small (but awesome) bit of that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk It's a good thing not everyone thought Malthus was (completely) wrong!

wombatmobile 6y ago
Hmmmmmmm! I didn't know about Feigenbaum's constant. That is interesting and mysterious...
- 1123581321 6y ago
  That’s all you have to say? ;)
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    It might take a lot of processing before my brain can integrate this information well enough to formulate the next question! What strikes me at first is that if this pattern is universal... then... well, it means that the THINGS that we think about - the exceptions, the problems that people encounter in their work and in their personal lives, come from fundamental aspects of numbers. e.g. the power engineer who has to deal with spikes and outages; the pcb designer who has to deal with interference and cross talk, the plumber who has to diagnose a shaky pipe in an old building; the network engineer who can't fully explain latency; the spouse who can't synch with their partners mood; the athlete who surprises every now and then; the baseball team that should be winning but isn't... And more specific to the topic, I wonder how world and country population forecasts are made. Do the models take account of Verhulst's dynamics? What do weather forecasters know about this?