4 ms·

What did we learn? Um, that the book was wrong?

by pdonis 4y ago

UIUC_06 4y ago
That IS kinda the elephant in the room, isn't it? > “The battle to feed all of humanity [was] over,” he said in no uncertain terms. Soon hundreds of millions of people would die no matter what emergency measures were adopted. Things were so bad he was even willing to bet England would not exist by the year 2000. A little humility here would be nice. Ehrlich said certain things would happen; they didn't. He made a bet; he lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager
- Jtsummers 4y ago
  That might be more relevant if Ehrlich was one of the authors of The Limits to Growth.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Did he subscribe to its conclusions, though? Seems to me he did.
    - Jtsummers 4y ago
      Have you read the book? Seems to me you didn't. It's not even 200 pages long, you can probably finish it in an afternoon if you like. ---------- EDIT: One example, from page 94, that shows that the authors of The Limits of Growth and Ehrlich aren't exactly on the same page: > Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful. We cannot forecast the precise population of the United States nor the GNP of Brazil nor even the total world food production for the year 2015. The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them. On the other hand, it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socio-economic systems when the limits are reached. There are tons of caveats like this throughout the text that make it clear they aren't making precise claims about the future, but attempting to create a complex model and understand how things may turn out and why, the interaction of the various system components. Ehrlich, in contrast, liked to make very precise claims. Like that the 1970s would see hundreds of millions of people starving to death. EDIT: From page 121, further evidence that you have not read the book if you think that Ehrlich is strongly influenced by it: > First, we hope that by posing each relationship as a hypothesis, and emphasizing its importance in the total world system, we may generate discussion and research that will eventually improve the data we have to work with. This emphasis is especially important in the areas in which different sectors of the model interact (such as pollution and human lifetime), where interdisciplinary research will be necessary. Statements like these exist throughout the text. Again, making it clear that the authors are not drawing one particular conclusion. Strongly contrasting with Ehrlich again.
      - AlbertCory 4y ago
        > Have you read the book? Seems to me you didn't. It's not even 200 pages long, you can probably finish it in an afternoon if you like. Gosh, you know, it's hard to squeeze in more books, what with catching up with my Proust and Kafka and Dostoevsky and all that. Anyhow, in college I did a simulation of Urban Dynamics, in FORTRAN. Does that count? There were a whole class of doom-sayers back then. Ehrlich was one of them. He wasn't smart enough to avoid saying things that could be checked, like the others were.
        Jtsummers 4y ago
        Again, Ehrlich isn't one of the contributors to The Limits to Growth so his views are largely irrelevant when the actual contributors to The Limits to Growth don't agree with his doom-saying (at least as presented in the book, maybe some of them do in other contexts). How hard is this concept for you? That's what I was calling out (from someone who wasn't you), you just want to double down on it for some reason that makes zero sense. If you want to keep bringing irrelevancies into the conversation, fine. Have the last word after this. If you want to not look like an idiot, take 2-3 hours to read the book or at least 20 minutes to skim it and see that it's not Ehrlich-styled doom-saying.
        AlbertCory 4y ago
        Great, thanks for the last-word offer. I'll take it. And by the way, ad hominem attacks just make you look like an idiot. Maybe try admitting that Ehrlich WAS one of the Malthusians of that period, as evidenced by scholarly articles like [1] and [2], which mention him in the same breath. You are correct that he's not one of the authors. However, [2] says: This movement, which was a new chapter in the long running dispute between Malthusians and Cornucopians (Desrochers and Hoffbauer, this issue) can be construed as having commenced with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968), and, by many accounts, reached maturity with the publication of The Limits to Growth (1972) and its success and huge circulation. [1] https://www.condition.org/as95-6.htm https://www.condition.org/as95-6.htm [2] https://ppe.mercatus.org/system/files/JULIAN_AND_THE_LIMITS_TO_GROWTH_NEO-MALTHUSIANISM.pdf https://ppe.mercatus.org/system/files/JULIAN_AND_THE_LIMITS_...
bmismyname 4y ago
[flagged]
- pdonis 4y ago
  > We're on track for exactly what the book predicted First, the "predictions" have been well massaged as more data came in. The original predictions said we would already have hit "collapse" some time ago. Second, the "predictions" your references show are the same as those of alternate models that do not predict an imminent collapse. (All of these models, suitably adjusted to reflect the latest data, predict growth up to now, which is what the data shows. The alternate models simply predict a leveling off as population growth stops, not due to "collapse" but due to the fact that increasing wealth leads to lower birth rates.) So all of these models are useless for telling us whether a collapse is actually imminent or not. The fact is that we simply do not have that kind of predictive power using models.
  - bmismyname 4y ago
    Did you read the book? Or at least the wikipedia page? Here's a fairly recent paper with recent data comparing actual historical data to the book's predictions: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13084 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13084 Quoting from the abstract: > The two scenarios aligning most closely with observed data indicate a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity's goal in the twenty-first century. I could dig up more sources/data but I'm guessing you aren't going to read them since you certainly haven't read the book.
  - orwin 4y ago
    I think they only kept one scenario where collapse was predicted and from my foggy memory it wasn't caused by the decline in ressources or population, and at the time it seemed interesting to me. Most of their scenarii didn't predict collapse, but steady decline, and the main difference was 'how fast'
orwin 4y ago
The book isn't wrong yet. It will be if by 2030 we don't see a decline in food and industrial production. I think people here mix up "the limit to growth" and "the population bomb", two very different books by different authors, using different methodologies.
- AlbertoGP 4y ago
  > The book isn't wrong yet. It will be if by 2030 we don't see a decline in food and industrial production. Could this be why our Western governments are so hell-bent on destroying our economies? “We can not let The Book be wrong! The Prophecy must be fulfilled, and it is our sacred duty to ensure that it will!”
LatteLazy 4y ago
Also that people believe things because those things are simple and appeal to their own sense of paranoia, aggression and laziness, not because those things are accurate or realistic.

What did we learn? Um, that the book was wrong?

by pdonis 4y ago

What did we learn? Um, that the book was wrong?

That IS kinda the elephant in the room, isn't it? > “The battle to feed all of humanity [was] over,” he said in no uncertain terms. Soon hundreds of millions of people would die no matter what emergency measures were adopted. Things were so bad he was even willing to bet England would not exist by the year 2000. A little humility here would be nice. Ehrlich said certain things would happen; they didn't. He made a bet; he lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager

Jtsummers 4y ago
That might be more relevant if Ehrlich was one of the authors of The Limits to Growth.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Did he subscribe to its conclusions, though? Seems to me he did.
  - Jtsummers 4y ago
    Have you read the book? Seems to me you didn't. It's not even 200 pages long, you can probably finish it in an afternoon if you like. ---------- EDIT: One example, from page 94, that shows that the authors of The Limits of Growth and Ehrlich aren't exactly on the same page: > Can anything be learned from such a highly aggregated model? Can its output be considered meaningful? In terms of exact predictions, the output is not meaningful. We cannot forecast the precise population of the United States nor the GNP of Brazil nor even the total world food production for the year 2015. The data we have to work with are certainly not sufficient for such forecasts, even if it were our purpose to make them. On the other hand, it is vitally important to gain some understanding of the causes of growth in human society, the limits to growth, and the behavior of our socio-economic systems when the limits are reached. There are tons of caveats like this throughout the text that make it clear they aren't making precise claims about the future, but attempting to create a complex model and understand how things may turn out and why, the interaction of the various system components. Ehrlich, in contrast, liked to make very precise claims. Like that the 1970s would see hundreds of millions of people starving to death. EDIT: From page 121, further evidence that you have not read the book if you think that Ehrlich is strongly influenced by it: > First, we hope that by posing each relationship as a hypothesis, and emphasizing its importance in the total world system, we may generate discussion and research that will eventually improve the data we have to work with. This emphasis is especially important in the areas in which different sectors of the model interact (such as pollution and human lifetime), where interdisciplinary research will be necessary. Statements like these exist throughout the text. Again, making it clear that the authors are not drawing one particular conclusion. Strongly contrasting with Ehrlich again.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      > Have you read the book? Seems to me you didn't. It's not even 200 pages long, you can probably finish it in an afternoon if you like. Gosh, you know, it's hard to squeeze in more books, what with catching up with my Proust and Kafka and Dostoevsky and all that. Anyhow, in college I did a simulation of Urban Dynamics, in FORTRAN. Does that count? There were a whole class of doom-sayers back then. Ehrlich was one of them. He wasn't smart enough to avoid saying things that could be checked, like the others were.
      - Jtsummers 4y ago
        Again, Ehrlich isn't one of the contributors to The Limits to Growth so his views are largely irrelevant when the actual contributors to The Limits to Growth don't agree with his doom-saying (at least as presented in the book, maybe some of them do in other contexts). How hard is this concept for you? That's what I was calling out (from someone who wasn't you), you just want to double down on it for some reason that makes zero sense. If you want to keep bringing irrelevancies into the conversation, fine. Have the last word after this. If you want to not look like an idiot, take 2-3 hours to read the book or at least 20 minutes to skim it and see that it's not Ehrlich-styled doom-saying.
        AlbertCory 4y ago
        Great, thanks for the last-word offer. I'll take it. And by the way, ad hominem attacks just make you look like an idiot. Maybe try admitting that Ehrlich WAS one of the Malthusians of that period, as evidenced by scholarly articles like [1] and [2], which mention him in the same breath. You are correct that he's not one of the authors. However, [2] says: This movement, which was a new chapter in the long running dispute between Malthusians and Cornucopians (Desrochers and Hoffbauer, this issue) can be construed as having commenced with the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb (1968), and, by many accounts, reached maturity with the publication of The Limits to Growth (1972) and its success and huge circulation. [1] https://www.condition.org/as95-6.htm https://www.condition.org/as95-6.htm [2] https://ppe.mercatus.org/system/files/JULIAN_AND_THE_LIMITS_TO_GROWTH_NEO-MALTHUSIANISM.pdf https://ppe.mercatus.org/system/files/JULIAN_AND_THE_LIMITS_...

bmismyname 4y ago

[flagged]

pdonis 4y ago
> We're on track for exactly what the book predicted First, the "predictions" have been well massaged as more data came in. The original predictions said we would already have hit "collapse" some time ago. Second, the "predictions" your references show are the same as those of alternate models that do not predict an imminent collapse. (All of these models, suitably adjusted to reflect the latest data, predict growth up to now, which is what the data shows. The alternate models simply predict a leveling off as population growth stops, not due to "collapse" but due to the fact that increasing wealth leads to lower birth rates.) So all of these models are useless for telling us whether a collapse is actually imminent or not. The fact is that we simply do not have that kind of predictive power using models.
- bmismyname 4y ago
  Did you read the book? Or at least the wikipedia page? Here's a fairly recent paper with recent data comparing actual historical data to the book's predictions: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13084 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.13084 Quoting from the abstract: > The two scenarios aligning most closely with observed data indicate a halt in welfare, food, and industrial production over the next decade or so, which puts into question the suitability of continuous economic growth as humanity's goal in the twenty-first century. I could dig up more sources/data but I'm guessing you aren't going to read them since you certainly haven't read the book.
- orwin 4y ago
  I think they only kept one scenario where collapse was predicted and from my foggy memory it wasn't caused by the decline in ressources or population, and at the time it seemed interesting to me. Most of their scenarii didn't predict collapse, but steady decline, and the main difference was 'how fast'

orwin 4y ago

The book isn't wrong yet. It will be if by 2030 we don't see a decline in food and industrial production. I think people here mix up "the limit to growth" and "the population bomb", two very different books by different authors, using different methodologies.

AlbertoGP 4y ago
> The book isn't wrong yet. It will be if by 2030 we don't see a decline in food and industrial production. Could this be why our Western governments are so hell-bent on destroying our economies? “We can not let The Book be wrong! The Prophecy must be fulfilled, and it is our sacred duty to ensure that it will!”

LatteLazy 4y ago

Also that people believe things because those things are simple and appeal to their own sense of paranoia, aggression and laziness, not because those things are accurate or realistic.