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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

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_...

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_...