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On 07/05/2012 23:34, spike wrote:
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Today we look at Mr. and Mrs.
Ehrlich’s notion of the population bomb and their predictions,
and oh, were they silly, so wrong, etc. But in retrospect, it
isn’t entirely clear to me they were wrong exactly, but rather
just too pessimistic on the timeframe of their predictions.
Perhaps they really had the right idea to some extent, just
didn’t really model it correctly. Perhaps in the very long
run, Malthusian population dynamics really do apply to this
overcrowded planet, but the model is far more complex than a
jar of fruit flies.</p>
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<br>
Robin Hansons model of the upload population explosion (and the
"dreamtime" we are currently living in) have a similar Malthusian
dynamics, it is just that we are living before it really kicks in
(possibly for anthropic reasons, if you buy the simulation
argument). That it might involve rapid outward expansion doesn't
change its resource-constrained nature (potential exponential
population growth, polynomial resource growth). <br>
<br>
<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>What other examples can we
think of where the initially presented model is too simple but
perhaps contains some truth?</p>
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<br>
In many ways most scientific theories are like that. Darwin's
original theory just got the macro stuff right, but he was
completely wrong about genetic transmission (mostly because he did
not know it was done by discrete units) - but once that is corrected
his model works fine. <br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Philosophy Faculty of Oxford University </pre>
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