[ExI] energy modelling

[Eugen Leitl]

On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:54:58PM +0100, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> Nice essay, but it suffers from the usual peak oil flaw of focusing on  
> Hubbert peak curves. Basically, successful retrodictions do not prove  
> that a methodology is good at predictions. I made a simple example to  
> show the problem with the method:
>
> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2011/05/why_i_dont_trust_hubbert_peak_arguments.html
>
> Basically, you can't trust the prediction until you are almost at the  

The problem is that some predictions have harsher outcomes than
others, so we can't treat the caviar peak the same way as the 
fossil peak.

> peak. And to know you are at the peak you need separate information, you  

That peaks are only recogniziable as such in the rear view mirror
is a The Oil Drum trope.

And of course nobody is just looking at the peaks; there's a real
reality which produces these bell curves. These are just tl;dr
versions for the people who don't have the time to dig into the
details. An executive summary. 

> obviously can't use your prediction. The same mechanism makes Bass  
> technology diffusion curves hopeless at prediction despite their great  
> track record in retrodiction.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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