Comments on: Modeling population and technology: Why haven’t you starved to death?

By: Navin Kumar

Navin Kumar — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:55:32 +0000

>>And I would note that while Malthus was not entirely accurate (perhaps due to the mother on invention paradigm, but this is not a perfect explanation, as technology can have as many deleterious effects as beneficial ones. WW I and II for example), Malthus is used in many types of modeling in various areas with success.
My curiousity is piqued. Could you give me an example?
Also, WWI and WWII weren’t caused by technology, but by politics. You can, of course argue, that it made killing easier and therefore increased the death toll. But prehaps the war would have gone on much longer had tech not existed to provide decisive victories and defeats, increasing the death toll. So I’m not sure how many people would have died if the tech hadn’t existed, so I find the question of how benefits of tech v/s costs of tech to be speculative instead of empirically or logically provable. I personally would rather have technological improvemment than not have it. I think I’m better off in 2009 – with a century of advancement as well as violence – behind me than I would have been in 1909. What about you?

By: Navin Kumar

Navin Kumar — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:44:44 +0000

Hello, everyone. Again: I’m sorry about the delay in replies. I’m staying in Bombay for anouther 3 weeks and the nearest cyber is quite far from my place. So there will be a gap on 2-3 days between rebuttals.
I’m going to start with David, because I find it the most interesting.
>>There have been famines in Africa, North Korea, China, etc. not caused by weather. Some, in fact, I would argue are caused by people innovating (Mao and Kim Jong Il), though in the model presented innovation only increases production.
I agree: not all famines are caused by weather. I feel like an idiot for having forgotten the pain caused by ideas spawned by the Mao and Lysenko in Russia.
But I argue that this pain – like most famines – are more political than than technological. Typically, a progress in technology spreads slowly: there are people who take risks and try in out first and people who follow after seeing the positive results. This means only technology that works gets adopted.
In the case of Mao etc. an idea was forced upon farmers without proper verification resulting in the mess we saw. The problem was with the political and market structure.
Anywhere else only that technology which improves production/reduces costs would be adopted. (Again: I’m ignoring the technology – such as scrubbers – which is adopted to protect the environment etc.)
>>We constantly use, with great success, many models that do “predict the outcomes of social, financial, or technological events.”

Bayesian analysis, for instance in used in many endeavors such as commodity markets, spam filters, internet traffic loads, etc.
This comment would seem more appropriate on the GW section but I’ll deal with it.
I can’t see what problem you have with the model I presented in this article, so I assume this is sorta-kinda a question on when and where you can use models.
My purpose in this article wasn’t to attack predictive models. That was simply an aside. But as Andy said, I shouldn’t say something if I’m not ready to defend it.
I hardly need to point out these models are far from perfect: spam gets through and every once in a while a page or website suddenly generates so much traffic, it has to shut down for a while. But these are social phenomenon where a) a failure doesn’t equal disaster and b) there is constant real-time improving of the model.
Also, these are hardly predictive models, the main focus of my contempt. And commodity prices aren’t heavily subject to social (i.e. human free will generated) fluctuations. They *are* subject to whether changes: see how fast the prices of futures change when the meteorological department makes a mistake. Another source of fluctuations (for some commodities) is political. Sugar in my country, for example. The government recently (i.e. a year or two ago) tried to reduce the price of sugar by banning exports. That worked too well and there was a glut and a huge fall in prices, forcing the government to subsidize exports to help farmers. Shame the governments’ commodities model couldn’t figure out that was going to happen. After this fiasco a lot of farmers simply switched to other crops. Show me a commodities model that saw that coming.
Although I didn’t mention it, my main focus of attack here was the models used by Wall Street firms. These generate decent returns for a while and then blow up. The most recent blow up was caused because these considered a fall in prices in multiple real estate markets unlikely enough to ignore. Idiots.

By: David Annis

David Annis — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:27:17 +0000

I take issue with the statement:
Yet, in the 200 years of the theory’s existence, a famine caused by failure of food production has never occurred.
There have been famines in Africa, North Korea, China, etc. not caused by weather. Some, in fact, I would argue are caused by people innovating (Mao and Kim Jong Il), though in the model presented innovation only increases production.

By: Brigitte

Brigitte — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:02:23 +0000

Another source of food: solyent green.

Let’s multiply and pollute, everything has been taken care of.

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:01:48 +0000

Well, I hardly need to criticise this since the author did so himself:

“I’ve completely ignored the question of whether or not the land has a ‘carrying capacity’”

I might as well make an argument that oil supply is unlimited and will last forever, with the qualification that I will ignore the issue of oil being a finite commodity.

By: Andy Kaiser

Andy Kaiser — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:38:11 +0000

rc_moore,

You raise a good point about Navin not responding to comments. I didn't realize that until now, when I checked a bunch of his old articles to verify. If he doesn't respond to this or the previous article comments soon, I'll email him directly and see what's up. As you see, I'm willing to post articles from people with different opinions than you. But not if those people aren't willing to - at least some of the time - respond to fairly solid and honest critiques. This isn't a drive-by opinion site. I want things to be more interactive than that.

Andy

By: rc_moore

rc_moore — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:00:18 +0000

Sorry, please read my previous comment as “you do *not* respond to comments. “

By: rc_moore

rc_moore — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:59:12 +0000

“The people who claim that they use a model to predict the outcomes of complicated social, financial or technological events are self-deluding frauds.”

Ok, your article from last week on global warming was naive. Now you are just making gross assertions from extreme ignorance.

We constantly use, with great success, many models that do “predict the outcomes of social, financial, or technological events.”

Bayesian analysis, for instance in used in many endeavors such as commodity markets, spam filters, internet traffic loads, etc.

This is just a few examples very complex models that are quite successful.

What you mean to say is that we cannot predict, through models, all events, to the level of probability that we need.

And I would note that while Malthus was not entirely accurate (perhaps due to the mother on invention paradigm, but this is not a perfect explanation, as technology can have as many deleterious effects as beneficial ones. WW I and II for example), Malthus is used in many types of modeling in various areas with success.

This is your second article where you have presented some well known arguments of no great import with a supercilious attitude that detracts from the innocuous point you are trying to make.
But my biggest objection at this point, is that while you post, you do respond to comments. Are you looking for a skeptical discussion or a pulpit?