tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6837159629100463303.post8167361173155711015..comments2023-06-18T01:25:08.748-07:00Comments on Information Transfer Economics: Limits to knowledge of growthJason Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12680061127040420047noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6837159629100463303.post-9874537093902887222018-05-18T00:38:26.173-07:002018-05-18T00:38:26.173-07:00Yes, while long cycles have an attractive plausibi...Yes, while long cycles have an attractive plausibility, based upon things like cultural forgetting and generational opposition, when you get down to data and noise, they end up looking indistinguishable from random walks.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6837159629100463303.post-88973311023310108322018-05-17T09:04:30.776-07:002018-05-17T09:04:30.776-07:00Note that a population decline from 10 billion to ...Note that a population decline from 10 billion to 5 billion over 20 years or so implies 10s of millions of people dying (death rates spike in the model ... due to pollution).<br /><br />Now I could see a mass anoxic event in the oceans poisoning the entire east coast (like a local version of the P/T extinction), but that's not in the model and we don't have enough data to extrapolate the smaller dead zones to a global catastrophe.<br /><br />(Which is why global warming is such a big issue: uncertainty coupled with possible major consequences.)Jason Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12680061127040420047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6837159629100463303.post-43974783859334062732018-05-17T08:55:28.321-07:002018-05-17T08:55:28.321-07:00I couched it in terms of dynamic equilibrium shock...I couched it in terms of dynamic equilibrium shocks, but their model actually has what you might call restorative forces. However, since these restorative forces hadn't kicked in enough to have affected the population time series by 1970 (and wouldn't in their models until 2030), it would have been impossible to measure the parameters describing those forces. And since there's never been a time in recorded history when the population declined by half or more, there is no other source for that information.<br /><br />It's like saying you know about a 100-year cycle in GDP growth or interest rates and plotting a graph of a sin wave that peaked in the 80s, had a trough in 2010s, and then peaked again in 2050. We simply do not have the relevant data to support such a model without it being extremely accurate about something else. But even then, the estimates of the 100-year cycle frequency would be *highly* uncertain.<br /><br />It is the equivalent of just making up a shock in the dynamic equilibrium model.Jason Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12680061127040420047noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6837159629100463303.post-20345996111100906292018-05-17T06:39:45.764-07:002018-05-17T06:39:45.764-07:00So the shocks centered at 2065 and 2080 were just ...So the shocks centered at 2065 and 2080 were just assumed by the LtG authors?Tom Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17654184190478330946noreply@blogger.com