Someone once posted something that made the difference between science and fields such as economics crystal clear.

He or she pointed out that, in a real science or in a field like engineering, you can pretty much use books from 1900 and 1910 and 1920 and 1930 and so forth, and while there will be new information added with each that revises the previous books, you won't have complete revolutions, and you especially won't see these revolutions tied into the personality of the proponents, the dead giveaway tip-off to a field that is dominated by the personalities of the folks running the show at that moment rather than by any sense of finding out how things actually work.

You pick up a chemistry or mechanics book from before World War II and you realize how smart those people were who figured out an amazing amount of stuff without benefit of computers.  In contrast, economists are always writing about how the dark ages of economic thinking -- which always ended just before the writer got the PhD -- were periods of incomprehensible mistakes that needed the new Truth to be revealed to the waiting world (with the exception of the historical figures the writer wishes to claim kinship to).

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

I have a bad habit of always wanting to get in the last word, but since I've already said about all that I can on the topics you bring up, I will resist that temptation now.  

But I do feel compelled to clarify one thing.  I meant absolutely no disrespect or derisions when I used the phrase "so-called" in front of the phrase "Austrian School."  The Cato Institute was founded by a couple of people who describe themselves as "Austrians" (in the economic sense).  Many of my colleagues at Cato are Austrians.  Some of the most famous libertarians ever affiliated with Cato - such as the anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard - are Austrians.  Two of my favorite economists - Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek - are Austrians.  For my part, I think the Austrians are more right than wrong.

In any event, "so-called" was meant as a signal to readers that "Austrian School" did not mean "a place in Austria where economists went to school."  That's all.      

The all knowing "free" market is the omniscient god of this new era.  God's own freedom, given to each and every multinational corporation on this planet, will inevitably chart the course of humanity.

Any risk at all, GHG climate disaster, terrorism, economic disaster from rising energy prices, can be simply "hedged" against.

Let the hedge funds do for the future of the human friendly climate of planet earth what they have done for the US and now worldwide credit markets.  If they trade carbon and weather futures freely enough, then all will be as it should be.  So it is written, so shall it be done.

The corpo-right does not bow to history, it makes history.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

I'm an Austrian (in the economic sense).  I really liked your post

It's almost an inhuman standard to avoid relying on unreliable predictions.  As an example, the (excellent) Casten post you link to goes thorugh a lot of funny stories about the inability of economists to predict accurately, then in point 4 reviews his theory that he understands exactly how to achieve several mutally-conflicting goals if only his preferred technological solution were put in place.

You end your (also excellent, in my view) post with:

"It is a possibility that overzealous attempts by liberal types to fix the problem could make matters worse, which I suspect is Taylor's main concern, which I share. We need to make sure that does not happen but we also need to take immediate steps to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions."

I assume that you have made an implicit prediction about the net economic (in the broad sense of the term) impacts of this.  Can you make it explicit?

I think there is a tension in modern neurobiology and psychology in that (1) our brains are wired for thinking about the future, and (2) we are bad at "predictions."

Our tendency is to predict beyond our ability.  When an answer would be really, really, nice to know, we stretch for it.

It's hard not to stretch for some questions though, because not to stretch is to accept whatever you get.

We want to know if we can burn this coal.  We want to know if Social Security is sound.  What else can  you do?  You predict.

BioD also predicts that we will act on our predictions ;-).  I'm sure we will, but some mornings I'm not sure that our actions will be sufficient.  Look at "managed fisheries" as a model of prediction and action.  Managed fisheries should not collapse ... except they do.  All the time.

Sometimes the end-run is a policy that acknowledges our poor predictive abilities ... like "no take" marine preserves ... or maybe a big walloping carbon tax.

Growthbuster,

You and a number of other contributors to these web pages speak of the need to "optimize the size of our population on the planet". My question, is what do you have in mind?

Some people point to empowerment of women, and how that leads to fewer children per couple, or the effects of increasing urbanization on family size, and suggest that population will take care of itself (eventually) if these trends continue. I presume you're not in that camp?

Are you making an appeal for voluntary restraint in family size? If so, how effective do you think such appeals will be? Or do you think that family size should somehow be controlled centrally, by economic incentives or force? If so, is it realistic to think that democracies will ever agree to such an idea?

I'm afraid I haven't got any answers but it's something I've been thinking about. Over population is the elephant in the room.

At some point I think mandatory limits on family size may become necessary. Imagine how many more millions of poor people there would be in China if they had not instituted their one-child policy. Education and empowerment of women are the are better ways of reducing population growth but we've left it too late.

Limiting population will be yet another facet of the great moral crisis we have brought upon ourselves. Which is worse? To restrict personal freedoms or to bring billions into a life of starvation and hardship? There are no easy answers except to say that doing nothing is the worst inhumanity.

and you might like to know that "trickle down" was a concept that originated in Von Hayek's "The constitution of liberty" (actually, a good read), Von Hayek being one of the founders of the Austrian school.

but not in the sense usually meant by "prediction."  If you "predict" a train wreck up ahead, this may spur people to attempt to prevent the train wreck.  Thus negative "predictions" can have a preventative function......

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

"Mark, are you saying they "can" predict the future in the sense that we can't stop them? ;-)"

I'm saying that any "science" that does NOT make falsifiable predictions of the future is not real science.  (No better examples of pseudoscience can be found than the "projections" in the Limits to Growth series, or the IPCC's assessments.)

So of course economists can predict the future.  That's what true science is all about.  Now, Arnold Kling may be wrong in his prediction, but he's made a prediction, based on scientific principles.  (Specifically, his prediction is based on the growth of computing power in the 21st century.)

Where has any anyone from the "environmental economics" community made any falsifiable predictions about future world economic growth?

"I hope not in the sense that they 'can' be consistently accurate."

Concerning future economic growth, the record of economists is much better than that of environmentalists over the past 50 years.  The world economy has never collapsed.  In fact, per Angus Maddison ("The World Economy: A Millenial Perspective") there have never even been even two straight years of negative per-capita world economic growth since 1950.  In fact, only 3 of those 57 years have had negative per-capita growth at all...and all have been less than 0.5 percent.  That actual experience can be contrasted with the pathetic record of warnings of economic doom from environmentalists in the past half-century.

Mark Bahner

Actually, "Expert Political Judgment" might be termed as people wanting to be "scientific" and thus "reaching" for prediction.

The books I've given you document the hubris in that.

Beyond that, the "science requires prediction" thing sounds better at first hearing than than upon reflection.  A scientist, after observing lemurs for 30 years, might offer a prediction about what "spike" will do next ... but that's not really what we value.  We desire scientific understanding the creature and its environment.

I'm saying that any "science" that does NOT make falsifiable predictions of the future is not real science.

How would this apply to, say, astronomy?

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

Thanks bio-d.  It's a theory laden language.  Many theories trying to coalesce around a singularity.  

A cultural black hole to crush the forces of mass delusion forever.  In the massive gravity of natural chaos.  

For I am..an agent of chaos, mwhahaha..hehey.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

We seem to be conflating the different senses of prediction, one akin to soothsaying and one referring to what scientists do when the predict the results of a trial (or an observation, or a behavior, or a chemical or nuclear interaction, etc.)

The ability to make such testable (and falsifiable) predictions is indeed the hallmark of a science and, more importantly, of a scientific theory.

Just today I got into a discussion with a usually very smart guy who wanted me to buy into his belief in cold fusion (expressed as "there's something there" and "the effect has been replicated numerous times" and similar statements and appeals to authority, such as the claim that the Navy is investing in cold fusion research).    
Problem is, there's no falsifiable theory on offer, just wild claims about governments suppressing positive results, etc. etc. etc. (See, 200 mpg gasoline additive, zero point energy, etc.).

So too with creationists--the god-in-the-machine story means that there are no testable hypotheses that can be made since, according to the story, the god is whimsical and can choose when to create universes at will and when to leave us to our own devices.  All observations square with such a theory; thus predictions shed no light on the validity of the story.

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

Odo: 'My recollection is that Gilbert makes a case for human nature (and happiness) strongly centered in the word "prediction."'

My recollection is that he makes a case for how badly people 'predict' their own happiness under various scenarios of gain or loss. In other words, humans are lousy predictors of future situations involving how they will feel. Rather, they base their estimates of their happiness on a causal model of how something ought to make them feel. And they consistently get it wrong.

Robin Hogarth makes a good case for the fact that what people do is not prediction (in the technical sense) because that implies statistical inference based on probability theory. People routinely show that their estimates of likelihood for two or more mutually exclusive events often sum to more than one. Check out "Judgment and Choice" by Hogarth. Its a good read.

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

Many sciences don't predict future

I know that, you know that, but...

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

Odograph quotes the New Yorker review:

Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more reliable forecaster, but Tetlock found that knowing a lot can actually make a person less reliable.

I don't know if that is a verifiable scientific prediction, but I have certainly witnessed the phenomenon.

Back in August 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, sending the price of crude oil sharply upwards, I was working for the International Energy Agency (IEA). Those of us not on vacation at the time started speculating about at what price crude might peak, and when. So we polled each other.

A month later, the price peaked. The guy closest to the oil markets, who had previously worked for years on a commodity exchange, trading oil futures, had complete confidence he would win. He came nowehere close. The winner was the IEA's librarian.

I bet the oil trader has his own hedge fund now, right?  Hehey.

This is what I learned too, about expert traders that base their trading theories on the "science" of economics.   Remember the Long term capital management hedge fund crash in the late 90's.  I bought at the bottom of that crash and made my first 5k in the following run up due to the Fed lowering/bail out.

The LTCM doods were expert economists, professors with supercomputers and airtight, ground breaking trading theories that couldn't lose.  they borrowed 5 billion, then leveraged that to 100 billion.  But they lost.

And the fed bailed the banks out that backed them  by lowering rates on an emergency basis.  That started the infamous "bubble".

Anyway, what the new right corporatarians are trying to sell us is that the 'free' markets, the same ones that crashed from LTCM manipulation, and are about to crash from the mortgage crisis turned global credit crisis.  These same markets manipulated by these same type of insider trading hedge funds, are the best possible cure for GHG climate disaster.

They will "hedge" the risk for us all, taking a mere pittance in profits for assuming all that risk. They will trade weather futures and carbon and insurance company junk bonds and save the planet!  all with no new taxes!!  and no inept government interference in market efficiency!!! Sound great!

I spent a few months arguing with Jerry and his minions over on the Cato site.  It's difficult to stomach, but illuminating.  All the latest, greatest corporate friendly taking points are repeated over and over in very complex theory laden terms.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

"Robin Hogarth makes a good case for the fact that what people do is not prediction (in the technical sense) because that implies statistical inference based on probability theory."

Is that an important distinction?  When an economist says on TV that growth will be X and inflation will be Y, do we know that he did anything other than poll his gut?

And importantly, I think Tetlock would have found "better" predictors if they had been using whiz-bang statistical models.

It occurs to me that true scientific prediction is not usually "statistical."  When we "predict" the future positions of planets we do it by understanding their dynamics, and calculating based on their speed, mass, gravitational interactions, etc.  We don't poll their past positions and present odds going forward.

(Nassim Taleb also does a pretty good take-down on statistical modeling of the past to predict the future in his books.)

This is brilliant, some of your best work, and all the more impressive that you make it look as though you dashed it off in a half an hour.

Also admirable is your attempt at translating that fragment of Amazingdrxese.  Frankly, though, I have no way of judging how accurate it was.  To me, not knowing anything about such matters, it looks rather like trying to translate Beowulf, and coming up with a Grendel's Mother who looks like Angelina Jolie, power-boobs and all.

Here is a snippet from Sean Casten's post, which you say you like:

<<
I recently joked to an economist friend that economics is the only discipline where you can get fired if you admit you are unable to predict the future. The comment has too much truth in it to be particularly funny, though.
>>

Funny, I always thought of economics as basically a handmaid of history, past-oriented, a method of explaining certain events in the stories of human beings.  So, for example, historians of the ancient Mediterranean might wish to relate the so-called (ha!) Fall of the Roman Empire, and the establishment of new, more restricted cultural centers in Late Antiquity, to the disruption of the normal supplies and distributions of food of the Pax Romana.

Also, there are the examples which you like, as also does Jared Diamond: the Easter Islanders, and the Classic Lowland Maya, drasticly diminished by an apparently anthropogenic deficiency of resources; and the Anasazi (whom we are now asked to call Early or Ancestral Puebloans, in deference to our brethren the Pueblo peoples of today, who dislike that non-Pueblo Navajo term, meaning something like "enemies of our ancestors" or "ancestors of our enemies"), drasticly diminished by a natural aridification event that was beyond their power to cope with.

By contrast, predictive, future-oriented economics, the sort that you gotta know about if you want to grow up to be, say, Secretary of the Treasury or Chairman of the Fed, is to true economics, rather as technology is to science.

Sean Casten also wrote:

<<
In Consilience, E.O. Wilson differentiated between the sciences and the pseudosciences by noting that only the former are verifiably predictive. By this definition, economics is a pseudoscience. Arguably, so is much of medicine, and this is fine so long as the discipline is honest enough to acknowledge its limitations. My beef with economics is that it keeps on dogmatically asserting the accuracy of its crystal ball in spite of all available evidence to the contrary.
>>

OK, the beef is truly there, if in fact economists behave that way.  Medical doctors diagnose, prognose (does that verb exist?), prescribe and treat, on the basis (ideally) of probabilities carefully constructed from the records of all earlier medical cases.  If your case turns out differently than what your doctor expected, then your doctor (ideally) makes a note of what happened counter to expectation, the note goes straight to the medical data banks, and all doctors in the future will take it into account.

But, you mean to say, economists don't work like that?!

In the third quote-box in your post, you quote Jerry Taylor:

<<
Strictly speaking, no economist would contend that "infinite growth of some meaningful quantity is possible in a finite space."  If nothing else, infinity means forever. ... [And then he says something about deciding] what our definition of "finite space" might be.
>>

Well, I have no idea how economists like to use these terms, but it is not true that "infinity means forever."  The infinity of time was already a controversial concept in ancient philosophy; and modern cosmology has fundamentally restructured the problem for us.  So, the infinity of a being existing in time is not impossible to conceive of, but that depends on its being true that time itself is infinite.  

Also, there are other kinds of infinity than infinity in time and infinity in space.  A line segment is by definition (ha!) finite, and yet it contains an infinite number of points.  Paradox-loving theologians, dwelling on the ancient, common-sensical truth, "finitum incapax infiniti," "what is finite cannot contain what is infinite," presumably like to ask if that is refuted by the line segment and its infinite number of points, as they consider that Christmastime Mystery, the Incarnation of the uncreated, eternal, perfect-in-every-way Word of God, in the finite baby born of the young girl Mary.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

Yes it is an important distinction. This is pretty standard stuff re: human mental models (c.f. Johnson-Laird, Philip, (2006). How We Reason, Oxford University Press, Oxford.) vs. formal statistical inference. If an economist is going with his gut then we are all in very deep trouble.

This isn't to say that statistical modeling is always that much better. The statistics may be flawless, but the underlying assumptions and what you choose to measure may be horribly askew. Isn't that what we are claiming about much of economic prediction?

The reference to 'Tetlock' is obscure to me.

As for 'true' scientific prediction, you claim that only deterministic systems count. This is terribly dismissive of the whole arena of stochastic systems that are, by definition only knowable by statistical inference. I think most biologists and many chemists would be surprised to hear that they are not doing true science.

In fact, even deterministic systems (involving gravity as in your example) cannot be modeled without some statistical work. Measurements are always imprecise and noisy. It takes many observations and averaging to collect the 'data'.

In the example you mention, the solar system and predicting the position and momentum of bodies, it turns out that the equations are not closed form and the solutions have to be computed by mathematical modeling. Even then there is inherent error in the prediction!

I would have said that true scientific prediction is ALWAYS approximate, and therefore of a statistical nature. But that's just me nitpicking.

George

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

As a civilization we have found scientific methodology to be extremely useful and we apply it to some degree in almost all areas of human study and endeavor. We observe, we analyze, we seek out and then test predictive rules to measure our understanding of the physical universe and all it contains. Economics is no exception. But then, neither is astrology or portrait painting. Astrologers depend upon scientific observation of the heavenly bodies for the framing of their analysis. Painters have for centuries applied scientific methodology to the discovery of durable pigments and binders and effective techniques. But few would describe these areas of activity as sciences. The use to which the science is put inevitably goes far beyond the scientific method  itself. This condition would also appear to apply to economics: the study of economics includes science, but that is not to say it is science.

The most glaringly self-evident limits of scientific method in economics are threefold. One is the extreme difficulty (impossibility?) of isolating particular effects for the purposes of study - no economic system can be effectively separated out from the cultural matrix in which it resides. In economics there is no mixing of two defined substances in an inert vessel to see what happens.

The second limitation is the undoubted effects of the observational study itself, both directly and through its interpretation, upon the outcome of the observed phenomena. The prediction enables the result - "if I say it three times it (becomes) true".

The third obvious limitation is the extremely long timescale of the experimental and observational platform itself and the major changes in the baseline assumptions that can take place within that timeframe. It took six decades for command and control communist economic theory to be tested in the Soviet Union - and who can say for certain for what reason that experiment failed? The variables of input, from the devastations of WW11 to the Russian fondness for vodka, are endless.

There is a fourth problem which springs from the uncertainties inherent in the first three, which is the extreme vulnerability of the resulting analysis to interpretation according to political and ideological principles rather than scientific ones. The huge and constantly growing volume of available economic data allows a comforting illusion of scientific objectivity. This illusion founders on the equally huge volume of uncontrolled cultural and other variables. This is not to say that economic inputs (and predictions) are useless in our deliberations on the climate change crisis. But it does suggest they can hardly be considered to have the full weight and authority of definitive scientific process behind them.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

shapeshifter, if you haven't read about "experimental economics" I recommend the field.  It is a very interesting investigation into human nature.  I think it shows us to be semi-economic in nature ;-), but with important biases for cooperation, etc.

Many sciences don't predict future

I know that, you know that, but...

ALL sciences make falsifiable predictions of future events.  That's what true science is about.  Here are just a few examples of scientific predictions of the future (i.e., falsfiable predictions of the future, based on scientific principles):

 "If I drop this apple, it will fall to the ground with an acceleration of 9.81 m/s^2."

 "Haley's comment will appear in the year 2xyz." (Whatever it is...I'm too lazy to look it up.)

 "There is a layer of iridium around the world at the same time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction.  Therefore, we will find a huge crater somewhere on earth that deposited that layer of iridium."

 "Ulcers are caused by helicobacter pylori, not 'stress.'"  Therefore, if we treat the helicobacter pylori with antibiotics, we'll cure the ulcers.  If we treat 'stress' we probably won't cure ulcers."

 "There is a 90% chance of precipitation tomorrow."

 "Here is the 5-day storm track, with a 'cone of uncertainty'."

 "Schizophrenia is a disease of the mind, not demonic possession.  Therefore, exorcism won't cure schizophrenia."

 "The IPCC's 'projections' for methane atmospheric concentrations, black carbon emissions, and sulfur dioxide emissions are all too high.  The actual values will be even below the lowest projections."

 "Modern birds are descended from dinosaurs.  Therefore, we will find more fossils of transitionary species between dinosaurs and birds."

"In this experiment with palladium electrodes, excess energy and helium will be produced in a manner that can only be explained by fusion."

 "Economic growth is caused by (free) human minds.  Therefore, the more (free) human minds--or their computer equivalents--that exist, the greater will be the rate of economic growth."

Etc. etc. etc.

Mark Bahner

Just curious since you seem to be the authority on what counts as science. No prediction - no science huh?

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

On collecting moths of the Amazon: In fact, paleontologists were long stung by the charge that they were "stamp-collectors," not "real" scientists.  But their recent redefining emphases on evolutionary biology and systematics, and on paleoecology, have presumably given them a more respectable position.

Are the naturalists who collect moths of the Amazon true scientists?  Well, as with paleontologists, and cosmologists inventorying and cataloguing the contents of the universe, there is a serious part of science that is engaged in the collection of data.  There is a predictive aspect to what the collectors are up to.  The discovery in the Amazon of a moth that was previously found only in the Himalayas would be rather startling.

Surely much of the work of historical economists is like that.

As for the two discoveries related to Earth history in Mark Bahner's list, the Chicxulub crater at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary, and the fossil remains of the Late Jurassic "missing link" between reptiles and birds, Archaeopteryx lithographica, it should be remembered that those discoveries were not strictly predicted, as though the discoveries definitely would happen.  They are indeed consistent with certain theories, and they offer evidence powerfully supporting those theories; but the theories themselves would not be put into doubt solely if those discoveries had not been made.

The same thing is true with the fascinating recent discovery in Nunavut of the Devonian lobe-finned (sarcopterygian) fish, transitioning into a form that must be very similar to that of the earliest tetrapod, Tiktaalik.  Apparently the creationists have been attacking its importance as a "missing link."  But they misunderstand why it is important.  The theory of evolution is already very secure, as is the specific theory about the descent of tetrapods from sarcopterygians.  The discovery of Tiktaalik does not "prove" those theories.  But it is very important for shedding light on many details of what we had already known in a more general way.

On the other hand, paleontologists, whose work is radically founded in the theory of evolution and accept the reliability of the chronological sequence of strata and the characteristic life forms appropriate to the various periods, definitely make a negative prediction, that they will NOT find fossils associated with one time period in strata set down at another period.  So, for example, if a fossilized gorilla were to be discovered in a Late-Jurassic stegosaur quarry, that would be profoundly disquieting.

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

Mark - Really an interesting leap from apple > ground to economic growth > (free) human mind. I know what an apple is, and the ground; I think I have a reasonable concept of what people mean by economic growth; what the hell would be the working definition of a (free) human mind that's not based entirely on ideology?.

A construct without functional, non-ideological definitions is not in any sense of the term falsifiable. This is exactly where some economists seem all too ready to fall off the edge of a scientific methodology.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

You've got me backwards if you think I undervalue observers of nature (and humanity).  I think there is HUGE value in that.

Not only that, I am not convinced that those who branch out to prediction are unnecessarily the wisest.

Many of us observe that when question X is fuzzy it might be wise to pass on prediction, but the TV producer will keep dialing, and get a guest who "knows."

Sorry to be pugnacious. I looked at your Random Thoughts blog and can't discern your credentials or profession. Forgive the question if it is intrusive. It's just that when someone makes claims like you have, I'd sort of like to know what authority backs those up. If we are to have a discussion on what counts as science or not science, we should be able to disclose where we are coming from. Opinion or practice, you know.

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

Mark, I think you've just demonstrated that the definitions of freedom (or (free)dom) you have at your disposal are multiple and relative, not singular and absolute as your post suggests, and those which are relevant to your argument are, yes, largely ideologically based. For example, I think you'd find it hard to find consensus that "an absolute right of property ownership" (primary methodology of your first link) is an objective measure of human freedom. Your second link with its emphasis on political and civil liberties is more mainstream but appears to display no plausible connection with your original contentious hypothesis.

Not that this matters very much as that hypothesis is in itself entirely circular and self-referential. As a reminder:

"Economic growth is caused by (free) human minds.  Therefore, the more (free) human minds--or their computer equivalents--that exist, the greater will be the rate of economic growth."

In other words, "economic growth is generated by those individuals and machines which generate economic growth. The more of them there are, the more of it there will be." Falsifiable? Maybe. Worth the trouble? Not for the purposes of an intelligent discussion of how much economic growth is good for us (as opposed to how much of it can possibly be made to happen). Sorry - looks like just one more example of an ideologically-inspired economistical non-contribution to addressing the most critical environmental issue in human history.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

It's one of the oldest, tiredest, lamest rhetorical tactics on the internet.  Just plain stupid.  Put your money where your mouth is, cry the trolls.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Mark Bahner makes this false and unhelpful distinction:

<<
Science is about who is right and who is wrong.  Authority is a matter for religion, not science.
>>

Mark apparently fails to understand the many, complex ways in which we use the term "authority."

Questions of authority arise in most, if not all, human relationships, at one point or another.  Something so simple and every-day as the kind of friendly, cooperative conversations that we engage in could not take place, without our implicitly agreeing that sometimes it is right to assert authoritatively, sometimes to acquiesce.

"Religion" is a royal red herring, thrown out to draw off people who suffer from ignorant prejudices.  The world is full of all kinds of religions, religious practices and religious behaviors, reflecting all kinds of general human behaviors and attitudes, for better or worse.  By no means do all religions exhibit the hierarchical, obscurantist assertion of private revelation that is found in certain historical forms of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  Nor is it fair to charge all Jews, Christians and Muslims with obscurantism, or craven acquiescence to hierarchs, or uncritical and exclusivist devotion to revealed texts.

By contrast, "science," in principle, ought to be the most democratic, candid, translucent and transparent of all paths to knowledge.  In fact, in the way it is actually practised, perhaps necessarily so, it is an academic or techical discipline, like so many others.  And therefore the master/disciple relationship, one of authority, is fundamental.

Also, inasmuch as one sense of "science" is "what scientists say about the universe," we cannot help noticing the vast complex system of authority that keeps those scientists talking: advanced educations, global communications networks, unspeakably cutting-edge specialized ultra-limited-access technology, positions of power in professional institutions, all of which is supported by lots and lots and lots of wealth.  Is it any wonder that there are a few simple folk who, every now and then, for brief moments, actually find themselves doubting the authority of scientists?

Aren't scientists supposed to be just simple folk themselves?

Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.

...don't usually design machines with the idea that a part of that machine will somehow become 100 times more efficient in X amount of time.  In other words, you don't go into a design meeting with a box at a crucial stage of the machinery, and say, "I don't know what this is now, but I'm sure that it will work wonderfully in a couple of years".  You would be laughed out of the room.  

The same applies to the extremely complex machinery known as the biosphere and global economy.  We have to work with what we have now, not what may be.  My father was engaged in fusion research for 30 years, and while maybe a solution to that problem is "right around the corner", it could easily be another 30 years before anything comes of it. You don't know.  We've been using the internal combustion engine for over 100 years, even though the only reason it survived into the 20th century, much less the 21st, is because of the miraculous properties of oil.

So I'm sure you're a fine engineer, just try to let the two parts of your brain talk to each other.

For the wealthiest, it means the ability to exploit others as mere receptacles of labor-power.

For the relatively well-off, it's the consolation prize of a consumer lifestyle as compensation for a life working meaninglessly in the circulation sphere.  Go, sports teams!

For the bottom 40%, it means the "right" to leverage nothing into nothing, since said 40% has only labor power at too low a market value to count for much beyond mere survival.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

Appeal to authority, yes Canis.  A much overused informal fallacy.  It is implied in the subtext of most very important pronouncements by most VIPs.

Science should instead be about dialectic discovery.  The best science is, but most science now is for sale to the highest bidding industry group or government agency.

List the conclusions you expect, then watch the applicants swarm to provide them.  Successful "scientists" know how to play along.  throw out data that doesn't match the expected conclusion as "anomalies".  That is how drug safety clinical trials are conducted.  Convenient!

Expert scientific opinion is vital, but the way it is usually used transforms it into the fallacious.  Appeal to authority.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Humans, as individuals, are imperfect.  Human institutions, as a natural result, are imperfect.  Science is nice because its central framework is designed to compensate for a variety of our flaws.  It is supposed to compensate for argument from authority as well as bad logic, bad data, etc., etc.

Critics of science like to focus on the errors, the cheats, the times science has lost its way ... but you know, at least science is trying.

To return to the theme of this, I think hard science tries harder, and that there is less self-deception there than in the more "social" sciences ... but as I link above, there are whole (good) books on that.

I think hard science tries harder, and that there is less self-deception there than in the more "social" sciences

Deception in the social science serves a purpose, and that purpose isn't self-deception.  Social scientists can operationalize anything, make up relationships in any arbitrary way (using chi-squared if necessary to force the statistics into place), or start with any fallacious notions they care to name, in order to justify whatever social order they think will be good for the rest of us.  It's propaganda, then.

On this thread the big mathematical manipulation is "GDP," which is in fact a sum of prices, which are in themselves the measurement of no real material entities but rather a set of relationships between buyers and sellers as regards their fetishism of commodities.

The purveyors of "GDP" would have you believe that a high-intensity, high-consumption lifestyle would be better than a low-intensity, low-consumption lifestyle because the former generates more "GDP."  Myself, I'd choose the latter, as being healthier.  

The most arbitrary concept I've seen in this thread is that of "economic freedom," defined as the freedom of the rich to dominate the rest of us.  Everyone's "economic freedom" is of course the freedom to leverage what they've got, but "economic slavery" (the fate of those of us with nothing that would attract the attention of the all-sacred market) isn't something measured by the purveyors of "economic freedom," who simply look at the rights of the possessors of capital to penetrate markets, without heed to social context.

Imagine a similar concept: "military freedom," defined as the right of militaries to conduct war wherever they so choose.  Would that be a fun use of brainpower?  

Thus my argument that one can have all of the brainpower in the world to devote to a problem, yet be completely stymied by adherence to the wrong initial premises.

http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus

But it seems you put a lot of weight into the authority of Ray Kurzweil.

I put no weight on the authority of Ray Kurzweil.  I've read large parts of a couple of his books (The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near) and many of his Internet articles or debates.  It's his detailed research that impresses me, not who he is.  I'm persuaded by his evidence, not his authority.  

As to the issue of wealth creation and energy, my own contention is that wealth comes from the capture and use of free energy.

Again, look at North Korea vs South Korea.  The former East Germany vs the former West Germany.  Taiwan vs Mainland China (or Mainland China vs Hong Kong).  One say that South Korea, West Germany, Taiwan, and Hong Kong had better "capture and use of free energy" (although I'm not even sure what that means).  But could you PREDICT that they would have that better use?  What is predictive is that South Korea, West Germany, Taiwan, and Hong Kong all had more economic freedom than their counterparts.  

It's obvious that this simple fact hurts everyone here, but it's still a simple fact.  Free human minds (especially economically free human minds) are what create wealth.

Our technologies are also the source of our non-biological wastes. These are building up at an exponential pace.

This is simply not true.  Both air and water pollution in the U.S. have significantly declined in the last 3 decades.  They have not increased...let alone increased "exponentially."

What else should we expect from this scenario?

Your "scenario" is just that...it has nothing to do with present trends.  Again, air pollution and water pollution in the U.S. have declined (significantly) in the last 3 decades.

Mark Bahner

Another great freemarketeerian analysis!  God's own freedom, freeing corporate citizens from any and all regulation will save us all.

Abolish government, if you want representation become a shareholder.  That's the new freedom.

Like those KBR gang rapists evidently have.  Total freedom!  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Another great freemarketeerian analysis!  God's own freedom, freeing corporate citizens from any and all regulation will save us all. Abolish government, if you want representation become a shareholder.  That's the new freedom.

I guess I should be charitable right before Christmas, but it's always kinda funny to me how religious people go ballistic, and say completely loony things, when their religious beliefs are confronted with conflicting scientific evidence.

Mark Bahner

That's a great idea.  Hmmm...maybe a tax free church could bring on this freemarketeer paradise.

Jesus was a freemarketeerian?  Sure, why not.  That's fairly close to the Bushco religion.

Gaaawd gave the earth to corporations to add to their bottomline and thus expand his own gaaawd given freedom to heathen nations (only with valuable minerals or oil under them though).

Gaaawd speaks through your fearless leader.  He said that at an amish community meeting during the last appointment (don't call it an election)cycle.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

  Everything is connected.  economists make their predictions by disconnecting human activity from the eco-sphere.  That's why they come up with these overly rosy predictions of continued economic growth.  

   Let's inject a little common sense into this picture.  At the present rate of fishing, there will be nothing left within fifty years.  That means a lot of people are going to go hungry.  

    But what about fish farms? The problem is that those fish have to be fed too.  Either you get the feed from wild fish or from agriculture.  If we run out of fish then the first option is out.  If we grow the feed then we are competing for land use with food for humans.

    But global warming will lead to bigger more extended droughts which means more land, especially in the tropics is going to turn from productive farmland into desert.  Canada and Russia may be able to increase food production because they are far enough north.  But what happens to all the people in the tropics?  The refugee problem will cause wars and political instability.  Think Sudan and Rwanda on a global scale.  

    There was one economist who did see the connections -  Malthus.  He didn't take into account technological change so he has been proven wrong for the last two hundred years.    Technology has prolonged human life and created untold efficiencies,  leading to economic growth and higher standards of living.

   The question is, can technology keep producing this miracle of increasing productivity?  The common sense answer is no. We cannot keep extracting resources unsustainably and damaging the environment without some kind of payback down the road.  

    We don't know when that day will come.  Global warming appears to be showing us that it may be sooner than we think. Common sense tells us when we don't have any fish in the sea or enough crops to eat that all the computing power in the world isn't going to make any difference to the outcome.  

Economists make their predictions by disconnecting human activity from the eco-sphere.  That's why they come up with these overly rosy predictions of continued economic growth.

Actually, 99% of economists underestimate the likely growth in the 21st century.  Averaged over the century, the world economy will likely grow by over 7 percent per year (adjusted for inflation).  Most of the growth over 7 percent per year will probably come after 2030, however.  This is because most economists don't appreciate the likely economic impacts of computers equaling and then vastly exceeding the capabilities of the human mind.

Let's inject a little common sense into this picture.  At the present rate of fishing, there will be nothing left within fifty years.  That means a lot of people are going to go hungry.

No, that's wrong on several accounts.  Most importantly, food from the sea is not presently a signficant source of calories for homosapiens.  Worldwide, approximately 5 percent of protein consumed by humans comes from fish.

But global warming will lead to bigger more extended droughts which means more land, especially in the tropics is going to turn from productive farmland into desert.

What productive farmland in the tropics do you think will turn into desert?

There was one economist who did see the connections -  Malthus.  He didn't take into account technological change so he has been proven wrong for the last two hundred years.

Yes, he's been proven wrong.  So why mention him?

The question is, can technology keep producing this miracle of increasing productivity?  The common sense answer is no.

No, the commonsense answer is "yes."  You've just noted that Malthus has been wrong for more than 200 years.  The commonsense conclusion is that he'll be wrong for the next 200 years also.  Especially considering the current trends in food production, medicine, and computers.  (Not to mention energy technologies such as photovoltaics.)

Mark Bahner