{"id":9864,"date":"2019-05-22T01:00:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T08:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=9864"},"modified":"2019-05-21T01:01:28","modified_gmt":"2019-05-21T08:01:28","slug":"the-forever-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2019\/05\/22\/the-forever-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"The Forever Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from The Atlantic<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Peculiar Blindness of Experts<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. But reliable forecasting is possible.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by DAVID EPSTEIN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
NA KIM<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The bet was on,\u00a0and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller,\u00a0The Population Bomb<\/em>, Ehrlich insisted that it was too late to prevent a doomsday apocalypse resulting from overpopulation. Resource shortages would cause hundreds of millions of starvation deaths within a decade. It was cold, hard math: The human population was growing exponentially; the food supply was not. Ehrlich was an accomplished butterfly specialist. He knew that nature did not regulate animal populations delicately. Populations exploded, blowing past the available resources, and then crashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book, Ehrlich played out hypothetical scenarios that represented \u201cthe kinds of disasters that will<\/em> occur.\u201d In the worst-case scenario, famine rages across the planet. Russia, China, and the United States are dragged into nuclear war, and the resulting environmental degradation soon extinguishes the human race. In the \u201ccheerful\u201d scenario, population controls begin. Famine spreads, and countries teeter, but the major death wave ends in the mid-1980s. Only half a billion or so people die of starvation. \u201cI challenge you to create one more optimistic,\u201d Ehrlich wrote, adding that he would not count scenarios involving benevolent aliens bearing care packages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The economist Julian Simon took up Ehrlich\u2019s challenge. Technology\u2014water-control techniques, hybridized seeds, management strategies\u2014had revolutionized agriculture, and global crop yields were increasing. To Simon, more people meant more good ideas about how to achieve a sustainable future. So he proposed a wager. Ehrlich could choose five metals that he expected to become more expensive as resources were depleted and chaos ensued over the next decade. Both men agreed that commodity prices were a fine proxy for the effects of population growth, and they set the stakes at $1,000 worth of Ehrlich\u2019s five metals. If, 10 years hence, prices had gone down, Ehrlich would have to pay the difference in value to Simon. If prices went up, Simon would be on the hook for the difference. The bet was made official in 1980.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at The Atlantic<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Atlantic The Peculiar Blindness of Experts Credentialed authorities are comically bad at predicting the future. But reliable forecasting is possible. by DAVID EPSTEIN The bet was on,\u00a0and it was over the fate of humanity. On one side was the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich. In his 1968 best seller,\u00a0The Population Bomb, Ehrlich insisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mirth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9864\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}