Albert Bartlett and The Exponential Function

[blacbloc]

This thread might as much be in the economy forum but here is just as good. I posted this on another website a while ago and it was received with great interest there - am pretty sure it will be of interest to many here too.

A huge amount of food for thought in the Youtube presentation below and it puts a different perspective on the whole economic, oil, population etc conondrum. Nothing like an incontrovertible mathematical equation to concentrate the mind, you'd think. Bartlett masterfully exposes the idiocy of western economic policy and planning. An emeritus Professor of Physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, he has given this presentation about 2,000 times. He's in widespread demand for it in academic circles but, despite its searingly obvious relevance to just about every problem we face, there is not a trace anywhere in government economic or environmental policy that our 'lords and masters' have even begun to understand it - let alone incorporate it in governmental action. Anyway, it's good Sunday morning viewing if you're busy right now glamming up for a night out or whatever. Its about 50 minutes altogether in 8 segments on Youtube:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY]YouTube - The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See (part 1 of 8)[/ame]

See what you think.

[jpc]

This presentation has been posted here a few times.
It is excellent and its no harm to post it again.
Pity more people don't take heed of its implications.
Especially with regard to population growth .
And the falacy of continuous compound growth.

[Geckko]

This guy is nearly as old as Malthus too!! Some additional elementary maths the retired Prof. might consider:

Assymptotes
Dynamic equillibium state

among others.

[blacbloc]

This guy is nearly as old as Malthus too!! Some additional elementary maths the retired Prof. might consider:

Assymptotes
Dynamic equillibium state

among others.

Care to relate them to his theory? Is there something wrong with being older?

[Geckko]

Care to relate them to his theory? Is there something wrong with being older?

Nothing wrong with being old. It was a quip about the age of the theory he is espousing. As a retired physics professor, he is passing his time trying to understand economics which is beyond his pay grade. He should stick to the physics.

Compound growth in population leads to blah blah blah. But this "very basic mathematics" was applied in the same way by Thomas Malthus 200 years ago. He was wrong too.

More recently it was reapplied around 40 years ago, when similalry incredulous academics declared we would be starving to death and out of oil before the end of the 20th century.

He and all those of his ilk (this stuff is as commmon and credible as UFO sightings) should just get some sandwich boards and pound the streets instead "THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING"

[jpc]

Nothing wrong with being old. It was a quip about the age of the theory he is espousing. As a retired physics professor, he is passing his time trying to understand economics which is beyond his pay grade. He should stick to the physics.

Compound growth in population leads to blah blah blah. But this "very basic mathematics" was applied in the same way by Thomas Malthus 200 years ago. He was wrong too.

More recently it was reapplied around 40 years ago, when similalry incredulous academics declared we would be starving to death and out of oil before the end of the 20th century.

He and all those of his ilk (this stuff is as commmon and credible as UFO sightings) should just get some sandwich boards and pound the streets instead "THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING"

Keep shuffling the deckchairs on the Titanic then.
I'd back Malthus and Bartlett over your dismissive optimism.

[advertismo]

[QUOTE=Geckko;1597007]Nothing wrong with being old. It was a quip about the age of the theory he is espousing. As a retired physics professor, he is passing his time trying to understand economics which is beyond his pay grade. He should stick to the physics.
QUOTE]


Economics is Leaving Cert Maths compounded to Infinity by the conditioning factors of human activity. It has as much to do with the psychology of massed groupings of individuals as anything.

Physics is a little more complicated than quantified greed.

[NapperTandy]

Nothing wrong with being old. It was a quip about the age of the theory he is espousing. As a retired physics professor, he is passing his time trying to understand economics which is beyond his pay grade. He should stick to the physics.

Compound growth in population leads to blah blah blah. But this "very basic mathematics" was applied in the same way by Thomas Malthus 200 years ago. He was wrong too.

More recently it was reapplied around 40 years ago, when similalry incredulous academics declared we would be starving to death and out of oil before the end of the 20th century.

He and all those of his ilk (this stuff is as commmon and credible as UFO sightings) should just get some sandwich boards and pound the streets instead "THE END OF THE WORLD IS COMING"

Malthus wasn't necessarily wrong. He was probably 200 years out on his prediction. He failed to anticipate the huge increase in agricultural yields. It has gone up five fold since he made his prediction

[wombat]

I only watched the 1st video which I thought was a pretty good attempt at visualising exponential growth. Regarding its application to anything, the point is that unchecked exponential growth of anything gets out of control very quickly. Usually where people are involved, something happens to stop the growth - as in property bubble.

[Geckko]

Malthus wasn't necessarily wrong. He was probably 200 years out on his prediction. He failed to anticipate the huge increase in agricultural yields. It has gone up five fold since he made his prediction

So you are saying Malthus might be right, because he was wrong (i.e. food production didn't increase in a linear fashion that we said it would). That is just a stupid statement.

Don't forget the demographics either. The countries which Malths was basing his predictions (i.e. Europe) have shown clear signs of assymptotic growth, which leads to an assymptotic ceiling on population.

Population growth in those same countries now is wholly down to immigration (France, Germany, UK).

Now the countries from which those people are coming and which are still showing higher rates of growth (still in an explosive phase) will also show the same trends over time. They become wealthier and fertility rates decline (meaning people prefer to have have fewer children). It is a proven relationship and the second reason why Malthus and this guy are wrong.

Simply, the mathematical models they are were and using are far too simple to describe what actually happens:

Food production grows in an exponential fashion
Population grows in a convergent assmymptotic fashion.