The assumption that human behavior and economic system behavior are static is to me the biggest flaw in virtually all of these models that I have seen. It also underlies adjacent panics that arise based on this kind of thinking, like the overpopulation panic. We can see how wrong that was in retrospect, though it may have been right if all behaviors and systems remained static.
I wish the present day underpopulation panic people would get the memo. They are making the exact same errors around mindless extrapolation of present behaviors and trends. Instead of “with these birth rates we will be eating people in 50 years” it’s “with these birth rates we will go extinct!”
There are things to be very concerned about. What happens when you take current behavior and trends and drag it forward on a spreadsheet is not one of them. “If our company continues this growth trajectory we will be worth more than the entire global economy in 25 years!” Every single one of these models and panics is a version of that thinking.
I think a more useful question when faced with such predictions is “how will this not happen?”
I wish the present day underpopulation panic people would get the memo. They are making the exact same errors around mindless extrapolation of present behaviors and trends. Instead of “with these birth rates we will be eating people in 50 years” it’s “with these birth rates we will go extinct!”
There are things to be very concerned about. What happens when you take current behavior and trends and drag it forward on a spreadsheet is not one of them. “If our company continues this growth trajectory we will be worth more than the entire global economy in 25 years!” Every single one of these models and panics is a version of that thinking.
I think a more useful question when faced with such predictions is “how will this not happen?”