A good reminder to thoroughly vet our sources. Note that the word "Malthusian" is used as a pejorative to characterize someone as being in favor of depopulation, advocating anything from limiting human reproduction, to active extermination of the asserted but unspecified "surplus." However, the term could more neutrally be applied to someone who simply believes that there are limits to the population size that the planet's resources are capable of supporting.
Yes. As often, if the message is not as palatable as we would like, better kill the messenger...
BTW, I'm very interested in Peter Turchin's work and his structural-demographic theory where the Malthusian component is taken into account without explaining the whole historical dynamic.
Strangely, no one is trolling J. B. Calhoun because its work was far more dark and pessimistic compared to Matthäus and predicting fare more pain, starvation, madness and general disorder....
The Universe 25 experiment is quite interesting, you can read about it on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink) but is quite more interesting if dig the sources: he never expected that his finds are directly applicable to society but that can still be a source of study for similarities and a lot of discussions are about observations and conjectures never expressed in the author paperwork, overpopulation was never reached but technically could be happened only in the control group that had periodical culling (in subsequent experiments, https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1429/) and finally is interesting that resources was never considered as a trigger to aberrant behavior, but that was perceived density of the population (crowd can be maintained by sinking "used space" of the colony, not sure but some graph seems to suggest it).
For real "culling programs" we had seen them only when a population is looking for quick wealth gains, usually is a form of "barbaric invasion"...... We can clearly see that in the fall of Rome but also during a lot of European expansion phase and generally on any expansion, Rome first was quite barbaric during his expansion if we just consider that his "founding fathers" were proud of going to abduct other, more civilized, cultures women (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women).
Modern time give options for more spectacular events and a bit of efficiency thanks to technology, but paradoxically we got less destructive with time, the impact on population of war is constantly declining if we look at statistical relevance: a tribal skirmish that kill a couple of warriors is quite significant because a tribe is 20-40 (10%-5% of the population of the tribe) units but a "total war" like the 2 WW only in extreme cases did the same percentage of damage to a population!
Reality is far from us, we as human need some simplified version of it and we cling to that illusion of understanding that our internalized representation give us! Usually humans are quite willing to kill for making their illusion to stand against reality and also often willing to sacrifice themselves to it (voluntary soldiers during 2 WW....), religions usually try to give a representation that is tailored to reduce the worst of our more destructive instincts but almost always after the initial phase a religion become a propaganda machine used.
Politician sell dreams like writers, filmmakers and entertainers that are, if successful, some of the wealthiest professions and to successful sell dreams you must live in it, our society pays them to do so and a lot so we can argue that we collectively want to stay away to reality!
This reminds of an interesting set of experiments in the 60-70s by John Calhoun. Do you think they can be applied to the our realities especially East Asia? For example South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world.
I had read the Corbet piece, too, and since Malthus and I aren't really close, it left me wondering if my impressions were all wrong.
I'm happy to read your rebuttal, strengthening my previous impression that Malthus was a wise and kind person who was simply ahead of his time… and that he couldn't have possibly predicted the powerful impact fossil fuel would have on population dynamics.
In short, humans have become detritivores, subsisting on 250,000,000 year-old dead things — which we are quickly running out of.
Fact is that "the true" is what "everyone" believes, but in "reality" truth is that to be discovered with our rationality to unveil the false scheme that humans power try to indict to a doom society.
It's funny how our lives are infinitesimal slivers of cosmic time, and since we're programmed to both think short term and believe we're the most important being in the universe, we can't see beyond humanity's little sliver in time and mistake our 78 years or whatever as forever. When someone rightly points out that civilization's trajectory isn't going to work out, but their predictions don't come to pass within 12 minutes, they're dismissed as a fraud.
If you can link to someone criticizing Malthus and claiming that infinite population growth is possible, I'd like to read it. That seems like a strawman characterization of Malthus's critics, something that fits Ugo's reader's tastes and thus can be passed along without attribution knowing it won't be challenged.
I’m not interested in your overly vivid but unsubstantiated stereotypes. I don’t doubt that you engage in low-quality conversations with people making inflated claims. That doesn’t invalidate all possible criticisms of Malthus.
You’re doing exactly what Bardi is criticizing in this post. You assume that the people reading this Substack share your prejudices, so you can state those prejudices as if they were verifiable facts and the people here will agree with you and hold you in high esteem for articulating their prejudices for them.
“Any lie goes once it is printed, and it suits the taste of readers.”
"Limits to Growth" was purposely non-specific about dates.
Searching the original for "2050," for example yielded no "hard" claims about that date, only saying things like "By the year 2050, several more minerals may be exhausted if the current rate of consumption continues." (page 57)
Several follow-on studies have put dates to the curves, notably those by Graham Turner. Just last year, a "recalibration"† corrected some data that was close, but not directly on, the curves, finding this caused a steepening of the corresponding down-slope.
As Niehls Bohr said, "Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future." LtG said vague things about "mid century" without naming specific dates. But as we get closer, data are lining up nicely and the dates of the main phase reversal is becoming more clear.
But even these predictions are only confident about the magnitude, not the slope. We can say with some confidence that we'll run out of cheap oil in the next few years, but it's really difficult to say what happens when the curve changes direction!
† Nebel, A., Kling, A., Willamowski, R., & Schell, T. (2023). Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13442
A good reminder to thoroughly vet our sources. Note that the word "Malthusian" is used as a pejorative to characterize someone as being in favor of depopulation, advocating anything from limiting human reproduction, to active extermination of the asserted but unspecified "surplus." However, the term could more neutrally be applied to someone who simply believes that there are limits to the population size that the planet's resources are capable of supporting.
I'll proudly wear that label!
Generally, when people create an unfair negative association with something, it means you're getting under their skin. That's "a good thing."
Yes. As often, if the message is not as palatable as we would like, better kill the messenger...
BTW, I'm very interested in Peter Turchin's work and his structural-demographic theory where the Malthusian component is taken into account without explaining the whole historical dynamic.
I plead guilty to flip-flopping between Turchin and Tainter, depending on which is closer to the point I am trying to make.
In reality, there's not a lot of difference between "an over-production of elites" and "an excess of complexity," no?
Yes. I guess this is more or less the same phenomenon. Or at least, it goes hand in hand.
Strangely, no one is trolling J. B. Calhoun because its work was far more dark and pessimistic compared to Matthäus and predicting fare more pain, starvation, madness and general disorder....
The Universe 25 experiment is quite interesting, you can read about it on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink) but is quite more interesting if dig the sources: he never expected that his finds are directly applicable to society but that can still be a source of study for similarities and a lot of discussions are about observations and conjectures never expressed in the author paperwork, overpopulation was never reached but technically could be happened only in the control group that had periodical culling (in subsequent experiments, https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/1429/) and finally is interesting that resources was never considered as a trigger to aberrant behavior, but that was perceived density of the population (crowd can be maintained by sinking "used space" of the colony, not sure but some graph seems to suggest it).
For real "culling programs" we had seen them only when a population is looking for quick wealth gains, usually is a form of "barbaric invasion"...... We can clearly see that in the fall of Rome but also during a lot of European expansion phase and generally on any expansion, Rome first was quite barbaric during his expansion if we just consider that his "founding fathers" were proud of going to abduct other, more civilized, cultures women (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_the_Sabine_Women).
Modern time give options for more spectacular events and a bit of efficiency thanks to technology, but paradoxically we got less destructive with time, the impact on population of war is constantly declining if we look at statistical relevance: a tribal skirmish that kill a couple of warriors is quite significant because a tribe is 20-40 (10%-5% of the population of the tribe) units but a "total war" like the 2 WW only in extreme cases did the same percentage of damage to a population!
Reality is far from us, we as human need some simplified version of it and we cling to that illusion of understanding that our internalized representation give us! Usually humans are quite willing to kill for making their illusion to stand against reality and also often willing to sacrifice themselves to it (voluntary soldiers during 2 WW....), religions usually try to give a representation that is tailored to reduce the worst of our more destructive instincts but almost always after the initial phase a religion become a propaganda machine used.
Politician sell dreams like writers, filmmakers and entertainers that are, if successful, some of the wealthiest professions and to successful sell dreams you must live in it, our society pays them to do so and a lot so we can argue that we collectively want to stay away to reality!
This reminds of an interesting set of experiments in the 60-70s by John Calhoun. Do you think they can be applied to the our realities especially East Asia? For example South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world.
https://youtu.be/ampmkFrD33Q?si=9T8d9kUc3pWL5tzE
Thanks Ugo.
People feed their memes junk food these days.
Junk food causes great harm.
;-(
Thank you for this, Ugo!
I had read the Corbet piece, too, and since Malthus and I aren't really close, it left me wondering if my impressions were all wrong.
I'm happy to read your rebuttal, strengthening my previous impression that Malthus was a wise and kind person who was simply ahead of his time… and that he couldn't have possibly predicted the powerful impact fossil fuel would have on population dynamics.
In short, humans have become detritivores, subsisting on 250,000,000 year-old dead things — which we are quickly running out of.
Malthus will be vindicated.
Maybe in a very poor thought!
Fact is that "the true" is what "everyone" believes, but in "reality" truth is that to be discovered with our rationality to unveil the false scheme that humans power try to indict to a doom society.
It's funny how our lives are infinitesimal slivers of cosmic time, and since we're programmed to both think short term and believe we're the most important being in the universe, we can't see beyond humanity's little sliver in time and mistake our 78 years or whatever as forever. When someone rightly points out that civilization's trajectory isn't going to work out, but their predictions don't come to pass within 12 minutes, they're dismissed as a fraud.
If you can link to someone criticizing Malthus and claiming that infinite population growth is possible, I'd like to read it. That seems like a strawman characterization of Malthus's critics, something that fits Ugo's reader's tastes and thus can be passed along without attribution knowing it won't be challenged.
I’m not interested in your overly vivid but unsubstantiated stereotypes. I don’t doubt that you engage in low-quality conversations with people making inflated claims. That doesn’t invalidate all possible criticisms of Malthus.
You’re doing exactly what Bardi is criticizing in this post. You assume that the people reading this Substack share your prejudices, so you can state those prejudices as if they were verifiable facts and the people here will agree with you and hold you in high esteem for articulating their prejudices for them.
“Any lie goes once it is printed, and it suits the taste of readers.”
"Limits to Growth" was purposely non-specific about dates.
Searching the original for "2050," for example yielded no "hard" claims about that date, only saying things like "By the year 2050, several more minerals may be exhausted if the current rate of consumption continues." (page 57)
(You can download it and look it over yourself! http://www.donellameadows.org/wp-content/userfiles/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf)
Several follow-on studies have put dates to the curves, notably those by Graham Turner. Just last year, a "recalibration"† corrected some data that was close, but not directly on, the curves, finding this caused a steepening of the corresponding down-slope.
As Niehls Bohr said, "Prediction is very difficult, especially of the future." LtG said vague things about "mid century" without naming specific dates. But as we get closer, data are lining up nicely and the dates of the main phase reversal is becoming more clear.
But even these predictions are only confident about the magnitude, not the slope. We can say with some confidence that we'll run out of cheap oil in the next few years, but it's really difficult to say what happens when the curve changes direction!
† Nebel, A., Kling, A., Willamowski, R., & Schell, T. (2023). Recalibration of limits to growth: An update of the World3 model. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/jiec.13442