September 6, 2005
Revisiting the Easter Island mathematical modeling
Dr. William Basener, whose approach to modeling a societal collapse I wrote about a few days ago, left me some comments, but they got truncated for some reason, so I asked him to continue. He responded, and what he has to say is so extensive (not to mention interesting) that I opted to turn it into a feature article. I hope he doesn’t mind; it’s quite fascinating and readable.
I’ve always found the the behind the scenes stuff more interesting than the press release itself. Come on inside and check it out!
Q&A with Dr. William Basener on his Easter Island collapse model
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Can you extrapolate this information to find where today’s society is?
(hueblur would like me to note that he didn’t realize that this question had already been answered. -Rian)
Comment by hueblur — September 6, 2005 @ 10:50 pm
That’s the hope. The nice thing about math is that its portable - you count apples and oranges with the same integers.
On the other hand, population models of humans tend to be wrong. Oh that darn free will. There have been many predictions of impending collapse or mass starvation. One of the earliest was by Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798. He contended that exponential growth of a population will eventually outstrip the polynomial growth of resources. Hence, there will come an unavoidable day when the world will have more people than food. However, he missed the exponential growth of technology, which so far has more than made up for the growth in population.
This fear keeps returning in different forms of prediction of impending doomsday, and every time has been confounded by technological advances. It seems the human spirit for invention has outpaced the human spirit for reporduction. Recently, in the late 1970’s, Paul Ehlrich predicted a collapse by 1990 in his book “The Population Bomb.” The collapse never came, and people are better fed and better off on average now than ever. The only thing that I can say for sure is that if you are going to predict the end of the world then you’d better predict it to happen after you expect to die; If you happen to be right then there will be no one to congratulate you and if you are wrong then then there will be everyone to blame you.
There is a great article about the debate between those believing in an impending disaster and those believing in human ability to overcome at:
http://www.dynamist.com/tfaie/bibliographyArticles/tierneybet.html
There is one other thing that can be said for sure. It is difficult to imagine the Earth supporting more than about 1 trillion people. (At the present rate of doubling every 43 years, we hit 1 trillion between 2350 and 2400.) One Trillion is roughly the number of people that could be supported if all of the power from the sun was consumed directly by humans. (We consume the sun’s energy, but its turned into an edible product by plants.) See the great book “How Many People Can the Earth Support? ” by Joel Cohen. He has a nice description of many of the failed predictions of impending doom.
But then I really haven’t answered the question. I think our model would be useful in looking at a local population. In present times, I think that the interconnectedness between nations would soften a collapse in a given region.
Take Hati, for instance. They have little money and have been cutting down their trees at an enormous rate. The country certainly won’t crash the way Easter Island did - they do have other resources. But they are headed for some sort of collapse, or would be without outside help. Here is a quote:
“These days, many Haitians — and indeed much of the rest of the developing world — face a stark choice: protecting the environment or eating. If it weren’t for foreign aid, Haiti could never support its population.”
http://www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/08/kavanagh-collapse/
My hope for use of our model would to assist in predict oncoming disaster earlier. Its easy to see Haiti is in trouble now, but could we have predicted it earlier?
Comment by Bill Basener — September 7, 2005 @ 11:33 pm
So when Dr William Basener says this…
“One Trillion is roughly the number of people that could be supported if all of the power from the sun was consumed directly by humans.”
Does he mean specifically luminescent energy sources? This would by the way mean constructing a dyson sphere to completely surround the sun and thus all life on Earth would be affected quite seriously anyway…
Also specifically speaking the Sun does exert a lo of energy on the Earth in a purely gravitational manner such as Tidal forces (Sun on the moon and earth plus the moon on the earth) and the molten cores hence geothermal energy and I’m wondering if this is being taken into account also.
I’m not saying the numbers are wrong I’m just wondering if they are also taking these factors and quite possibly many others also into account.
Comment by Tim — September 8, 2005 @ 5:45 pm
1 trillion is the number Joel Cohen uses. He quotes it from another source. It takes into account the energy from the sun that hits the earth - no dyson spheres. But then you could concievably add more people by using a nuclear power plant to create food, say by powering grow lights or something more efficient. The problem with predicitng technological advances is that they haven’t been invented yet.
By the way, Peter Turchin has written several books on using mathematics (dynamical systems)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-7344400-8377638to understand the rise and fall of empires. Its the closest thing to Seldon’s plan that I’ve seen. In the end, human populations tend to confound predictions. There are too many parameters that are difficult to approximate. Asimov fans will enjoy reading the intros and reviews of Turchin’s books on Amazon.com. I saw psycohistory mentioned somewhere - the thoght does come up.
CEO wages seem to have the inverse of a crash! Economics does say a lot about wages and trade. I am not sure about our model - I’d expect other people already have more appropriate models. But, if there is a cycle leading to a crash then our model could be useful. I don’t know enough economics in general. Which is part of the reason I always say its good for people in diverse fields to work together.
Comment by Bill Basener — September 8, 2005 @ 10:16 pm
I, personally, would say a CEO’s salary must be an inverse to a crash period infact especially during a time of crisis the salaries for experienced and intelligent CEO’s would be in even more demand as befitting men and women of their ability and experience.
A crash period is a time of crisis and a CEO that can steer a company through a period of crisis should receive remuneration accordingly as CEO’s who can do this… Well it’s good old economics in action again. In addition because of their position they can personally react faster to a changing market dynamic than people outside of the loop (for want of a better choice of words.)
So throw in experience, better ability at making economic and financial decisions and access to more detailed information regarding economic factors either for the company or the market segment as a whole and you’re going to either get someone who can steer a company through very very troubled times and thus they will be rewarded accordingly OR from a purely selfish perspective someone who can then exploit the situation to their own benefit and maximising their own profit potential. Either way the CEO comes out doing much better than the average joe.
This is merely a byproduct of the pharaonic model of authority, if you don’t like it then, well that’s the way it works in companies right now, other models may work but I doubt people will want to risk their money in it unless they’re real idealists.
Comment by Tim — September 9, 2005 @ 12:17 pm
[...] Update: There is a Q&A with Dr. Basener here. [...]
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