Thursday, October 04, 2007
on economic and environmental modeling
"We can't know what future technological disruptions may look like. We do know that extension of smooth trend lines, such as in the Limits to Growth or Population Bomb treatments, is always wrong.
Moreover, differentiating between reoccurring and idiosyncratic phenomenon, the essence of generalization and thus modeling, depends on being able to differentiate between that which is stable, including those dynamics that are predictable and repetitive, and that which is unstable.
This becomes problematic, for economic or environmental modeling, when' human social and cultural systems, and their reflexivity and contingency, become important components of the system.
This time creep is also characteristic of environmental and climate change modeling: the general circulation models of climate change have some explanatory power regarding the physical processes behind climate change, and may be accurate so long as relatively stable technological, institutional and social bases can be assumed.
When such models are extended into social and cultural realms over periods of centuries, however, the basic assumption of institutional, technological, social and cultural stability becomes invalid. It is not that the models are "wrong," it is that they are being mistakenly applied beyond the boundary of their validity."
Brad Allenby on Francisco Louka's book "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution"
Moreover, differentiating between reoccurring and idiosyncratic phenomenon, the essence of generalization and thus modeling, depends on being able to differentiate between that which is stable, including those dynamics that are predictable and repetitive, and that which is unstable.
This becomes problematic, for economic or environmental modeling, when' human social and cultural systems, and their reflexivity and contingency, become important components of the system.
This time creep is also characteristic of environmental and climate change modeling: the general circulation models of climate change have some explanatory power regarding the physical processes behind climate change, and may be accurate so long as relatively stable technological, institutional and social bases can be assumed.
When such models are extended into social and cultural realms over periods of centuries, however, the basic assumption of institutional, technological, social and cultural stability becomes invalid. It is not that the models are "wrong," it is that they are being mistakenly applied beyond the boundary of their validity."
Brad Allenby on Francisco Louka's book "As Time Goes By: From the Industrial Revolutions to the Information Revolution"
# posted by Surya Swamy : 10:43 AM
