PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

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5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY simple rule for what makes optimists and pessimists, I would say that it is the relative position on the growth life cycle. Before the peak one is optimistic; after the peak the very same events take on a pessimistic hue. There has been controversy about the future of the United States. Its power is said to be on the decline, attributable to a variety of social economic, and political causes, including degenerating morals, a thesis which can provoke chicken-and-egg arguments in response, questioning which is the cause and which the effect. I would like to propose an observational approach toward decline without trying to explain the reasons that cause it. The only justification for it would be an existential one: Decline must follow because growth preceded. The when and how are details to be estimated through close examination of whatever observables may correlate to the life cycle in question. One such observation is the intellectual strength of a country as it can be measured by the number of its citizens who excel; for example, the number of Nobel prize awards. We saw in last chapter that the growth of an individual’s achievement is capped. We also saw that companies learn and innovate like individuals. The next level of generalization is to consider a whole country as one organism that grows, competes, and eventually loses to a newcomer. This would imply that the country’s collective intellectual achievement must also be capped. I am aware that such a hypothesis may be stretching the analogy, but final judgment should not be passed before a confrontation with the real data. The United States can be seen as a niche for Nobel awards, and we can map out the growth of the number of prizes it has received over time. The graph at the top of Figure 5.1 shows the cumulative number of Nobel prizes won by Americans since their conception. Details for this study can be found in an article I published in 1988. 1 All disciplines are put together, and each Nobel laureate is counted as one even if he or she shared the prize with others. An S-curve is then fitted to the data. The agreement between data and curve is good. After determining the function, taking a derivative yields the smooth bell-shaped curve superimposed on the yearly awards data in the bottom of Figure 5.1. This curve depicts the life cycle of the process. At the turn of the 104
5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY FEWER NOBEL PRIZES FOR AMERICANS 350 American Nobel Prize Winners (Cumulative) 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 9 American Nobel Prize Winners (Yearly) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020 2040 FIGURE 5.1 At the top the S-curve fit indicates a “niche” capacity of 350. An actual number of 254 makes this niche 73% exhausted by 2000. At the bottom, the corresponding life cycle is superimposed on the data. The thin dotted lines are from an S-curve fit made in 1988. But taking into account recent data (little white circles) necessitates revising that forecasts upward (see text). 105
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PREDICTIONS - 10 Years Later Ten ye
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Copyright © 2002 by Theodore Modis
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CONTENTS Going West 53 Mesopotamia,
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CONTENTS 10. IF I CAN, I WANT 225 W
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PREFACE This book is about seeing t
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PROLOGUE The fisherman starting his
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PROLOGUE analogy between natural la
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PROLOGUE animal population and foll
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PROLOGUE stead; and those who belie
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1 Science and Foretelling A barman
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING prices,
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING the futu
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING Safety i
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING But exam
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING programm
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING terpreta
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING On the o
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING terms of
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING THE LAW
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING resolved
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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING by hard
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2 Needles in a Haystack HOW MUCH OR
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK able to fi
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK LEARNING F
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK Intel’s
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7. COMPETITION IS THE CREATOR AND T
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT consumption d
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT compare the d
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT seems to puls
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT spikes stand
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT Marchetti fit
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT the predicted
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT according to
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT It is equally
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT Finally, ther
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT Ten Years Lat
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT having the th
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8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT The number fi
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9. REACHING THE CEILING EVERYWHERE
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Ten Years Later 9. REACHING THE CEI
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Ten Years Later 9. REACHING THE CEI
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10 If I Can, I Want Logistic functi
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT ability become
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT Christopher Co
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT The search for
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT look like an S
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT producing chao
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT First commerci
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT In addition to
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT Between two su
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT The state depi
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10. IF I CAN, I WANT to sustain one
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY announced i
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY The “natu
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY In 1975, as
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY The country
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY feedback me
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY States, rec
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY in 1991 pro
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY least four
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY United Stat
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11. FORECASTING DESTINY which would
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EPILOGUE • • • We are in Cent
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EPILOGUE Fads and media stories abo
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APPENDICES 273
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APPENDIX A The Predator-Prey Equati
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APPENDIX A the two varieties will b
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APPENDIX A By assigning weights to
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APPENDIX B As an example, let us co
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APPENDIX C Additional Figures THE N
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APPENDIX C POPULATIONS OF CARS GROW
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APPENDIX C RAILWAY NETWORKS GROW LI
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APPENDIX C GOTHIC CATHEDRALS APPEND
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APPENDIX C OIL PRODUCTION AND DISCO
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APPENDIX C ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1
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APPENDIX C THE BIRTH RATE OF AMERIC
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APPENDIX C 296
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APPENDIX C WORLD WAR II FAVORED TUB
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APPENDIX C THE EXIT OF STEAM ENGINE
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APPENDIX C 302
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APPENDIX C THE DESTRUCTION OF THRES
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APPENDIX C WARS MAY INTERFERE WITH
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APPENDIX C COMPETITION BETWEEN TRAN
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APPENDIX C ANNUAL ENERGY CONSUMPTIO
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APPENDIX C THE GROWTH OF AIR TRAFFI
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APPENDIX C Annual registrations 6,0
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APPENDIX C POPULARIZED DEATHS HAVE
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NOTES AND SOURCES Prologue 1. Donel
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NOTES AND SOURCES the Law Followed
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NOTES AND SOURCES 4. For examples s
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NOTES AND SOURCES bile Road to Tech
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NOTES AND SOURCES 2. For a brief de
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NOTES AND SOURCES Appendix B: Expec
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Bagwell, my initia
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PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute