PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

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5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY forecasted trajectory and the actual course more striking. At face value this would imply that the miracle drug in this case had no real effect! I found this conclusion so disturbing that I went to the library to read about the antidiphtheric vaccine. It was not an inspired discovery. Researchers had been working on it for decades with progressive success both in Europe and the United States. Early, less efficient versions of the vaccine had been employed on large samples of the population. The more I read, the clearer the emerging conclusion became. The development of the vaccine had itself gone through a natural-growth process over many years, and what we see in Figure 5.3 is the combined evolution of disease and vaccine. Medicine was not the disease’s only enemy. Diphtheria’s decline must also be attributed to improvements in living conditions, diet, hygiene, or simply education. Moreover, fast growing new diseases, such as cancer, claimed increasing shares of the constraining overall death toll. The fully developed vaccine helped regulate the exit of diphtheria rather than eliminate it instantly. Individuals would still die from it, but epidemic outbursts where whole villages were decimated could now be prevented. The vaccine’s history is intertwined with the disease’s phasing out. The progressive realization of the antidiphtheric vaccine can be seen both as cause and effect of the phasing out process. A situation similar to diphtheria is found with tuberculosis. The medical breakthroughs that had an impact on this disease include the development of antibiotics and, of course, the B.C.G. (Bacillus- Calmette-Guérin) vaccine. The first human experiment with the tuberculosis vaccine was done in 1921 in France, but ten years later its safety was still disputed by experts such as the distinguished American bacteriologist S.A. Petroff.5 Reliable curative antituberculosis drugs became available only in the mid-1950s. Which one should be labeled the “miracle” drug is not obvious. What is clear for tuberculosis, however, just as it was for diphtheria, is that the disease has been continuously losing ground to other diseases since 1900. Repeating the diphtheria exercise I graphed the percentage of all annual deaths attributed to tuberculosis from 1900 onward. Then I fitted a growth curve to the historical window 1900 to 1931, before penicillin, antibiotics, vaccine, and curative drugs. The projection of this curve agreed impressively well with the data of a much later period, the post-1955 116
5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE THE SAME WAY THE PREPROGRAMMED DECLINE OF DIPHTHERIA FIGURE 5.3 Deaths due to diphtheria in the United States. The large dot is the 9-year average around World War I. The S-curve fit is on data only up to 1933, the year the vaccine was officially introduced on a large scale. years. Such an agreement must be attributed to a lucky coincidence. Several similar S-curves could have been accommodated within the uncertainties of the fitting procedure, but all of them would display the same general pattern. The data points after effective medication became 117
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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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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK looks like
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK documentat
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK MESOPOTAMI
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2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK derstandin
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3. INANIMATE PRODUCTION LIKE ANIMAT
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3. INANIMATE PRODUCTION LIKE ANIMAT
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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