PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT
seems to pulsate with roughly the same beat. The data are the same as in
Figure 7.2 of the last chapter.
Here again one may be tempted to establish a causal relationship.
The technologies for discovering and separating elements could themselves
be linked to the basic innovations and therefore would display the
same pattern. The picture becomes more intriguing, however, when one
notices that innovation and discoveries peak during periods of recession
and disinvestment, as can be evidenced by the graph at the bottom that
charts bank failures. The data on banks for the three periods shown
come from different sources. For 1933 and the few preceding years the
percentage of failures is unreliable. One thing is known, however: The
number was high. Fifty-six years later, circa the late 1980s, the percentage
increased in a similar way. For 1988 and 1989 1.7 and 1.8 percent
of banks ran into financial problems respectively.
Ten Years Later
The black dots connected with intermittent lines in Figure
8.2 show what happened since the drawing was fist put
together. Each trend has in general followed the predicted
course.
Remarks on the updates:
• The time series on the use of horsepower was discontinued
in 1992.
• The continuation of the appearance of basic innovations
uses as a proxy the percentage deviation from the
growth trend of the number of patents issued by the
U.S. Patent Office.
• The discovery of stable elements loses credibility in the
late 1990s when new discovery claims are based on
fleeting observations of “elements” consisting of only 2
or 3 of atoms.
• Bank failures from 1990 onward show the percentage of
banks losing money.
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