PREDICTIONS – 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

8. A COSMIC HEARTBEAT
Ten Years Later
The black dots connected with dotted lines in Figures 8.4
and 8.5 tell the story of what happened during the last dozen
years. There is general agreement with the trends. Life expectancy
and the record breaking of the one-mile run both
accelerated as had been predicted. On the other hand, cirrhosis-of-the-liver
victims declined as expected. Even feminism
subsided (as measured by the female content of Nobel prize
awards.)
Homicides—and criminality in general—declined. By 1998
homicide rates were almost half what they were in 1990. The
New Yorker likened this decline to that of a passing epidemic
pointing out that homicides reached levels below those of the
early seventies. What they failed to highlight was that homicides
in the seventies were on the way up whereas in the late
1990s homicides were heading for further decline.
The only trend that deviated significantly from its “prescribed”
course is the choice of the murder weapon (see third
graph on Figure 8.5). The ratio knives to guns dropped by a
factor of two as guns gained in popularity. But this was supposed
to happen during boom years, and we are not there yet
(next boom is due in the 2020s). One may speculate that the
precautious economic recovery in America during the period
1991-1998 may have “confused” murderers into using the gun
prematurely, instead of the knife that would have been more
“natural” at this time.
EPITAPHS
An explanation can be seen as an attempt to describe a phenomenon
by using only knowledge that existed beforehand. Economists indulge
in this activity insatiably. Their explanations invariably come
after the fact and cannot be tested—”Much like epitaphs,” remarks
Marchetti, “which for a scientifically trained mind have a strong
stink of cemetery.” 14
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