PREDICTIONS â 10 Years Later - Santa Fe Institute

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1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING ever the size, ... the mammalian heart seems to be good for a billion beats and no more.” 8 For hundreds of thousands of years humans had a life expectancy between twenty-five and thirty years. With the normal rate of seventytwo heartbeats per minute, they conformed nicely to the one billion invariant. Only during the last few hundred years has human life expectancy significantly surpassed this number, largely due to reduced rates in infant mortality from improved medical care and living conditions. Today’s humans reach three times the mammals’ quota, positioning Homo sapiens well above the animal world. Are we finally making progress in our evolution as a species? “On the contrary, we are regressing!” exclaims Marchetti in his usual playing-the-Devil’s-advocate style. Life expectancy at birth increased primarily because infant mortality decreased. But what also increased at the same time was the availability and acceptability of safe and legal abortions, resulting in a rise of prenatal mortality, thus canceling a fair amount of the life expectancy gains. The end result, he says, claiming to have seen the data that substantiate it, is that life expectancy at conception is still not much above forty. If there is any truth in this, we are back—or close enough—to the one-billion-heartbeat invariant, but with an important difference. Low infant mortality rates result in the birth of many individuals who may be ill-suited to survive a natural selection process favoring the fittest. At the same time, abortions are blind. They eliminate lives with no respect to their chance of survival. A selection at random is no selection at all, and the overall effect for the species is a degrading one. With life expectancy defined at conception, the one-billion-heartbeat invariant seems to still be roughly in effect for humans. From now onward there can be no significant further gains in infant mortality rates because they are already quite low. Moreover, as we will see in Chapter Five, the overall death rate has practically stopped decreasing. All this argues for bleak forecasts about life-expectancy growth. There may be a message for us coded in the one-billion-heartbeat invariant. According to the Bible we are now reaching the upper limit in life expectancy: 9 Seventy years is all we have—eighty years, if we are strong; yet all they bring us is trouble and sorrow; life is soon over, and we are gone. (Psalm 90:10). 34
1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING On the other hand, an invariant turning into a variable is nothing unusual. A frequent discovery in physics is that something thought of as a constant is, in fact, a limited manifestation of a simple law, which in turn is a special case of a more complicated law, and so on. When the complexity becomes unmanageable, physicists turn toward unification, searching for a general law that will describe a multitude of diverse phenomena, each hitherto abiding by elaborate custom-made rules. In other words, they look for a new invariant on a higher abstraction level. For example, the acceleration of gravity, 10m/sec/sec, had been perceived as a constant from the early falling-apple days until Newton showed that the rate decreases with altitude. Later Einstein’s relativity theory revealed more complicated equations for the falling apple. Today, besides apples, there are hundreds of elementary particles, all behaving according to rules made to measure. The physicists’ dream in the meantime has become the Grand Unification wherein the behavior of apples, as well as particles, stars, galaxies, and light, all can be described by the same set of equations. To predict the future we must first find out the constraints which have to be met, the invariants and other natural laws that have influenced or governed in the past and will, in the highest degree of probability, continue to do so in the future. There are many mathematical equations that can describe such certainties, but I have found that much of their essence is captured visually through the shapes associated with these equations, which accurately depict the past and provide reliable forecasts for the future. 35
Page 2: PREDICTIONS - 10 Years Later Ten ye
Page 6 and 7: Copyright © 2002 by Theodore Modis
Page 8 and 9: CONTENTS Going West 53 Mesopotamia,
Page 10 and 11: CONTENTS 10. IF I CAN, I WANT 225 W
Page 13 and 14: PREFACE This book is about seeing t
Page 15 and 16: PROLOGUE The fisherman starting his
Page 17 and 18: PROLOGUE analogy between natural la
Page 19 and 20: PROLOGUE animal population and foll
Page 21 and 22: PROLOGUE stead; and those who belie
Page 23 and 24: 1 Science and Foretelling A barman
Page 25 and 26: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING prices,
Page 27 and 28: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING the futu
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Page 31 and 32: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING But exam
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Page 39 and 40: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING terms of
Page 41 and 42: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING THE LAW
Page 43 and 44: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING resolved
Page 45 and 46: 1. SCIENCE AND FORETELLING by hard
Page 47 and 48: 2 Needles in a Haystack HOW MUCH OR
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Page 51 and 52: 2. NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK LEARNING F
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4. THE RISE AND FALL OF CREATIVITY
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5 Good Guys and Bad Guys Compete th
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5. GOOD GUYS AND BAD GUYS COMPETE T
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6 A Hard Fact of Life Natural growt
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE avoid wrong
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE one substitu
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE place in a n
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE DETERGENTS S
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE The percenta
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE During the l
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE Another inno
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE replacement.
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE soldiers opp
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6. A HARD FACT OF LIFE takes place
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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