WebHubbleTelescope has been attempting to model various aspects of oil depletion in and out of production/consumption context and has posted a number of interesting technical arguments that are congruent to many of those made here. His current piece which can also be found @ The Oil Drum examines the examination process itself:
Scientific theories get selected for advancement much like evolution promotes the strongest species to survive. New theories have to co-exist with current ones, battling with each other to prove their individual worth [Ref 1]. That may partly explain why the merest mention of “theory” will tune people out, as it will remind them of the concept of biological evolution, which either they don’t believe in, or consider debatable at best. Generalize this a bit further and you could understand why they could also reject the scientific method. If we admit to this as a chronic problem, not soon solved, the idea of accumulating knowledge seems to hold a kind of middle ground, and doesn’t necessarily cause a knee-jerk reaction like pushing a particular theory would.
So, what kinds of things do we actually want to know? For one, I will assert that all of us would certainly want to know that we haven’t unwittingly taken a sucker’s bet, revealing that someone has played us. I suspect that many of the diehard TOD readers, myself included, want to avoid this kind of situation. In my mind, knowledge remains the only sure way to navigate the minefield of confidence schemes. In other words, you essentially have to know more than the next guy, and the guy after that, and then the other guy, etc. TOD does a good job of addressing this as we constantly get fed the unconventional insights to explain our broader economic situation.
Ultimately we could consider knowledge as a survival tactic — which boils down to the adage of eat or be eaten. If I want to sound even more pedantic, I would suggest that speed or strength works to our advantage in the wild but does not translate well to our current reality. It certainly does not work in the intentionally complex business world, or even with respect to our dynamic environment, as we cannot outrun or outmuscle oil depletion or climate change without putting our thinking hats on.
This of course presumes that we know anything in the first place.
WHT has made the point several times and bears repeating; the oil extraction/consumption discipline needs good models. It needs them so that practical forecasting can be improved. It also needs to counter arguments of vested interests which constantly tout their book but nothing else.
The take- away is this:
It has often been emphasized, particularly by the philosopher Karl Popper, that the essential feature of science is that its theories are falsifiable. They make predictions, and further observations can verify those predictions. When a theory is contradicted by observations that have been repeated until they are worthy of acceptance, that theory must be considered wrong. The possibility of failure of an idea is always present, lending an air of suspense to all scientific activity. (Gell-Mann p.78)
This is the crisis in economics, as most of the establishment practitioners’ models (theories) failed to either predict the arrival of a blatantly obvious onrushing financial disruption and also failed to predict its severity and duration. The same models are failing now, the revised models are also failing, the new practitioners’ models are failing and the failures generally are taking place because enduring prejudice/embedded interests constrain model inputs. Gell- Mann is correct: The falsifiable theories have failed, period. Garbage in means garbage out.
Heuristics can be correct as often as otherwise. Resource depletion is not a sensation, when it becomes one it will be massively unpleasant, which is why the business community and their lackeys and sock puppets don’t want to touch it with a bargepole. Of course, it will be thence too late to do anything about it. I learned this common- sense from my mother. “Don’t use capital for operating expenses.” Our culture has been burning through its capital for fifty years, as fast and as ‘efficiently’ as possible.
Why does everyone out there in the greater world hate scolds such as peak climate and peak oilers, again?
Abstract representation of our understanding of resource depletion.
This article speaks to me about languages; which are linear in effect:
‘Rational’ ….. (transforming by symbiosis then becoming) ….. ‘Hysterical’
At one end of the scale is Art => Naturalistic description => mathematic (language) description => scientific theory => Applied technology => propaganda => statistics => rumors => leading back to art.
Ideas get personalized because it’s easier to follow names. The ideas themselves become fixed as in Leonardo Da Vince’s idea was to create artworks which, by his act of creation, described observable characteristics of nature. That idea is embodied in ‘Da Vinci’ which then becomes a ‘Code’ … then a major motion picture:
Leonardo Da Vinci described nature => John Stuart Mill described society => Carl Gauss described electrostatic forces => James Lovelock observes the relationship between ecosystems => Thomas Edison related electric force and mechanics => Samuel Goldwyn took the mechanics and sold its lifestyle products => Paul Krugman today gives us comforting lies about the process => Rush Limbaugh gives us disquieting lies about Krugman and others like him => the end product of the system is Andy Warhol who is personally is as enigmatic but equally descriptive as Da Vinci and disquieting as Limbaugh .
Thomas Eakins => Adam Smith => Albert Einstein => James Crick => Genghis Khan => Joseph Goebbels => Milton Friedman => Father Coughlin leading up to James Dean!
None of these ‘actors’ have any connection save in the minds of those would follow the ‘arc of conceptual reasoning’ from art to observation to description to use to lies and ultimate fantasy. At the same time, the actors’ primary contributions all have equal validity, they are internally coherent to the degree that they defy criticism. The logic framework of prior art cannot be applied to them. It would be hard for Louis Pasteur to critique Francis Crick’s work although he would certainly understand it and Crick stands upon Pasteur’s shoulders. The critique of Poussin cannot be made of Jeff Koons (… or vice versa, but that is another discussion). Yet, prior art claims are launched against the sciences constantly; Galileo just missed being burned at the stake by the ‘Earth- centric’ crowd. Here’s more, you can do this at home:
Eric Hoffer => John Locke => Enrico Fermi => Georges Lemaitre => Johannes Gutenberg => Leni Riefenstahl => George Gallup => Orson Welles => H. G. Wells.
Jackson Pollock => Charles Darwin => Pierre Fermat => Sigmund Freud => Eli Whitney => Conde Nast … eventually leads to Thomas Nast and a corpulent Santa Claus.
It’s not a hard game to play, start with:
Edward Gibbon => Carl Menger => Euclid => Karl Marx => Steve Jobs => climate change deniers => Freeman Dyson => Peak Oilers => Adam Sandler. You start with James Madison who describes (human) nature toward different forms of observation toward reasoning toward application toward rationalization to advertising and profits where you wind up with Nathan Rothschild … to Sir Evelyn de Rothschild to Rothschild wannabes and ending up with Groucho Marx and Sarah Palin. The last two are both artists of sorts. Andy Warhol is usually parked at the beginning and the end of the ‘circle of descriptive rationalizations’. Warhol’s descriptions (colored photographs) of his environment are as valid as Palin’s evocation of hers.
Both are equally ‘gay’ too, BTW. See how it’s done? The reduction of complexity into derogatory simplification: wanna watch me do it again?
What can be taken away from all this is the distracting folly of discrediting others’ models by discrediting those who are interchangeable with them. Everyone constantly does it, I do and that’s human nature. We are all as competitive as race- car drivers and don’t care if the other crashes! ‘Ms. Gayness’ Palin can cry all the way to the bank with the $20 million she’s made from her gay- bashing, neo- Nazi ‘disciples’ over the past six months! Good grief! I look better in a pink chiffon dress than she does! I’m also a far better shot. Where’s MY $20 mil?
All the models are valid which are rendered internally consistent; Gell- Mann’s process is the forge of internal linearization or the crafting of a narrative by absorbing components from the outside. The models gain integrity. Blaming the ills of the world on Jews may not be factual or historically accurate – certainly not geologically accurate – but internal consistency of the approach that rationalizes this way cannot be easily argued against. There is always to a mathematical certainty that wherever there is some trouble there is a Jew within a couple of thousand miles. The quid pro quo is as clear as the nose on my face; at the same time, how do you model absurdities? It’s not required when the model is self- reinforcing. The components of absurdities are inwardly rational as laws of science. Scientific method is irrelevant to show business. Both Freeman Dyson’s and James Hanson’s imaginations of climate are superficially coherent, differentiated in ways that are quibbling and hard to quantify but the AGW argument is fatally undermined when Dyson becomes ‘Mr. Climate Change’.
This happens here! Whaddya going to do? Arguing with Dyson now is arguing with science itself. All the deniers’ rigor follows from that point.
How will Peak Oil ever transcend Matt Simmons? Simmons is the ‘Mr. Peak Oil Dude’ that’s all that matters; the issue becomes whether he beats his dog. The next step is for Joe Isuzu to take that dog- beating Matt Simmons’ place. When that happens, peak oil as a concept disintegrates.
Until reality arrives, that is …
Louis Farrakhan called Hitler a ‘Great Man; what did he mean by ‘great’? Did that word mean a great … disaster? Germany’s surrender in May of 1945 spared Berlin or Dresden or Leipzig the atomic bomb. Hitler was a catastrophe to Germany first! Yet, the Germans were ‘under a spell’ and denial and unreality held sway until the end; we Americans are trodding a well- worn path that ends in the same place in spirit if not if form. Yet today, in the New York Times’ Bob Herbert measures the American cultural and gestalt center of the Auto Age as a ‘Dresden Equivalent’:
What you’ll see are endless acres of urban ruin, block after block and mile after mile of empty and rotting office buildings, storefronts, hotels, apartment buildings and private homes. It’s a scene of devastation and disintegration that stuns the mind, a major American city that still is home to 900,0000 people but which looks at times like a cross between postwar Berlin and the ruin of an ancient civilization.
The personalities elbow out the concepts. Language ultimately short- circuits itself. Reality is its own master; Dyson will die a fool and as is/was the undying Joe Isuzu. Pitiless and remorseless reality triumphs, witness the demise of ‘Joe Camel’.
Like ‘Mr. Penis Head’, ideas become easily- consumed ‘quanta’. The consumer can pass down the aisle with a shopping cart and fill it with a helping of Federalism from James Madison and a box of repressed sexuality from Freud, a container of Jew- hatred from Billy Graham and several servings of paranoia from Franz Kafka and Glenn Beck. What are you ‘up for’? Marshall McLuhan is still right, the medium is the message.
Paul Krugman is wrong and will be wrong to his grave but he’s still the ‘world’s best economist’ because he resides @ the New York Times. His is in the ‘statistical’ category as in Will Roger’s, “Lies, damned lies and statistics”. What are you going to do? Wait for that ‘Bus Named ‘Desire’ with both anticipation and dread as it is going to run over all of us. It doesn’t matter if we are sitting at the stop or not.
The container for all the arguments is language, whatever your language happens to be. It is the supermarket in which the consumers of lies and truths jostle for position. Where does WHT fit into all this? Asking him to make an argument without using math is like asking Willie Shoemaker to win a horse- race without a horse! Take Einstein’s chalkboard away from him and you have a hairstyle. Nevertheless, WHT’s points are well made and certainly valid. I appreciate the masterful effort.
[1]:
Murray Gell-Mann, “The Quark and the Jaguar : Adventures in the Simple and the Complex”, 1995, Macmillan