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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy



In <58dd1a$on6@news.inforamp.net> dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones)
writes: 
>
>On 8 Dec 1996 01:36:48 GMT, jwas@ix.netcom.com(jw) wrote:
>>
>>This is more than plausible;
>>many groups have died off completely.
>>Nevertheless, Yuri's claim is, in a sense, true:
>>on the *average*, the human population of the globe only
>>increased slowly: by the factor of maybe thirty of fifty
>>in a million years. 
>

>"On the average" everything is a single number somewhere in the
>middle. 

Yes, the average is a single number.

> What you say here is true, but only trivially true.

I wouldn't say so. Average rates of growth differ
by period. It takes factual data,
to assert that the average rate for the Paleolithic
was much smaller than for later times. 
This is a non-trivial fact.
If Yuri expressed only *it* in saying that the
population was stable, then he was saying
something that was both true and non-trivial.

If, however, as you say,

>Yuri's claim was that over the millions of years there has been peace
>and clam, and only in the last few hundred years has there been any
>change

then his claim was non-trivial but untrue.

>  The average is a technique for lending a spurious
>pluasibility to this absurdity; 

No, this is not what the average
"is a technique for". It
has other uses. Nor is this what I used it for.

>the gullibility to fall for it is a
>sign of serious innumeracy.

Here I quite lose track of who's who in
this discussion. I introduced the average
growth rate into it. Who, then, was the gullible
innumerate victim of this "technique"? 
Yuri, with his alleged claim 
of peace and calm? But he posted before me. I myself?
No - the description of prehistoric
demography that I gave (in the now-omitted
part of my response) was the reverse of peace
and calm: I compared it to a roller coaster.
And obviously not you. 

Why argue about definitions? 
Let us avoid the apparently contentious word "stable",
and just say that through the Paleolithic
the global human population grew very slowly,
though it had its ups and downs.
The growth accelerated in the Neolithic;
even more in the Bronze Age and in the classical
antiquity; even more in the Middle Ages;
and it really skyrocketed with the Industrial
Revolution. 

This acceleration resembles an 
exponential curve - not of *population*
(which grows exponentially when the
growth rate is *constant*)
- but of the *rate* itself.

This is a highly significant, non-trivial
fact. It is a uniquely human characteristic
which has a quantitative measure! It obviously
reflects the role of technology in human
population change. 

There is a problem with this technological 
point of view, for lower Paleolithic. 
The so-called Acheulian stone tool
kit remained amazingly stable through
some 1.3 million years - through
the whole existence of Homo Erectus
and his successors - transitional forms
to Homo Sapiens. Man changed,
his brain nearly doubled, yet his
tools remained the same! It is a puzzle.
However, since fire was
tamed in this period, skins came
to be worn as clothes, and speech apparently
evolved, one can't say that technology
remained stable (that word again! - sorry.)





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