sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the morning... | 36 comments (36 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (none / 1)

The positive feedback circuits don't blow up because first they drive themselves out of the linear regime.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 04:51:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (none / 1)

Yeah, they saturate, as do many other physical systems... We can't get a real 'population explosion' either... It will saturate. The problem is that 'saturation' for a population might look rather nasty, if undamped. Very ugly oscillations.

In electronics most people are not stupid enough to propose an unlimited growth model. Or rather, the basic model is, sure, for many things, like amplifiers... And it is very, very useful, this model. However, anyone who has ever built a circuit knows that it is indeed bounded, and the region of constant gain/growth is limited... The constant gain model is only useful for a range of inputs... Unfortunately most economists seems to disagree that their discipline, as it is based in the physical world, will have very similar bounds to the constant gain/growth model. They come off a bit like first year electrical engineering students. Confusing the model with the system, and failing to properly take into account how it is premised on limiting the input to a certain range...

by someone (s0me1smail(a)gmail(d)com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 05:05:36 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (none / 1)

Populations don't saturate, they overshoot and collapse. See Wikipedia: Lotka-Volterra equation [interpret us as the predator and the Earth's carrying capacity as the prey]

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 05:14:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (none / 0)

Yes, nasty oscillations. Under damped system.

by someone (s0me1smail(a)gmail(d)com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 05:20:26 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (4.00 / 2)

That is when each generation lives through many reproduction cycles and takes a long time to mature to adulthood. That gives the system huge delayed feedback.

In the case of magicicadas, as we learnt the other night, each generation reproduces at the end of its life cycle, and so in that case 1) you can have saturation; 2) you could potentially see chaotic logistic mapping behaviour.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 05:30:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (4.00 / 2)

That oscillation is why I support hunting of deer (as state departments of natural resources take it into account when deciding how many hunting permits to issue during any given year).

you are the media you consume.

by MillMan (millguy at gmail) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 01:01:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (none / 0)

So so I, but mostly because deer is tasty.

On the subject, all will be well, and if it doesn't at least it'll be interesting.

Most likely something like this: a bit bad-> pretty bad for us, very bad for the global poor-> very interesting-> good for us, as bad as usual for them.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.

by Starvid on Sat May 26th, 2007 at 05:16:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (4.00 / 3)

Economists are idiots. If they spent at least a year studying some kind of engineering, they'd have much more of a clue. But most of what they do now is just campfire story telling.

As for transistor feedback - the easiest way to destroy certain kinds of transistor is thermal runaway. (Oh, the irony.)

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 06:39:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the m (4.00 / 2)

If you're young, can do math, and have a penchant for systems thinking, you're not likely to choose Economics as your field of study, are you?

And so we get the Mathematical Economics that we get.

Bush is a symptom, not the disease.

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed May 23rd, 2007 at 06:46:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

sometimes it's hard to get out of bed in the morning... | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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