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Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy



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. 

Jan,
 
"On the average" everything is a single number somewhere in the
middle.  What you say here is true, but only trivially true.
 
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.  The average is a technique for lending a spurious
pluasibility to this absurdity; the gullibility to fall for it is a
sign of serious innumeracy.
 
                                                  -dlj.
 


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