Re: poly: Modeling Economic Singularities

Peter M. writes:
At 10:47 PM 5/3/98 -0700, you wrote:
>>>Let T2 be the time when the total value of physical goods (measured using
>>>prices that prevailed at time T1) produced in the wealthiest countries is
>>>100 times what it was at T2.
>>
>>This isn't a very good standard,
>
> Compared to what? Most alternative ways that people have actually used
>to describe a singularity are nebulous enough enough that it's hard to
>tell whether they are falsifiable. ...
> Yes, a perfect description of what I meant would contain something to
>limit the effects of large changes in relative quantities of goods.
> And my standard clearly becomes useless when applied to time periods much
>longer than a decade.

No need to reinvent the wheel here. Economists have worked out
sophisticated methods for dealing with these issues, and I presumed that we
were talking about what the best methods would reveal about the total GDP
change.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Mon May 4 17:47:15 1998