I'm curious about whether the number of planets of the type that are detectable with current technology can provide us with estimates of total earth-like planets. For instance, if we know that we can only currently detect large mass planet orbiting quickly, and have found that X% of stars seem to have them, what does that imply for small rocky planets that are not close to their stars? As our technology improves and we expand the set of types of planets that we are able to observe, it seems like we should be able to refine our estimate of the fraction of stars that have earth-like planets.

Rhodes' "Making of the Atomic Bomb" has an excellent recap of the path the atomic physics took from discovery of atom to the atom bomb, with a strong focus on how the physical experiments were married to the theoretical. In fact, there are a number of examples of people uncovering results in physical experiments without realizing the implications. For instance, the Joliot-Curies ran experiments which demonstrated the existence of both the neutron and positron, without realizing it. Others came up with the theory, realized the Joliot-Curies misinterpreted their findings and achieved glory. Doesn't go too in-depth on some phenomena like the photoelectric effect, but I can highly recommend it for the path between the birth of quantum physics and the atomic bomb.

How does one get from, "I have not found a systematic flaw in the quality of Knuth et al.'s reasoning" to "Knuth Got it Wrong"?

From my experience, the answer is likely vietnam or cambodia. I have seen a few firms considering pulling out of china due to rising wages/price inflation, and they were all looking at these two countries.

If memory serves, 19th century England had an interesting anomaly, in that during some period overall life expectancy declined, while life expectancy improved both for city-dwellers and non-city dwellers. The reason the overall statistic declined was the flood of the people to the city (where life expectancies were lower) had the effect of lowering the average.

The damned thing is that sometimes it really is different. Compare bond yields and stock dividend yields pre- and post- 1950s, for a dramatic instance. Many called bubble, but were in time proven incorrect. Many (legendary) investors scoffed at the high prices being paid for the "technology" stocks like American Telephone and Telegraph, Radio Corporation of America and International Business Machines in the 1930s. Central banking _has_ evolved such that we are able to prevent depressions, which has important implications for asset prices. The challenge in financial markets is trying to tease out the permanent from the temporary. Finance is not always as simple as saying "prices have increased, ergo bubble. qed."

Having read the paper, this is more ridiculous than I initially suspected. Of the four assets that they identified as being "bubbles", all four increased in price since they made the prediction! The only way to ultimately determine if a bubble is a bubble and not a rational increase in prices is by the subsequent collapse. They try to hedge themselves by saying that it changed into "some other sort of regime", ie non-hyper-exponential growth. So if it is flat, or down, or up they are correct. The only instance they claim to be able to predict is that the asset will not increase hyperexponentially. And they even fail at this, in the price of cotton. Sadly, can claim some knowledge in the realm of finance.

What was the criteria for evaluating success? TFA says that the impressive result by anyone's standards is that they predicted a crash in gold, which then was roughly flat for the next six months... There is an entire industry of "quants" attempting to do things like this for banks and hedge funds. Of course, they do not publish their results. If you would like to see what a good classification of bubbles looks like, see: http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/schillers-list-how-to-diagnose-the-next-bubble/. Note also that identifying a bubble is not always sufficient to profit. Julian Robertson of Tiger Fund famously identified the tech bubble - in '97. He subsequently lost billions betting against tech stocks that stubbornly refused to crash until after he had given up.

IANAL, but couldn't each of these individuals file a discovery motion that would be easy to put together but a complete pain for the lawyers to comply with? Surely each individual could find a way to generate 10-20 hours worth of work for those attorneys, at ~$350 per hour? That approach might make it uneconomical to pursue this behavior.

My point is simply that TFA has doomsday scenarios that in older times people speculated would result from a complete loss of fuel (ie wood), and asks us to draw a comparison to oil. For the examples TFA gives (Easter Island is not one of them), all of the worrying came to naught thanks to technological progress. There are many examples of the harm caused by natural resource depletion, but this article fails utterly to mention them. Not saying it always works out, but it sure did for all the examples and fears (loss of fuel) given.

"What lessons from the multiple experiences of Peak Wood can today’s society learn for addressing global peak oil?" - On the surface it would seem that the lesson is that eventually a new resource will come along that made all the worrying about the dwindling resource irrelevant.

second option is actually somewhat consistent - see Luke 4:12, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test" and others like it. The Bible specifically refrains from making falsifiable claims.

FWIW, probability theory made many strides thanks to literal gambling in casinos.

While recognizing the censorship as completely arbitrary and perhaps a little silly, I still support it as their taboo nature adds to their impact. The ability to offend stems from their taboo. It's why "Fuck you" is more powerful than "you stink, mister." Related, I also deplore the use of the c-word, so that I could save it for situations like "some stupid cunt ran over jeff with her car"!

IAAB (who is not a criminal). I shouldn't feed this troll, but I just can't stand that there were mod points given.

Labeling all bankers, lawyers, and investment houses as thieves of money is, of course, absurd. I will assume you meant it as a hyperbolic jest, the way I might comment that slashdotters seem to live in parents' basement and lack even a rudimentary understanding of economics. I assume you are criticizing the idea of the fractional reserve system, in which banks hold some money in a reserve and lend the rest out. The inherent setup of this system results in money creation or destruction depending on the level of interest rates (irrespective of the federal reserve, FWIW). Please also note that money creation is not necessarily the same thing as a change in the price level. The two are, of course, related through the velocity of money (if everyone stuffs money in their mattresses, prices will fall even if the monetary base is unchanged).

I suppose it is possible to create a government/legal community/finance industry cabal bent on getting the finance people rich, though I prefer the interpretation that the setup was such that system permitted a few people to take risks so excessive that they did not fully understand that there was a destabilizing effect on the country. As to your argument that there is nothing wrong with a deflationary spiral: 1) do you have a mortgage or credit card debt? that is denominated in nominal terms. Good luck if all prices and wages fall. 2) See the great depression. This is what happens when deflation gets out of control. 3) Milton Friedman won a nobel prize 40 years ago for demonstrating that there are real (meaning economic) impacts to inflationary/deflationary trends. This has been well known to students of economics for over a half century. Of course, they could all be wrong and you right.. After all, they're all just a bunch of thieves.