Quote Originally Posted by steelish View Post
I hear the end of life as we know it will occur on 12/21/12, so live it up while you can, people!
So far as the economy and my advanced age allows, I do.

But see, this is the other important thing about scientific propositions: testability. There is no way to test a proposition based on prophecy... unless the innumerable previous predictions of the End can be counted as tests of the general principle of fortelling the world's future from An-Cie-Ent Prophecies, in which case it's well and truly exploded.

But a proposition based on a simple mathematical relationship can be tested by seeing whether the curve goes on heading the way it's predicted to. And if it does, you're entitled to extend it into the future with some confidence. Same as the rogue economists who extended the curve of unsupported debt and warned, a couple of years in advance, that the economy was heading for a cliff. If governments had dared to listen to them and do something about it, we wouldn't be in this mess.

But it was probably politically impossible for anything to be done: both the rich frauds and the suckers who thought they were getting rich would have rebelled. Any government that saw where things were heading probably judged that it was safer to just let things go smash, then nobody would blame them. And that's the method most of them are applying now.