On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in general—while in my very first post agreeing that “There are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.” You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I don’t think I used a strawman at any point—I think that I responded to your general claim about “degrowth” with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, you’re incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which I’m very, very familiar with—I’ve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didn’t hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrong—post-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as I’ve said for years, it’s unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, you’re asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that it’s wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I don’t think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after you’ve looked into it.
On your first point, I was first clarifying that there has been discussion of this, and there was a pretty clear reason to dismiss this in general—while in my very first post agreeing that “There are other claims that degrowth makes that seem unobjectionable, and worthy of debate.” You attacked that, and my position, and I defended it. I don’t think I used a strawman at any point—I think that I responded to your general claim about “degrowth” with an accurate characterization of that position, and you retreated to a series of specific analyses that defend specific points.
On your second point, you’re incorrectly interpreting what was done in 1972, which I’m very, very familiar with—I’ve actually read the report, and used the model as a teaching tool. It was absolutely intended to predict consequences of decisions, to support specific decisionmakers, and they explicitly said that while it was imperfect, it was intended to be used as-is in order to make decisions. I can only urge you to read their original work. The patterns it explored didn’t hold up, the models were wrong in how the projected the key inputs and factors, and the conclusions they came to were wrong. Recent claims that they got things right are revisionist and wrong—post-hoc justification is possible anywhere, but as I’ve said for years, it’s unsupportable here.
And finally, in general, if you ask others to be more charitable to a position instead of defending it, you’re asking for a favor, rather than saying that something stands on its own merits. I did not say there was nothing here worthy of consideration, but I did say that their central claim was wrong. I agree that it’s wonderful to be charitable in discussions, but as a general point, no, I don’t think it makes sense to try to be charitable to and steelman every opposing viewpoint every time it is brought up, especially after you’ve looked into it.