SamInNebraska wrote:John_A wrote:Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and if that doesn't characterize nearly every article reference, and every idea you have, I don't know what does.
My take on why they failed is that they refused to learn. Not just along the lines of the basic history you mentioned, but where there is a cadre of professionals hanging out who are more than willing to show and talk about their work on these resource topics, why in the hell WOULDN'T someone who honestly wants to learn on a topic ASK them?
Sounds like we are operating in close orbit. I tend to be irritated when bad ideas are endlessly recycled and those proposing them can't be bothered with figuring out that they have already been proven to be bad ideas.
You seem focused on why they don't take the time to learn in the present from those who have the experience and have been doing this since before the invention of the internet.
Perhaps it is reasonable to maintain that TOD suffers from BOTH these maladies?
SamInNebraska wrote:Their recent attempt at communicating with the EIA notwithstanding (and really, that was ASPO which contains a few TOD folks) what are they afraid of?
You seem to discount their interactions with the professionals of this type, but I'm not so sure. The instant an insular group, such as TOD, comes into contact with those who do these things for a living, exactly the sort of learning you seem to think is lacking takes place. But there are multiple ways to react to that learning, the way you seem to expect, actual LEARNING, the exchange of ideas, people going "ah-hah!", stuff like that, and the other kind. More often characterized as walking away from the experience and saying "those people don't know what the hell they are talking about..".
My experience is that how this works has quite a bit to do with the people doing the alleged "learning", attitude really matters. Because ASPO hasn't ventured more than press release pablum on their experience with the EIA, and I haven't seen Jeff B. expounding at length on how last December's experience with the professionals went, it is difficult to determine on which side ASPO (and the attending TOD types) had fallen.
SamInNebraska wrote:I find it all very confusing, really, who decides that once they have some sliver of information to possibly support their position.,...they then stop learning? Who does that? Religious fundies? Idealogues?
No one is saying that TOD stopped learning, more that their lack of scientifically based resource scarcity experience hurt them badly in the long run, and they didn't even know their was a field of study to even go...study. So they just endlessly recycle as many variations of fitting time series data as possible, and didn't even get around to reading what is probably a critical paper on the topic from one of those experts you mentioned previously.
This stuff was being written a decade ago, it is even pre-TOD, but if you don't take the time to do a proper literature search and some honest learning prior to deciding you know it all....well....you close up shop when it catches you out.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2003/ofr-03-137/OF03-137.pdf
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