Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 28, 2026, 12:40 PMWith Trump gone the rate of decay slows, unless his contract with Satan keeps him around long enough for America to go over the Seneca cliff.  That probably is the case.

It is unfortunate that Ugo had to discredit himself, revolving around the peak oil world. I was reading through the Wiki description of his Seneca idea, which sounds quite reasonable. Fortunately he didn't try to drop any math into it, unfortunate that the Wiki goes on to mention the Hubbert curve in relation to his. By itself that could give someone enough of a clue to discount his concept.

There is math behind it.  Fine then, I'll bore myself with it.  Gravity in this case is math.

Quote from: K-Dog on Sep 28, 2026, 06:15 PMThere is math behind it.  Fine then, I'll bore myself with it.  Gravity in this case is math.

I'll go with gravity can be described by math, but it isn't math. I'd throw that one in the physics category. I got this great piece of advice from a PhD Air Force Academy physics professor.

There are only two things that matter in the Universe, one is the laws of physics, as they are the rules of the game. The second is the will of man. We call that "economics".

The Seneca effect is an interesting idea. When Ugo and I discussed it he was willing to admit that it certainly wasn't a "end of world" nonsense scenario that some had tried to twist it into, and on Facebook said he might look into researching the far side of other examples to see what he could see.

I will stand by the comment that he shouldn't have linked it to Hubbert's normal looking distribution, as neither Ugo, nor Hubbert, were familiar with discovery process modeling, an idea that came along in print a few years after Hubbert's 1956 work. Arps and Roberts, if memory serves. 1958. Hubbert has an excuse as to why, Ugo should have done better research. His lack of education in the field in question was probably a significant handicap.

Theoretical Physics is Applied Mathematics.  Pure Math people tend to look down on them.  There's an informal ranking system you find in Math departments for how the Math people look at everyone else.  Below the Physics people are the Chemists, then Meteorologists, Geologists, Engineers, Economists, Psychologists & Sociologists.  Depends on how much and how difficult the Math is you need to really grasp the subject.

RE

Quote from: RE on Sep 28, 2026, 10:42 PMTheoretical Physics is Applied Mathematics. 
RE

You can cast it anyway you'd like. I'll go with folks qualified to teach at the Air Force Academy with a PhD.

Remember what the Dormouse said.

Quote from: TDoS on Sep 29, 2026, 03:36 PM

Quote from: RE on Sep 28, 2026, 10:42 PMTheoretical Physics is Applied Mathematics. 
RE

You can cast it anyway you'd like. I'll go with folks qualified to teach at the Air Force Academy with a PhD.

I doubt  the AF Academy teaches any math past differential equations.   How much math do Pilots  do?  Some navigation is about it.   They definitely don't have a grad program in mathematics.  For good math, gotta go with Cal Tech or MIT.

RE