Econ Prof at Heriot-Watt University, interested in #econhist, #landreform, #microfinance, #sustainabledevelopment, #health, #nufc & #Seinfeld (not necessarily in that order)
www.eoinmclaughlin.ie
Eoin McLaughlin
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This week a group of economists and degrowth advocates argued in the Guardian that economic growth is a "doomed strategy". The piece is a good example of what I call advocacy bias: selecting evidence that supports a preferred policy while overlooking contrary evidence. (1/7)
China Inc deploys 'quiet' layoffs as Beijing promotes AI adoption reut.rs/4egfGdy
I explore that history and what it can teach us about advocacy bias in public discourse in my latest essay: open.substack.com/pub/eoinaldo...
Eoin McLaughlin
Reuters
Eoin McLaughlin
My argument is that The Limits to Growth survived because it stopped being judged primarily as a forecasting model and became something more powerful: a moral narrative about limits, overshoot, and ecological constraint. (6/7)
Dana Meadows later acknowledged that the model could not "take the world from the Industrial Revolution to whatever follows next beyond that." (4/7)
Economists such as Solow and Nordhaus, along with scientists such as Cole and Curnow, spent years dissecting the model's assumptions. Yet its influence only grew. Why? (5/7)
One criticism, first highlighted by Kevin Kelly, is particularly striking. If the World3 model is run from 1600 it predicts collapse roughly a century later. If it is run from 1800 it predicts collapse roughly a century later. The world did not collapse in 1700 or 1900. (3/7)
Many of today's degrowth arguments can be traced back to The Limits to Growth (1972), one of the most influential environmental texts ever written. Yet the model at the heart of the report attracted sustained criticism from economists and scientists alike. (2/7)
I used to wonder if the AI enthusiasts were getting paid to promote AI products. I saw a post from a very high profile AI advocate saying they were given early access to Mythos and heaping praise on it, that's the one that was supposedly 'too powerful for [the] public'
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Are smartphones causing global fertility declines?
www.nytimes.com/2026/06/08/u...
Eoin McLaughlin
Eoin McLaughlin
Eoin McLaughlin
How a disputed computer model became one of the most influential ideas in modern environmentalism
Liu, a Hangzhou-based contractor at a large Chinese internet firm, says her employer began quietly firing contractors in March after it ordered staff to use AI tools including AI agent OpenClaw, which saw lightning-fast adoption in China this year.
