Simon–Ehrlich wager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Simon–Ehrlich wager - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "All of [Ehrlich's] grim predictions had been decisively overturned by events. Ehrlich was wrong about higher natural resource prices, about 'famines of unbelievable proportions' occurring by 1975, about 'hundreds of millions of people starving to death' in the 1970s and '80s, about the world 'entering a genuine age of scarcity.' In 1990, for his having promoted 'greater public understanding of environmental problems,' Ehrlich received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award.' [Simon] always found it somewhat peculiar that neither the Science piece nor his public wager with Ehrlich nor anything else that he did, said, or wrote seemed to make much of a dent on the world at large. For some reason he could never comprehend, people were inclined to believe the very worst about anything and everything; they were immune to contrary evidence just as if they'd been medically vaccinated against the force of fact. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bizarre reverse-Cassandra effect operating in the universe: whereas the mythical Cassandra spoke the awful truth and was not believed, these days 'experts' spoke awful falsehoods, and they were believed. Repeatedly being wrong actually seemed to be an advantage, conferring some sort of puzzling magic glow upon the speaker."