LIMITS TO GROWTH AND STOCHASTICS

The aim of this article is to use probabilistic ideas to study predictive reasoning based on hypotheses and models, but without using Ito calculus, without writing any stochastic differential equations, in fact without writing any formulas at all. The aim is to extract from the study of stochastic processes those qualitative traits that have significant philosophical implications for the political decision-making process. Indeed, we need to acknowledge that the impact of the economy on the environment is not a result of temperance or mitigation of natural variations but rather that the economy itself - in addition to the underlying trends due to growth - is a major source of perturbations arising from the random fluctuations in prices or values that are caused by the anticipations made by the agents. Consequently we need to understand the additional effects that randomness superimposes on arguments based on the finiteness of the world and its flows of energy.