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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (2661)	10/12/2006 6:21:31 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

Seems to me that a straight line projection is an entirely logical default, not that a straight line will necessarily occur, but the odds are with it. I don't think I agree. Trends form all the time and then often reverse themselves. On SI stocks might be a good example. Look at Intel, which mostly went up for year and years, but hasn't exactly done well since sometime in 2000. Or look at the projections of population growth which assumed no decline in fertility or the projections in speed of human created vehicles that took short term geometric growth in speeds that ended before I was born and projected them out to show anything from hypersonic transport being common years ago, to faster than light travel being available in the 21st century. Of course the specific trend under discussion is a rather durable one. I'm not really commenting on it, but rather the more general principle.

To: Lane3 who wrote (2661)	10/13/2006 1:43:29 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

Seems to me that a straight line projection is an entirely logical default, not that a straight line will necessarily occur, but the odds are with it. I don't think there was any assumption that it would occur. Just a smart money play. It's not a smart money play that a straight line projection will continue forever. Or we could just all pile on the momentum investing bus and ride the trend to infinity. A history of finding natural causes does not mean that all causes are natural. For those things that have natural causes, natural causes are likely to be found. The leap to the assumption that all causes are natural is still a leap ... of faith.