descriptive claim
Paul Ehrlich bet that a basket of commodities would increase in price during the decade preceding 1990, amid his concerns about population growth.
Dwarkesh Patel · Why smarter AI models could drive up compute prices 10x · 3 Aug 2026
In their words
The transcript segments this claim was taken from
“I'm, for example, thinking of the famous Simon-Erlich bet.”
“Paul Erlich was this famous doomer about population growth,”
“and he made this bet that a basket of commodities would increase in price rather than decrease in the decade preceding 1990.”6:53Report a misattribution
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0.70importance to the conversation
0.90confidence the claim was read correctly