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Limits to Growth (1972)

The Limits to Growth "Computation and the Human Predicament," in the May–June issue of American Scientist, discusses the World3 computer model, introduced in the 1972 book The Limits to Growth. As a way of better understanding the inner structure of the model, I have been working to re-implement it as a web application.

I expect to continue improving it, but any serious investigation of the World3 model should be done with one of the more reliable simulation packages, such as Stella II or Vensim. In my casual tests I have found that it works well in recent releases of Google Chrome, Opera and Safari; it also runs in Firefox, though more grudgingly. A third slider determines the initial quantity of nonrenewable resources, which has a major impact on the fate of the simulated world.

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