I am not sure what you are arguing here. First of all, I will completely agree with you that ‘innovation’ is not an explanation, and so we should be wary of it being used as such. I don’t actually think the bucket analogy has much explanatory power (though I find the concept interesting and worthy of further exploration). Using the term ‘unavoidable innovation’ was my attempt to clarify the analogy in order to be able to point out where in my opinion it fails.
The model in fact attempts to explain why innovation happens, not use innovation as an explanation for progress (since as you point out, that seems merely tautological or at least devoid of new information).
The rest of your comment I find harder to follow. I hope you agree that disasters from natural causes such as floods or meteor storms qualify as real disasters. Game of Thrones is not a realistic depiction of human morality, being focused on the grim and dark. It is especially not a realistic depiction of history. The Malthus-trap point is hopefully irrelevant once we agree that innovation should indeed not be used as explanation, but rather explored as a consequence. Otherwise I really did not understand it (but please do clarify!).
I wasn’t trying to argue anything in particular, I’m just using comments as a notebook to keep track of my own thoughts. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was trying to start an argument.
I am not sure what you are arguing here. First of all, I will completely agree with you that ‘innovation’ is not an explanation, and so we should be wary of it being used as such. I don’t actually think the bucket analogy has much explanatory power (though I find the concept interesting and worthy of further exploration). Using the term ‘unavoidable innovation’ was my attempt to clarify the analogy in order to be able to point out where in my opinion it fails.
The model in fact attempts to explain why innovation happens, not use innovation as an explanation for progress (since as you point out, that seems merely tautological or at least devoid of new information).
The rest of your comment I find harder to follow. I hope you agree that disasters from natural causes such as floods or meteor storms qualify as real disasters. Game of Thrones is not a realistic depiction of human morality, being focused on the grim and dark. It is especially not a realistic depiction of history. The Malthus-trap point is hopefully irrelevant once we agree that innovation should indeed not be used as explanation, but rather explored as a consequence. Otherwise I really did not understand it (but please do clarify!).
I wasn’t trying to argue anything in particular, I’m just using comments as a notebook to keep track of my own thoughts. I’m sorry if it sounded like I was trying to start an argument.