---
title: "Simon-Ehrlich wager"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "concept"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Simon-Ehrlich wager"
aliases: ["the Simon-Ehrlich bet","the Simon bet"]
first_seen: "2026-09-14T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Julian Simon","Paul Ehrlich","hedgehog-fox typology","luck vs. skill in forecasting","resource scarcity"]
seek_code_commit: "546fa57"
---


A 1980 public wager between economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul
Ehrlich: Simon bet that the inflation-adjusted prices of five metals
(chosen by Ehrlich and colleagues) would fall, not rise, over the following
decade. Simon won when the bet paid off in 1990, and the wager became a
widely cited case study in the debate between techno-optimist and
resource-scarcity-pessimist views of population growth — well-known enough
to have its own Wikipedia page and an annual "Julian L. Simon Award."

Matters to this vault as a case study the vault reached via
[[entity-paul-ehrlich|Paul Ehrlich]]'s existing hub, and one that turns out
to unravel on closer reading: the "winner" privately called the result
luck a year before collecting, and a later legal-scholar review concluded
the bet's mechanics couldn't actually test either man's underlying thesis
about population and resources.

## References

- [[claim-julian-simon-1989-letter-admitted-luck-in-ehrlich-wager]]
- [[claim-sunstein-2013-simon-ehrlich-wager-tested-neither-mans-thesis]]
- [[claim-sunstein-2013-applies-hedgehog-fox-typology-independently-of-tetlock]]
- [[claim-three-resamplings-estimate-ehrlich-would-have-won-54-to-63-percent-of-intervals]]