"But
these are the three rough areas I want to cover: topologies, dynamics
and paradigms. Topologies are the structure of a system: what the
elements are and how they relate. The dynamics define how the structures
change through time. And the paradigm glues the two together. It gives
us tools for understanding the ways topologies are changed through
dynamics."
Very interesting. Does anyone have the
slideset???
Michael Tyler, Tyler & Company: My
question was prompted by a what struck me as a very striking divergence.
Here[base ']Äôs this fascinating agenda of ways of thinking about emerging properties
of complicated systems. The contrast immediately sprang to mind between the
way you[base ']Äôre dealing with that and the way we think about the economy. Think
about practical questions like, "What is the impact of a proposed very large
tax cut going to be? Will consumers consume while the investors invest? Will
it in fact increase productivity as claimed, or will it have the contrary
effect?" The methods being used to address that question correspond to just
one little piece of what you had in your slides. Amid this impressive array of
ways of thinking about emerging properties is one little piece of classical
physics, Newton[base ']Äôs universal law of gravity. We have economists trying to use
something that looks suspiciously like an elaborate version of Newton[base ']Äôs
equations of motion to predict the behavior of this rather large SimCity we
call the economy, without attempting to do any of the kinds of things that
you[base ']Äôre doing so fascinatingly with SimCity. Are there some lessons from what
you are doing that might make us do better in trying to understand the
emergent properties of the economy than we do with these mechanistic Newtonian
economic models that don[base ']Äôt seem to have any predictive power.
Wright: Yes, I agree. That[base ']Äôs why I said that
calculus was our primary modeling tool for several hundred years, but now we
have another one that seems to address these more emergent systems much
better. I totally agree with what you[base ']Äôre saying. In my view, classic economics
is dead, because it[base ']Äôs based upon this idea of a rational agent with fixed
curves crossing. Frequently, you look at how unpredictable economic systems
are, and it[base ']Äôs precisely because of emergence. It[base ']Äôs precisely because the way
just one newspaper might spin one story can have a deep impact on what the
investors do the next day. So the whole system is operating at such a deeper
level than these very simple equations might indicate.
'Pretend
You Live in America'. Our government can now 'disappear' ANY US
citizen, not allow them ANY lawyer and do whatever the government wants to
them for as long as it takes to get a confession, a plea or what have you.
Simply say he is a terrorist. And our media cheers this on. We are rapidly
becoming what we formerly hated. Star chambers are back. Power and
intimidation by authority will not make us safer. Exactly the opposite. Simply
look at Northern Ireland or the MIddle East. The administration is on
the wrong side of history on this. Fifty years from now, assuming we still
have some sort of real representational democracy, these decisions will be
viewed the same way the Japanese internments are now. http://radio.weblogs.com/0100187/2003/06/22.html#a2004
