Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
 
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Robert and Marcus, good morning,
Robert, your original thread is a fine one, and I sort-of know Moshe Levy, though not closely. The thread deserves orders of magnitude more and better attention than I can give it, so apologies in advance for shallowness in the following, or failing to make full use of the material you have provided. It seems to me that what makes this question interesting, important, and actionable, is the role that definite social structures can play in outcomes. In any simulations like Levy’s, one can make a model of a set of events, and then describe outcomes of that event-model, such as the dominating role of the “luck” of initial conditions. All good to do that. But another question is how one chooses to view the model as an instantiation of certain abstractions, and here there can be important choices. Economics, including much of what complexity people do (particularly those in finance) are heavy on the idea of negotiated contract and weak on the idea of Power and its role. Power can be anything that, either explicitly or in real-life-pragmatics, fills in gaps where idealized negotiation is either absent or practically unachievable. Hence power is pervasive and can result from enormously indirect and long-tailed causes. To the point of this conversation, it seems like crucial sources of power related to wealth divergences are _access_ (on one side), and _constraints_ (on the other). There are many other asymmetries, of information and skill sets (human capital in various denominations), time and computational capacities (both formal and informal) that one could add to the list. The enumerations of power, its forms and consequences, is probably a much larger and richer potential area for hopeful-future-science than economics is, because power is fundamentally a more diversified concept than contract. Yet whereas economics likes to think of itself as approaching a science (more deserved in a few areas than in almost all the rest), the study of power is still very rooted in “scholarship”, and lives in a world more of narrative and essay sometimes bolstered by some numbers, than in any world where systematic formal analysis could be said to have added much to understanding. But to mechanics: Access: having wealth changes the budgets of time, of social network, of centralization so you can take little commissions on lots of things created by publicly-funded joint resources (roads, schools, police, etc.). All these points were made by Obama and Elizabeth Warren and others in many public dicsussions that circulated on this list in past years. The general tenor of those messages, which I think is largely right, is that when you are a capital owner, wealthy, well-networked, and a middle-man in the productive labor of many others, you have the ability (within the law, and often within social norms), to take individually-tiny but vastly numerous benefits from the social infrastructure, which others further outside in the periphery of the network cannot take. This is a source of the positive feedback by which wealth breeds access, and access opens selective doors to further wealth. It seems an easy first-order explanation to the question often posed rhetorically: why do bankers garner vastly greater wages than homebuilders or other tradesmen, whose real contribution could be considered of comparable value and whose skills and effort are also comparable. It’s not that people need bankers more, but that more people need bankers to some degree, and the greater centrality of their position creates a structural power asymmetry. A similar thing can be said for people on coasts (and to a lesser extent along interior waterways), who are middle-men in ocean- (or river-) borne trade, or manufacturers as middle-men between raw materials suppliers and final-product consumers, or city dwellers whose use of infrastructure is denser and who therefore have economies of scale not available to rural residents. Many of these topics are discussed in fairly standard form in some of Paul Krugman’s early books on economic geography as a source of lock-in. I don’t think I am contributing any new insight here, but the point still seems to me far more important than the productive use to which we have been able to put it so far. Constraint: this is the opposite side of the coin from access. Its most conventionally treated forms are lack of access to capital and credit. Hard boundaries of the kind that come from limited capital and credit access turn what would be a probability distribution over options for a wealthy person into a kind of pin-ball careening from crisis to crisis, for the constrained. I have wanted, for years, to write down a simple model to check my intuition that this shortening of options which effectively shortens decision horizons, makes an inevitable ratchet for those who are less constrained, to always win on average over those who are credit- and cash-constrained. (I have a quasi-model with Duncan Foley several years ago which shows a version of this, but it doesn’t add much to understanding any important question here.) It isn’t illegal, per se, for each person to push hard for the best bargain for which he can find a counter-party, but it is a structural power asymmetry that the same people keep getting the worse end of almost-every deal, and it pushes them over time into corners from which they have no escape. So clearly the law is not sufficient to protect against a near-certain instability. Economists like to talk about cash and credit constraint because it is easy to measure and model, but one could say the same thing about constraints on time and attention (3 jobs; who has time to be careful about the news?), education and experience (the most effective way the republicans can hollow out the middle of the country and herd the populace into sheep-pens to be carved up is to defund and oppose basic education at every turn), and social network. Marcus, some months ago I made a comment about “emptying hearts and stuffing bellies”, to which you replied with perhaps skepticism, or at least a statement that I hadn’t made a clear case for something. I meant something along the lines of the foregoing paragraph, the awareness and accurate description of which is also present in most of your posts. I dislike the closed-mindedness and willful ignorance of groups I grew up in, probably in a very similar way to the way you do. But I don’t think that kind of thing flowers as it has, when societies are evolving to make a good life better; more like it grows where people are making an unsatisfying life somehow more tolerable to plough on through. So seriously and productively understanding the structural asymmetries that do constantly push wide swaths of people down, and figuring out how to get the public as a whole to make commitments to fix that where possible, was the intent of the “stuffing bellies” comment. Reduce the drivers to discontent, as a way to reduce the feral cultural offspring of discontent. I do think that things like trade deals appear in the conversation on exactly this point, because they can be one of the mechanisms by which a ratchet, driven by several factors, contributes one of the mechanisms of asymmetric access and increasing inequality. But trade deals are infinitely complicated and need a thread of their own, because they exist at an intersection of business, national governance, and geopolitics that makes it incredibly hard to fairly assess all the constraints that go into any particular negotiation or decision. I don’t mean the above comments on access and constraint as abstractions to obviate or sideline the kinds of models that economists or quantitative social scientists make, but I do intend them try to address the institutional or statutory decisions that create the mechanisms inbuilt into such models. Crucially, whereas the models simply describe wealth divergence as an amplification of luck in the form of initial conditions, choosing the right abstraction of mechanism gets at how the amplifier works. If there is an argument for a particular structure of taxation, which is a social institution, it could stem not even from an abstract moral or utilitarian domain (though I tend to agree with your positions on those as well), but from the practical domain that the whole rest of the structure of the market economy has inbuilt positive feedbacks which are inherently destabilizing, and that the stabilizing effects of progressive taxation are structural compensations — in the domain where they are possible — for the positive feedbacks elsewhere which are difficult to make less-positive because of the other ways the functions are designed. Like Steve and others, my thanks to the list, Eric > On Jan 21, 2017, at 2:56 AM, Robert Wall <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Good morning Marcus, > > I didn't give you a fair reply to this particular post; I got distracted myself by the RT thing. 😊 I will try to make amends here ... > > The Nautilus article--including my response to it--is about the "secret sauce" to massive wealth. The author's surprising conclusion after doing multiple stochastic simulations is that it is predominantly luck that accounts for success even after treating the experiment for talent. > > "His research interests include the distribution of wealth, investments, CEO compensation, decision-making, and social phase transitions." > > So I guess Moshe Levy, the author, has been looking at this for a while. So, he wonders that if the secret sauce is just luck, then shouldn't we "tax" the lucky in a way to rebalance the game? It is an interesting question for a hypothetical, non-intuitive result: the massively wealthy are massively lucky ... by virtue of the way they accrued their wealth. [an aside: using the Buddhist concept of dependent arising, in this context, one can never say "I did this all by myself."] If you are a dyed in the wool capitalist you would likely recoil from such a suggestion; you would say that "these personal gains are due to an individual's hard work and talent ... we don't want to tax these virtues as it would provide a disincentive and bring the whole enterprise to a screeching halt." > > So the luck hypothesis seems to turn this argument on its head. Moshe also squeezes in another "snarky" bit about the massively wealthy being able to avoid hard work and just live off of their investments. That just leaves talent or skill, which we are told he treats for in his experiment. > > Your idea, it seems, is that the answer to Moshe's wonder is that what anyone does about the wealth gap should depend on how one actually uses their wealth. Let's call this the use argument. Do they, for example, use their wealth for improving society or for separating themselves from the same and living in their own gilded bubble? [Please note that the thread's issue is with personal wealth and not corporate profits, leaving Google and payday loan institutions on the sidelines for the moment.] Risking to make your point a little better, in this case, I would have juxtaposed Bill Gates with the owners of WalMart, the family that owns as much wealth as the bottom 42% of all Americans combined. And, the latter entity will not even consider paying a living wage to its employees such that the American taxpayer do not have to pick up the tab for the rest. Bill and Malinda Gates are well-regarded philanthropists. So okay; which one should be "taxed" more? > > I am not really in favor of using taxes as the sole way of righting the ship. We have to also provide other ways for the 99% to earn their own way on their own steam, as it were.“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” as Reagan is famous for saying. But I would amend Reagan's First Innaguaral insight by saying that a large or growing governemnt is just a symptom of the problem. > > The problem with government is that there is too much demand for it. If you ensure a living wage and provide for economic opportunities for all Americans there would be less demand for government. Moreover, the American economy would have more viable consumers and less social dependency. The New Deal was all about this kind of fix to an ailing economy, which was also due in some part to a grossly exaggerated wealth gap. But this is something the capitalist failed to do themselves at that time. > > I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that land in a coordinated ways to build something more complex. One way is with trade laws. > > I think I can partly agree with this statement ... about the biased coin thing. That is the rigging, IMHO; by not making adjustments to the flow of wealth [akin to blood flow in a body] the system gets sicker and sicker. Our economic system is arguably sick now when you consider the body composed of constituents comprising the consumers in the system [the cells, keeping with the metaphor]. To be sure, government does not have to be the institution making the adjustments; the captains if industry should do this first to avoid any necessary government intervention. > > Just like you say that there are differences in billionaires, there are differences in trade agreements. IMHO, the trade agreemets like NAFTA and TPP help to perpetuate the neoliberal status quo with the multi-national companies being the exclusive beneficiaries and the American worker [and society] being the ultimate loser. We might look at this with a biological metaphor, say, the KT-extinction event, which percipitated a structural evolution allowing only the strong members to survive--strong for that niche, to be sure. This would be in keeping with the former neoliberal trope: "We make money the old fashion way; we earn it." [Remember that commercial in the early eighties with John Houseman ... who played Contract Law Professor Charles Kingsfield Jr. in the TV series The Paper Chase? 😎 ] > > But, do we want to "live" in a world like that? Or, can we evolve consciously as a society to find a more inclusive solution? If it plays out as it has throughout history, the anser will be "not likely." I mean this hope could be bordering on complete naïveté, calling for a universal Kumbayah moment. Yes? 😕 But let's go on ... > > Neoliberalism is now well-established in American politics, especially with the SCOTUS' Citizens United decision. Just another symptom. The "blood" has mostly gone to the head. It will take a revolution like the Arab Spring, IMHO. Not a Kumbayah moment! As the Pareto distribution of wealth versus population continues to skew more, this will ultimately reach a tipping point ... and revolution will become more and more likely even in this country. And, I didn't learn that at RT. 😁 [an aside: Capitalism requires some skew to the wealth versus population distribution in order for there to be incentive--the engine for such a market-based system ... and a very good system when resources are intelligently managed to not be wasteful--it's biggest arguable hit for the health of the planet. I get that, just like Kurt Vonnegut did in his Breakfast of Champions (1973). Capitalism is like gambling and investments. There has to be sufficient likelihood of winning.] > > As I watch the Inaguaration this morning and the mounting resistant to a Trump presidency, I see an irony unfolding that suggests that maybe half of America believe that the American economic situation could be different with a different election result. Neoliberalism--not the Russians--has effectively uncoupled those events. The root of the problem is neoliberalism itself, IMHO. > > Yikes! I am kind of sounding like Reagan who ushhered in neoliberalism in the country thirty-five years ago. 🤔 🤐 Sorry. Neoliberalism is a whole 'nother, different thread. > > I hope this is a better response Marcus ... > > Cheers, > > Robert > > > On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote: > "The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus population. It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the metaphorical fair coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan]." > > > > I think it depends in part on the source of the wealth and how it is used. There's a qualitative difference between a Google and a payday loan company that preys on the poor. Are these wealthy people creating new high-paying jobs or locking-in people to dead-end jobs like coal mining? Do they have a vision of advancement of humanity (Gates) or just a unnecessary assertion of the `need' for a lowest-common-denominator dog-eat-dog view of things? How does their wealth and power matter in the long run? It is at least good that there isn't just one kind of billionaire, like the sort that destroys the environment and enslaves people. > > > > A problem with government is that the agency it gives people is either very limited (you get food stamps so you can eat), or it is also hierarchical like these enterprises (you don't get much agency unless you fight your way up or are an elected official). For people to truly be free means creating a commons that facilitates other kinds of motivators that are rewarding in more complex ways than just salary or status. Universities don't really deliver on this, except perhaps for some professors who are in that world for most of their adult life. > > > > I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that land in a coordinated ways to build something more complex. One way is with trade laws. > > > > Marcus > > > > P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet. Of course, they'd have their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power. > From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall <[hidden email]> > Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent > > This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ... please skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too thought-full ... > > Does Pareto's Principle (with the attending, so-called Power Law) provide good moral justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or a reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g., changing the probabilities for the "everyman"]? And, is the argument one of morality or one of necessity? That's what this thread and the subject Nautilus article intend to explore, especially with the events that will begin the next four years tomorrow. > > Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent (January 19, 2017). > The surprising message of the statistics of wealth distribution. > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, > neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, > but time and chance happeneth to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11) > > [an introductory aside: As computational statisticians, we love our simulations ... and our coin tosses. We are always mindful of bias ... as, say, apparent with the ever-widening wealth gap. Money, Money, Money ...] > > > > So, as described in the subject Nautilus article, Pareto's Principle, descriptively seen so often in nature, seems to imply that the current widening wealth gap is, well, "natural?" Judging by its prevalence in most all rich societies, it does seem so. However, remembering that this sorting process works even with fair coin tosses in investments and gambling, this process phenomenon with its biased outcomes seems to occur in many places and on many levels ... > > For example, we find this aspect of luck in nature elsewhere in biological processes; from Wikipedia ... Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology is a 1970 book by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show that life is only the result of natural processes by "pure chance." The basic tenet of this book is that systems in nature with molecular biology, such as enzymatic biofeedback loops [metabolisms] can be explained without having to invoke final causality [e.g., Intelligent Design]. > > Usually, relatively very few winners and many, many losers. Phenotypical luck or luck in tectonic location? > > According to the introduction the book's title was inspired by a line attributed to Democritus, "Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity." > > But, is there a necessity to Pareto's Principle? To answer this I must defer to my theoretical mathematician friends who so often look to Plato for such answers. My thought is that the necessity comes from a need to, perhaps teleologically, react to it ... as the planet's only available potential intelligent designers ... the purpose being, on some scale, Darwinian-level survival. > > And, this aspect of fate by chance is also reasoned in the Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997, a transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). > > The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues that the gaps in power and technology between human societies originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent in the Eurasian genomes. [Wikipedia] > > The luck of geography. So then, should the more fortunate nations be more progressively taxed? Maybe we should ask Greece? Or see what Germany has to say? Followers of egalitarianism would argue yes. Followers of Ayn Rand's capitalism or her Objectivism [like Speaker Paul Ryan] would argue no. I think most of the rest of us fall somewhere in between; that is, not sure. So, let's go on ... > > Is the (economic) game rigged then, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have insisted? Personally, I would say absolutely yes, and neoliberalism is the underlying philosophy of the rigging process [hear just the 1st 12 minutes, if you watch]. But, maybe this political ideology is just one that is eventually spawned by a conspicuous need for moralistic or even Randian justification, by the winners, for its resulting destructiveness--as we so often hear, "wealth accumulation is based on hard work and talent." So, intelligent design? > > The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus population. It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the metaphorical fair coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan]. > > Going forward, maybe we need to think about this neoliberal meme as the next four years, with a President Donald Trump, begin tomorrow ... while also remembering that morality is a human concept or "invention." Or is it? Or, does that even matter?! Perhaps, morality is just a necessity ... but what are its goals ... dare I say its "purpose?" When did it emerge? With consciousness? How did it emerge? By chance, as Monad and Democritus would insist? > > Conjecture: It would seem that morality's human purpose is to check, slow, or rebalance the effects of the Pareto phenomenon in social and economic processes. Wealth has always been disproportionately distributed. Surely, just like the "selfish gene," morality arose out of self-interest; so it arose with prerequisite consciousness and not necessarily just with human consciousness [e.g., we see evidence of "morality" in other primate social systems]. As a system model, neoliberalism is connected with a positive feedback loop to morality and with a negative feedback loop to social stability. I think that there is a tipping-point distribution of wealth versus population. > > Conclusion: The above conjecture is borne up by chance and necessity. The necessity is manifested by the need to rebalance the outcomes of the game [e.g., wealth or opportunity] every now and then, in order to ensure social stability. This just seems like a brain-dead conclusion that even Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get. But will Trump? Strong critics of Hillary Clinton imply that she, like her husband, would surely have strengthened the negative feedback effect of neoliberalism toward their own self-interest and toward worsening social stability, IMHO. The results of the November election are a kind of testament to this conclusion. In an unexpected way, we may have a chance with Trump to bring even more necessary awareness to the aforementioned system model that has often played out in human history and as recounted in Jared Diamond's book-length essays. Bernie-style revolution? Perhaps. > > So, that is the idea of how chance and necessity fits here in "the game.". Now, let's dig into this idea of morality a bit more and how it fits in with the need for a different kind of evolution, not biological, but conscious evolution: > > This comment from a Quora article on this subject titled Is morality merely a social construct or something more? is notable: > Mindaugas Kuprionis, works at CERN > Written 17 Sep 2010 > > Just recently Edge.orgheld a conference titled "The New Science of Morality". Consensus statement signed by several scholars (list below) was such: > > 1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon > 2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality are innate > 3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little deliberation or conscious weighing of evidence and alternatives > 4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our moral lives > 5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with actual behavior > 6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral cognition, yet there is no "moral center" in the brain > 7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures > 8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying degrees [aside-- so morality may be akin to metabolic systems at the level of society --regulating feedback loops of sorts] > [aside-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment comes to mind. Under this eight-point new science, how would we judge the "higher-purpose" actions of Rodion Raskolnikov?] > > So if it is true that there is no distributional purpose to luck other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic sorting mechanism of outcomes in accordance with a Power Law, then should there be a necessary, periodic re-sorting of the initial conditions now skewed by chance ... like with a deck of cards before the next deal ...? All poker players would insist on no less. Don't we all insist on a fair game? It's an interesting question, IMHO. > Yes, I know; lots to unpack here. Sorry. Nonetheless, I thought the Nautilus article was quite thought-provoking as they always seem to be. > Cheers, > > -Robert > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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It's the end of the day here in New Mexico, at least for me. For now I'm going to imagine a 2020 debate in which the audience expects the candidates to at least operate in the world of narrative and essay.
Fascinating as always, Marcus -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Eric Smith Sent: Friday, January 20, 2017 5:34 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent Robert and Marcus, good morning, Robert, your original thread is a fine one, and I sort-of know Moshe Levy, though not closely. The thread deserves orders of magnitude more and better attention than I can give it, so apologies in advance for shallowness in the following, or failing to make full use of the material you have provided. It seems to me that what makes this question interesting, important, and actionable, is the role that definite social structures can play in outcomes. In any simulations like Levy’s, one can make a model of a set of events, and then describe outcomes of that event-model, such as the dominating role of the “luck” of initial conditions. All good to do that. But another question is how one chooses to view the model as an instantiation of certain abstractions, and here there can be important choices. Economics, including much of what complexity people do (particularly those in finance) are heavy on the idea of negotiated contract and weak on the idea of Power and its role. Power can be anything that, either explicitly or in real-life-pragmatics, fills in gaps where idealized negotiation is either absent or practically unachievable. Hence power is pervasive and can result from enormously indirect and long-tailed causes. To the point of this conversation, it seems like crucial sources of power related to wealth divergences are _access_ (on one side), and _constraints_ (on the other). There are many other asymmetries, of information and skill sets (human capital in various denominations), time and computational capacities (both formal and informal) that one could add to the list. The enumerations of power, its forms and consequences, is probably a much larger and richer potential area for hopeful-future-science than economics is, because power is fundamentally a more diversified concept than contract. Yet whereas economics likes to think of itself as approaching a science (more deserved in a few areas than in almost all the rest), the study of power is still very rooted in “scholarship”, and lives in a world more of narrative and essay sometimes bolstered by some numbers, than in any world where systematic formal analysis could be said to have added much to understanding. But to mechanics: Access: having wealth changes the budgets of time, of social network, of centralization so you can take little commissions on lots of things created by publicly-funded joint resources (roads, schools, police, etc.). All these points were made by Obama and Elizabeth Warren and others in many public dicsussions that circulated on this list in past years. The general tenor of those messages, which I think is largely right, is that when you are a capital owner, wealthy, well-networked, and a middle-man in the productive labor of many others, you have the ability (within the law, and often within social norms), to take individually-tiny but vastly numerous benefits from the social infrastructure, which others further outside in the periphery of the network cannot take. This is a source of the positive feedback by which wealth breeds access, and access opens selective doors to further wealth. It seems an easy first-order explanation to the question often posed rhetorically: why do bankers garner vastly greater wages than homebuilders or other tradesmen, whose real contribution could be considered of comparable value and whose skills and effort are also comparable. It’s not that people need bankers more, but that more people need bankers to some degree, and the greater centrality of their position creates a structural power asymmetry. A similar thing can be said for people on coasts (and to a lesser extent along interior waterways), who are middle-men in ocean- (or river-) borne trade, or manufacturers as middle-men between raw materials suppliers and final-product consumers, or city dwellers whose use of infrastructure is denser and who therefore have economies of scale not available to rural residents. Many of these topics are discussed in fairly standard form in some of Paul Krugman’s early books on economic geography as a source of lock-in. I don’t think I am contributing any new insight here, but the point still seems to me far more important than the productive use to which we have been able to put it so far. Constraint: this is the opposite side of the coin from access. Its most conventionally treated forms are lack of access to capital and credit. Hard boundaries of the kind that come from limited capital and credit access turn what would be a probability distribution over options for a wealthy person into a kind of pin-ball careening from crisis to crisis, for the constrained. I have wanted, for years, to write down a simple model to check my intuition that this shortening of options which effectively shortens decision horizons, makes an inevitable ratchet for those who are less constrained, to always win on average over those who are credit- and cash-constrained. (I have a quasi-model with Duncan Foley several years ago which shows a version of this, but it doesn’t add much to understanding any important question here.) It isn’t illegal, per se, for each person to push hard for the best bargain for which he can find a counter-party, but it is a structural power asymmetry that the same people keep getting the worse end of almost-every deal, and it pushes them over time into corners from which they have no escape. So clearly the law is not sufficient to protect against a near-certain instability. Economists like to talk about cash and credit constraint because it is easy to measure and model, but one could say the same thing about constraints on time and attention (3 jobs; who has time to be careful about the news?), education and experience (the most effective way the republicans can hollow out the middle of the country and herd the populace into sheep-pens to be carved up is to defund and oppose basic education at every turn), and social network. Marcus, some months ago I made a comment about “emptying hearts and stuffing bellies”, to which you replied with perhaps skepticism, or at least a statement that I hadn’t made a clear case for something. I meant something along the lines of the foregoing paragraph, the awareness and accurate description of which is also present in most of your posts. I dislike the closed-mindedness and willful ignorance of groups I grew up in, probably in a very similar way to the way you do. But I don’t think that kind of thing flowers as it has, when societies are evolving to make a good life better; more like it grows where people are making an unsatisfying life somehow more tolerable to plough on through. So seriously and productively understanding the structural asymmetries that do constantly push wide swaths of people down, and figuring out how to get the public as a whole to make commitments to fix that where possible, was the intent of the “stuffing bellies” comment. Reduce the drivers to discontent, as a way to reduce the feral cultural offspring of discontent. I do think that things like trade deals appear in the conversation on exactly this point, because they can be one of the mechanisms by which a ratchet, driven by several factors, contributes one of the mechanisms of asymmetric access and increasing inequality. But trade deals are infinitely complicated and need a thread of their own, because they exist at an intersection of business, national governance, and geopolitics that makes it incredibly hard to fairly assess all the constraints that go into any particular negotiation or decision. I don’t mean the above comments on access and constraint as abstractions to obviate or sideline the kinds of models that economists or quantitative social scientists make, but I do intend them try to address the institutional or statutory decisions that create the mechanisms inbuilt into such models. Crucially, whereas the models simply describe wealth divergence as an amplification of luck in the form of initial conditions, choosing the right abstraction of mechanism gets at how the amplifier works. If there is an argument for a particular structure of taxation, which is a social institution, it could stem not even from an abstract moral or utilitarian domain (though I tend to agree with your positions on those as well), but from the practical domain that the whole rest of the structure of the market economy has inbuilt positive feedbacks which are inherently destabilizing, and that the stabilizing effects of progressive taxation are structural compensations — in the domain where they are possible — for the positive feedbacks elsewhere which are difficult to make less-positive because of the other ways the functions are designed. Like Steve and others, my thanks to the list, Eric > On Jan 21, 2017, at 2:56 AM, Robert Wall <[hidden email]> wrote: > > Good morning Marcus, > > I didn't give you a fair reply to this particular post; I got distracted myself by the RT thing. 😊 I will try to make amends here ... > > The Nautilus article--including my response to it--is about the "secret sauce" to massive wealth. The author's surprising conclusion after doing multiple stochastic simulations is that it is predominantly luck that accounts for success even after treating the experiment for talent. > > "His research interests include the distribution of wealth, investments, CEO compensation, decision-making, and social phase transitions." > > So I guess Moshe Levy, the author, has been looking at this for a while. So, he wonders that if the secret sauce is just luck, then shouldn't we "tax" the lucky in a way to rebalance the game? It is an interesting question for a hypothetical, non-intuitive result: the massively wealthy are massively lucky ... by virtue of the way they accrued their wealth. [an aside: using the Buddhist concept of dependent arising, in this context, one can never say "I did this all by myself."] If you are a dyed in the wool capitalist you would likely recoil from such a suggestion; you would say that "these personal gains are due to an individual's hard work and talent ... we don't want to tax these virtues as it would provide a disincentive and bring the whole enterprise to a screeching halt." > > So the luck hypothesis seems to turn this argument on its head. Moshe also squeezes in another "snarky" bit about the massively wealthy being able to avoid hard work and just live off of their investments. That just leaves talent or skill, which we are told he treats for in his experiment. > > Your idea, it seems, is that the answer to Moshe's wonder is that what anyone does about the wealth gap should depend on how one actually uses their wealth. Let's call this the use argument. Do they, for example, use their wealth for improving society or for separating themselves from the same and living in their own gilded bubble? [Please note that the thread's issue is with personal wealth and not corporate profits, leaving Google and payday loan institutions on the sidelines for the moment.] Risking to make your point a little better, in this case, I would have juxtaposed Bill Gates with the owners of WalMart, the family that owns as much wealth as the bottom 42% of all Americans combined. And, the latter entity will not even consider paying a living wage to its employees such that the American taxpayer do not have to pick up the tab for the rest. Bill and Malinda Gates are well-regarded philanthropists. So okay; which one should be "taxed" more? > > I am not really in favor of using taxes as the sole way of righting the ship. We have to also provide other ways for the 99% to earn their own way on their own steam, as it were.“Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” as Reagan is famous for saying. But I would amend Reagan's First Innaguaral insight by saying that a large or growing governemnt is just a symptom of the problem. > > The problem with government is that there is too much demand for it. If you ensure a living wage and provide for economic opportunities for all Americans there would be less demand for government. Moreover, the American economy would have more viable consumers and less social dependency. The New Deal was all about this kind of fix to an ailing economy, which was also due in some part to a grossly exaggerated wealth gap. But this is something the capitalist failed to do themselves at that time. > > I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that land in a coordinated ways to build something more complex. One way is with trade laws. > > I think I can partly agree with this statement ... about the biased coin thing. That is the rigging, IMHO; by not making adjustments to the flow of wealth [akin to blood flow in a body] the system gets sicker and sicker. Our economic system is arguably sick now when you consider the body composed of constituents comprising the consumers in the system [the cells, keeping with the metaphor]. To be sure, government does not have to be the institution making the adjustments; the captains if industry should do this first to avoid any necessary government intervention. > > Just like you say that there are differences in billionaires, there > are differences in trade agreements. IMHO, the trade agreemets like > NAFTA and TPP help to perpetuate the neoliberal status quo with the > multi-national companies being the exclusive beneficiaries and the > American worker [and society] being the ultimate loser. We might look > at this with a biological metaphor, say, the KT-extinction event, > which percipitated a structural evolution allowing only the strong > members to survive--strong for that niche, to be sure. This would be > in keeping with the former neoliberal trope: "We make money the old > fashion way; we earn it." [Remember that commercial in the early > eighties with John Houseman ... who played Contract Law Professor > Charles Kingsfield Jr. in the TV series The Paper Chase? 😎 ] > > But, do we want to "live" in a world like that? Or, can we evolve consciously as a society to find a more inclusive solution? If it plays out as it has throughout history, the anser will be "not likely." I mean this hope could be bordering on complete naïveté, calling for a universal Kumbayah moment. Yes? 😕 But let's go on ... > > Neoliberalism is now well-established in American politics, especially > with the SCOTUS' Citizens United decision. Just another symptom. The > "blood" has mostly gone to the head. It will take a revolution like > the Arab Spring, IMHO. Not a Kumbayah moment! As the Pareto > distribution of wealth versus population continues to skew more, this > will ultimately reach a tipping point ... and revolution will become > more and more likely even in this country. And, I didn't learn that > at RT. 😁 [an aside: Capitalism requires some skew to the wealth > versus population distribution in order for there to be incentive--the > engine for such a market-based system ... and a very good system when > resources are intelligently managed to not be wasteful--it's biggest > arguable hit for the health of the planet. I get that, just like Kurt > Vonnegut did in his Breakfast of Champions (1973). Capitalism is like > gambling and investments. There has to be sufficient likelihood of > winning.] > > As I watch the Inaguaration this morning and the mounting resistant to a Trump presidency, I see an irony unfolding that suggests that maybe half of America believe that the American economic situation could be different with a different election result. Neoliberalism--not the Russians--has effectively uncoupled those events. The root of the problem is neoliberalism itself, IMHO. > > Yikes! I am kind of sounding like Reagan who ushhered in neoliberalism in the country thirty-five years ago. 🤔 🤐 Sorry. Neoliberalism is a whole 'nother, different thread. > > I hope this is a better response Marcus ... > > Cheers, > > Robert > > > On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 8:39 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote: > "The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus population. It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the metaphorical fair coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan]." > > > > I think it depends in part on the source of the wealth and how it is used. There's a qualitative difference between a Google and a payday loan company that preys on the poor. Are these wealthy people creating new high-paying jobs or locking-in people to dead-end jobs like coal mining? Do they have a vision of advancement of humanity (Gates) or just a unnecessary assertion of the `need' for a lowest-common-denominator dog-eat-dog view of things? How does their wealth and power matter in the long run? It is at least good that there isn't just one kind of billionaire, like the sort that destroys the environment and enslaves people. > > > > A problem with government is that the agency it gives people is either very limited (you get food stamps so you can eat), or it is also hierarchical like these enterprises (you don't get much agency unless you fight your way up or are an elected official). For people to truly be free means creating a commons that facilitates other kinds of motivators that are rewarding in more complex ways than just salary or status. Universities don't really deliver on this, except perhaps for some professors who are in that world for most of their adult life. > > > > I would say neoliberalism is trying to engineer biased coins that land in a coordinated ways to build something more complex. One way is with trade laws. > > > > Marcus > > > > P.S. RT is the Russian Propaganda news outlet. Of course, they'd have their own motives for wanting to diminish Chinese power. > From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Robert Wall > <[hidden email]> > Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2017 4:57:14 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent > > This is just an exploratory thought piece to try in this forum ... please skip if it seems, right off the bat, as being too thought-full ... > > Does Pareto's Principle (with the attending, so-called Power Law) provide good moral justification for an amped-up progressive tax strategy or a reverse-discriminating set of rebalancing policies [e.g., changing the probabilities for the "everyman"]? And, is the argument one of morality or one of necessity? That's what this thread and the subject Nautilus article intend to explore, especially with the events that will begin the next four years tomorrow. > > Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent (January 19, 2017). > The surprising message of the statistics of wealth distribution. > > I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, > nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet > riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill, but > time and chance happeneth to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11) > > [an introductory aside: As computational statisticians, we love our simulations ... and our coin tosses. We are always mindful of bias ... as, say, apparent with the ever-widening wealth gap. Money, Money, Money ...] > > > > So, as described in the subject Nautilus article, Pareto's Principle, descriptively seen so often in nature, seems to imply that the current widening wealth gap is, well, "natural?" Judging by its prevalence in most all rich societies, it does seem so. However, remembering that this sorting process works even with fair coin tosses in investments and gambling, this process phenomenon with its biased outcomes seems to occur in many places and on many levels ... > > For example, we find this aspect of luck in nature elsewhere in biological processes; from Wikipedia ... Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology is a 1970 book by Nobel Prize winner Jacques Monod, interpreting the processes of evolution to show that life is only the result of natural processes by "pure chance." The basic tenet of this book is that systems in nature with molecular biology, such as enzymatic biofeedback loops [metabolisms] can be explained without having to invoke final causality [e.g., Intelligent Design]. > > Usually, relatively very few winners and many, many losers. Phenotypical luck or luck in tectonic location? > > According to the introduction the book's title was inspired by a line attributed to Democritus, "Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity." > > But, is there a necessity to Pareto's Principle? To answer this I must defer to my theoretical mathematician friends who so often look to Plato for such answers. My thought is that the necessity comes from a need to, perhaps teleologically, react to it ... as the planet's only available potential intelligent designers ... the purpose being, on some scale, Darwinian-level survival. > > And, this aspect of fate by chance is also reasoned in the Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies is a 1997, a transdisciplinary non-fiction book by Jared Diamond, professor of geography and physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). > > The book attempts to explain why Eurasian civilizations (including > North Africa) have survived and conquered others, while arguing > against the idea that Eurasian hegemony is due to any form of Eurasian > intellectual, moral, or inherent genetic superiority. Diamond argues > that the gaps in power and technology between human societies > originate primarily in environmental differences, which are amplified > by various positive feedback loops. When cultural or genetic > differences have favored Eurasians (for example, written language or > the development among Eurasians of resistance to endemic diseases), he > asserts that these advantages occurred because of the influence of > geography on societies and cultures (for example, by facilitating > commerce and trade between different cultures) and were not inherent > in the Eurasian genomes. [Wikipedia] > > The luck of geography. So then, should the more fortunate nations be more progressively taxed? Maybe we should ask Greece? Or see what Germany has to say? Followers of egalitarianism would argue yes. Followers of Ayn Rand's capitalism or her Objectivism [like Speaker Paul Ryan] would argue no. I think most of the rest of us fall somewhere in between; that is, not sure. So, let's go on ... > > Is the (economic) game rigged then, as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have insisted? Personally, I would say absolutely yes, and neoliberalism is the underlying philosophy of the rigging process [hear just the 1st 12 minutes, if you watch]. But, maybe this political ideology is just one that is eventually spawned by a conspicuous need for moralistic or even Randian justification, by the winners, for its resulting destructiveness--as we so often hear, "wealth accumulation is based on hard work and talent." So, intelligent design? > > The rigging is, IMHO, of not doing anything about the unabated and disproportionate flow of wealth to the top and, hence, giving rise to the resulting, ever-skewing, descriptive Pareto distribution of wealth versus population. It certainly does seem like an increasing biasing of the metaphorical fair coin [e.g., the busted "trickle down" metaphor of President Ronald Reagan]. > > Going forward, maybe we need to think about this neoliberal meme as the next four years, with a President Donald Trump, begin tomorrow ... while also remembering that morality is a human concept or "invention." Or is it? Or, does that even matter?! Perhaps, morality is just a necessity ... but what are its goals ... dare I say its "purpose?" When did it emerge? With consciousness? How did it emerge? By chance, as Monad and Democritus would insist? > > Conjecture: It would seem that morality's human purpose is to check, slow, or rebalance the effects of the Pareto phenomenon in social and economic processes. Wealth has always been disproportionately distributed. Surely, just like the "selfish gene," morality arose out of self-interest; so it arose with prerequisite consciousness and not necessarily just with human consciousness [e.g., we see evidence of "morality" in other primate social systems]. As a system model, neoliberalism is connected with a positive feedback loop to morality and with a negative feedback loop to social stability. I think that there is a tipping-point distribution of wealth versus population. > > Conclusion: The above conjecture is borne up by chance and necessity. The necessity is manifested by the need to rebalance the outcomes of the game [e.g., wealth or opportunity] every now and then, in order to ensure social stability. This just seems like a brain-dead conclusion that even Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get. But will Trump? Strong critics of Hillary Clinton imply that she, like her husband, would surely have strengthened the negative feedback effect of neoliberalism toward their own self-interest and toward worsening social stability, IMHO. The results of the November election are a kind of testament to this conclusion. In an unexpected way, we may have a chance with Trump to bring even more necessary awareness to the aforementioned system model that has often played out in human history and as recounted in Jared Diamond's book-length essays. Bernie-style revolution? Perhaps. > > So, that is the idea of how chance and necessity fits here in "the game.". Now, let's dig into this idea of morality a bit more and how it fits in with the need for a different kind of evolution, not biological, but conscious evolution: > > This comment from a Quora article on this subject titled Is morality merely a social construct or something more? is notable: > Mindaugas Kuprionis, works at CERN > Written 17 Sep 2010 > > Just recently Edge.orgheld a conference titled "The New Science of Morality". Consensus statement signed by several scholars (list below) was such: > > 1) Morality is a natural phenomenon and a cultural phenomenon > 2) Many of the psychological building blocks of morality are innate > 3) Moral judgments are often made intuitively, with little > deliberation or conscious weighing of evidence and alternatives > 4) Conscious moral reasoning plays multiple roles in our moral lives > 5) Moral judgments and values are often at odds with actual behavior > 6) Many areas of the brain are recruited for moral cognition, yet > there is no "moral center" in the brain > 7) Morality varies across individuals and cultures > 8) Moral systems support human flourishing, to varying degrees > [aside-- so morality may be akin to metabolic systems at the level of > society --regulating feedback loops of sorts] > [aside-- Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment comes to mind. > Under this eight-point new science, how would we judge the > "higher-purpose" actions of Rodion Raskolnikov?] > > So if it is true that there is no distributional purpose to luck other than a mechanistic, long-run, teleonomic sorting mechanism of outcomes in accordance with a Power Law, then should there be a necessary, periodic re-sorting of the initial conditions now skewed by chance ... like with a deck of cards before the next deal ...? All poker players would insist on no less. Don't we all insist on a fair game? It's an interesting question, IMHO. > Yes, I know; lots to unpack here. Sorry. Nonetheless, I thought the Nautilus article was quite thought-provoking as they always seem to be. > Cheers, > > -Robert > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe > at St. John's College to unsubscribe > http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
Good afternoon Steve, Marcus, and Eric, First off, thanks guys for so generously chiming in on this thread. I will try to respond in kind, but there is so much to unpack--especially in Eric's response--that I will attempt to keep it, perhaps uncharacteristically, brief. Not promising ... 😊 Steve, I think this [the conscious evolution of a society] is a candidate for my idea of "a good question". And a corollary might be "what does conscious evolution of a society even mean?". If we knew what it meant, it might just fall into place? As an abstraction it seems most useful as a stalking horse? Spot on! This is a question I floated in another local [philosophy] group about a year ago. In the current context, it seems like a much better alternative than, say an Arab Spring, of even an American-style French Revolution. So it is worthy of reflection. But how practical is this? On an individual level, it can take years to evolve consciously beyond our cultural inculcations toward a wisdom that allows for a more peaceful, cooperative coexistence with our planet and its creatures, creatures that have been [passively] adapted to a physical co-existence with the same. But conscious evolution cannot be passive on any level: individual, societal, global, universal. In a sense, conscious evolution is a kind of rebooting of a conscious organism with a new "morality" program that has the purpose of changing the nature of that organism more toward altruism and less toward self-interest, kind of resetting the initial conditions built into our DNA, so to speak ... superseding the animal. So, it's kind of changing the probabilities of the social game, like we are discussing in this thread, but on an individual level. On the individual level, this is indeed possible by way of Hebbian learning, which itself is possible by way of the plasticity of the brain, its neural network, so to speak. BUT, how can this be done on the level of a society? There is no corresponding "social brain" except the memetic (ideas) network that exists on a social level ... with the zeitgeist being the resulting behavior of that "animal." There have been various attempts through history to adapt the zeitgeist toward what would be good for ... the ruling class. These manifest as religion, codes of conduct, Law, ... or something in the human brain that has been inculcated by society as morality. Let's quickly review what that conference titled "The New Science of Morality" concluded about characteristics of morality:
This is kind of akin to a sequencing of the "DNA" of societal memes. A menome of sorts that can vary across cultures. Moreover, these memes correspondingly produce an "organism" that acts with jingoistic self-interest. Let's be clear, this physically evolved trait is what allowed humankind to become the top dog on the planet: tribes. But tribalism can no longer work as a constructive cohesive force in the Nuclear Age dominated by a neoliberal ruling class. Society needs to consciously evolve. Societies need to now go beyond their "culturally evolved" programming. But how? It seems like it needs to be more bottom-up. Typically, it comes from top-down by a self-interested ruling class. But the Internet could break this pattern ... This was a hopeful note in Jared Diamond's epilog to his Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2006). Religion has not turned out so well for us either as a Hebbian-like device. Folks talk about gene editing, AI, transhumanism, and the like as possible ways. Hitler had another recommendation, but thank goodness we nipped that in the bud. Concurrent to Hitler, Aldous Huxley wrote about his idea in Brave New World (1931). The Buddhist have their notion in the Dharma, which is kind of an Operators Manual for the brain. But people don't seem to WANT to live that way even though they like to decorate their homes with statues of the Buddha. So, in our weekly meetings at a local Santa Fe cafe reflecting on this dilemma, we never came up with a way to get past this and just saw our discussions devolve back into readings of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger. We're doing Whitehead now. His Process Philosophy kind of just says, "Wait long enough and everything will change." Change for the better?! So, Steve, it remains as a stalking horse still. As Marcus says, "It's all physics." More on this later. At the risk of sounding like a dualist, "Where does that leave consciousness." I guess I will have to read this now: Nautilus: Consciousness Is Made of Atoms, Too (September 2016). In this metaphor [i.e., blood for money], if it is apt, it would appear that the body of our society (first world?) has gone into a sort of self-annihilation, constricting blood flow to parts of the body, as if it doesn't understand that the necrosis which offends it is *caused* by it's treatment of the very organs or extremities it is causing to fail so miserably? Exactly. Metaphors can be useful. George Lakoff says they are fundamental to language. I see neoliberalism as a pandemic virus that affects the flow of blood [wealth]. Extending the metaphor, the world needs to stimulate the right antibodies to rid us of this disease before the patient dies. Question: is neoliberalism the Markovian absorbing state to capitalism? Another thread. perhaps ...? I left my sympathy with the conservative (more libertarian than republican) apprehension of the world and moved it quite a way to the left. Bernie was my man, Jill got my vote, Hillary got little more than a big groan out of me and Trump gets everything short of stark-raving disdain from me. Same, same. Bernie and Jill got my vote too. Hillary got more than a groan from me, which I am sure irritated my friends because of the obviously evil alternative. 😕 Eric, Wow! A very thoughtful, obviously experienced-based response, and not at all shallow. But another question is how one chooses to view the model as an instantiation of certain abstractions, and here there can be important choices. Indeed, Moshe Levy's first-order, certainly oversimplified model left out the role of access and constraint. As you put it, these properties are two sides of the same biased coin: power. "Heads I win; tails you lose," in the neoliberal vernacular. Yes, I believe these could be thought of as amplifiers in the various feedback loops. So it could be presumed that if you take an initial condition of, say, a wealth distribution characterized by a Lorenz curve with a coefficient of infinity [i.e., perfect equality in wealth distribution], then over the time of the simulation of "coin tosses" the outcome distribution would "approach" a Lorenz curve with a coefficient of unity if the simulation were to continue long enough. This could assume, as it did in Levy's essay, no influence of skill or power. Adding skill in making betting choices would, according to Levy, amounts in only marginal gains [skewness] in the final outcome. According to my sense of it, if power could be "properly" added to Levy's experimental model, it would act as an amplifier in the feedback process; so, it would have the effect of getting to an "absorbing (?)" state quicker. I think this could be true, as the "power coin" works on both ends of the independent variable (i.e., population "buckets") simultaneously. Okay, that's the modeling, perhaps, but what it is abstracting, process-wise is the reconfiguration of the economic pathways in order to affect the probabilities that represent the stochastic effect of access and constraint. Moreover, there would have to be a time-dependent aspect to power, as it ebbs and flows in the real world according to innumerable confounding variable effects [technology infusions, elections, etc.]. These would need to be controlled for to make any sense or included to give the mode enough face validity to be believed. It's no wonder that Levy did not or could not competently go down this path, IMHO. Yes, getting at how the amplifiers actually work should be a key pursuit concerning any potential model-based remedies. But, even as a conceptual model, the extending ideas you bring are instructive, to say the least. Realizing what's missing is always a good thing in model-building. Of course, you are not implying this, but, these absences do not necessarily diminish the practicality or weight of Levy's query: should we "tax" the luck more ... or, perhaps better, should we "tax" the lucky in accordance with their measure of access. In fact, this idea of "tax" based on access and constraint would be a great direction if only we could measure it. [an aside: I put the term tax in scare quotes to mean more than an adjustment to any tax policy. I mean it also as policies compensating social structures that serve to amplify the property of constraint]. When I contemplate how this might go, I am still reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's fictional parody Breakfast of Champions (1973). So care would be needed in any implementation to not destroy incentives or promote counter-constructive fleeing of the system [e.g., multinationals' hoarding of money offshore] ... yet another confounding variable in the model. All kinds of tipping points and conundrums to any potential model. 🤔 It is encouraging that you are contemplating such things, Eric. You have obviously given this a lot of thought. If only all social policy were constructed based on validated models Many folks think this would be a better way to run an economy. Instead, it all seems so "seat of the pants" and ultimately decided by those with access to the controls. I am humorously reminded of a scene from Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In that particular scene, we have our three heroes stealing a spaceship parked outside the "restaurant at the end of the universe." They blast off with the space ship violently gyrating to and fro, and with the now thieves desperately wrestling with unfamiliar controls to smooth out the erratic behavior. Eventually, it did smooth out. And, when asked if they had found out what was wrong, they said, "No, we just stopped fiddling with the controls." 😎 Marcus, To suppose it [e.g., becoming an Einstein by sheer will power] could be different would be to say the mind can override physics. It seems that luck provides potential that includes genetics and circumstances [e.g., time and geography]. But, what is the source of the urge to exploit that potential: Free will? At the level of reductionist physics, the current thinking is that there is no free will and that we live in a totally deterministic universe subject to the initial conditions being the ultimate determinant as to what can or will occur in this (timeless) block universe. In other words, in this view, there is no randomness and, therefore, there is no luck; there is only complexity. If there is free will, then the mind can, in this context, override physics. If there is free will, then there is randomness and luck can exist. Yes? Otherwise, throw all the statisticians under the bus and throw Levy's essay in the toilet ... but you would not be doing any of this out of free will ... 😊 What to do? What to think? ... Thanks, guys! Robert 🏃 On Fri, Jan 20, 2017 at 5:33 PM, Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote: Robert and Marcus, good morning, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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< In a sense, conscious evolution is a kind of rebooting of a conscious organism with a new "morality" program that has
the purpose of changing the nature of that organism more toward altruism and
less toward self-interest, kind of resetting the initial conditions built into our DNA, so to speak ... superseding the animal. > There is research in this area.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763614/ “Pathological anxiety is thought to reflect a maladaptive state characterized by exaggerated fear mismatched with actual environmental stimuli.” Special case: economic anxiety. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the-economy-is-weaker/ “Routine jobs are often defined as those that involve tasks that
can be accomplished by following explicit rules. A
standard definition of routine jobs includes manufacturing and other goods-related occupations, as well as administrative, clerical and sales occupations; nonroutine jobs include professional, managerial and
service occupations. For this post, we included farming-related occupations in routine jobs since the
BLS projects employment declines in those occupations over the next decade. The correlation between Trump support and the share of jobs that are routine by this definition was 0.65.” Trump piled on copious amounts of fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and pathological anxiety emerges. “So, it's kind of changing the probabilities of the social game, like we are discussing in this thread, but on an individual level. On the individual level, this is indeed possible
by way of Hebbian learning, which itself is possible by way of the plasticity of the brain, its neural network, so to speak. BUT, how can this be done on the level of a society?” As super-rich people like Peter Thiel age, I expect he (and others like him) will start looking at actually applying gene therapy to himself for life extension. (Thiel is already looking
into vampirism.)
Elizabeth Parrish already did apply gene therapy on herself. With full genome sequencing getting cheap and quantum computers able to perform high dimensional discrete optimization, I expect multi-SNP signatures will be
found for improved short and long term memory, even intelligence. The required data, technology, and biological knowledge will likely soon converge. When it does, there will be strong economic motives -- the same kind of motives that cause parents to fork
over hundreds of thousands of dollars for prep schools and colleges. These interventions will have to be regulated, but then we are in position to weed-out anxiety and personality disorders on the germline and to bless various `safe’ enhancements, much like
vaccines are used routinely on children. Sure, people will freak out about this, but if it extends capabilities or lifespans, it better be done in the public interest and not just be confined to making the rich richer. Imagine if the coastal populations
bumped their IQs by 10 points. “It seems like it needs to be more bottom-up.” One way is by making the individual able to learn faster and be more adaptive.
Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
Robert writes: “At the level of reductionist physics, the current thinking is that there is no free will and that we live in a totally deterministic universe subject to the initial conditions being the
ultimate determinant as to what can or will occur in this (timeless) block universe. In other words, in this view, there is no randomness and, therefore, there is no luck; there is only complexity.” Determinism and free will are a false choice. There are high quality pseudo-random number generators that won’t repeat in a lifetime, and true random number generators that amplify noise,
like from resistors or that use quantum phenomena. Quantum mechanics plays a role in biological processes like photosynthesis and enzyme catalysis, but quantum cognition is pretty
far out. Penrose tried to argue free will possible by arguing that the brain implements time travel! Some people will try anything to rescue this concept. Free will requires that the nondeterminism could be influenced by some supernatural independent force -- that there is a homunculus that can move the moments around of the many random distributions
involved in integrating perceptual signals in the brain. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Hi Marcus, All good thoughts. Thanks! Just a few things hopefully that can constructively add to the discussion ... There is research in this area. The kind of "rebooting" I am thinking about in this context would not be chemically or surgically induced. It would be a Hebbian-oriented mental process by way of "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism or the desired state. In a manner of speaking this is a process of consciously rewiting the brain through a processs of trial and error and observing how such habitualed thoughts and behavior work as positive feedback loops to an individual's happiness and as reflected in those in his social circle. It not a brainwashing or fooling one's self. It doesn't result in an army of Jason Bourne types. It is conscious and logical. It's the beginning of wisdom. Or, is it just a fool's errand? Not easy. Not something I have achieved. But I do think it is possible. I have a few more years yet ... and then I die. 😕 It does beg the question, "What's the point if this can't be perkolated up to the level of society?" I suppose we need to ask a devoted Buddhist this same question. And, so my question is how this can work at the level of a society, beyond the individual level. An example, perhaps but not sure, is the societal transformation of profit-oriented, capitalist or stockholder-owned enterprises into employeed-owned cooperatives. It creates a very different kind of economy, still very much market oriented. If habituated, it may become obvious that this could be a better way. ESOPs under ERISA were an attempt at this but were abused by the capitalists to gain the tax breaks provided by a government that saw the wisdom in this. I won't quote Ronald Reagan again here ... enough said. Many employees in thos ESOPs have asked, "What's the point?" With respect to the Thiel, Parrish thing, the answer to a better society--or even a better lif--will not be to have everyone, or even just those who can afford it, live longer. The problem is that they drag their crappy minds along with them. Living longer does not change the animal. The same is true with transhumanism. What gets uploaded? The same crappy minds. Genetic engineering isn't going to get us there either, IMHO. We don't know where to locate the genes or how to comfigure the so called Hox circuits to get better brains or minds. Again, better for whom? Then there's the Blank Slate debate. Cue Steven Pinker ... This "uploading" is all kind of a fools errand, if you resonate with the idea of embodied cognition [again George Lakoff and especially Anthony Chemero and his Radical Embodied Cognitive Science]. As it turns out, if you follow this stuff, we can't separate the mind from the body or the body from the world. So forget uploading your minds into immortal robotic contraptions. BTW, that Nautilus article I linked on consciousness being composed of atoms is another look at this. Good luck to Thiel and Parrish. IMHO, we need to value the lives we have now and try to impriove them while we have our time in the sun ... Cheers On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 5:44 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Robert writes: < It would be a Hebbian-oriented mental process by way of "habituating" the kind of thoughts that lead to altruism
or the desired state. > I give that names like worrying, self-reflection, doubt, analysis, and reading. I believe it is practiced in a widespread way by the type 1 thinkers that Pamela mentioned.
<
And, so my question is how this can work at the level of a society, beyond the individual level. An example, perhaps but not sure, is the societal transformation of profit-oriented, capitalist or
stockholder-owned enterprises into employeed-owned cooperatives. > Ok. I’m skeptical about the concept of employees. Employees aren’t the deciders pretty much by definition. To simply have a bunch of people that do enough to get an income isn’t
typically enough to make an enterprise successful. Hard problems require improvisation, not just managers that divide up work. Actually I’m skeptical about the concept of enterprises too. Enterprises imply insiders and outsiders and thus haves and have-nots.
The only solution I can see is to divorce goals from organizations. Goals need to be their own first class objects that aren’t proxies for other things like money. For example, I write to FRIAM because it has an inherent value to me, not because it is proxy
for something else like professional networking or whatever. I work on a free editor feature because I want it. As soon as organizations get involved there is trouble. In reality, we need organizations like political parties and non-profits like the ACLU
to cope with bigger organizations like the elected federal government. And we need the federal government to counter other governments that have even more objectionable properties.
< Genetic engineering isn't going to get us there either, IMHO. We don't know where to locate the genes or how to comfigure the so called Hox circuits to get
better brains or minds. Again, better for whom? > Through experiments, individuals with more or less short term memory can be identified. There have been cases in the popular press (e.g. 60 minutes) about people that have profound
auto-biographical long term memory. There are IQ tests. There are individuals in academia in industry that demonstrate incredible productivity (objective measures like citations or patents). Pick some phenotype of interest, and then the inverse problem
is what are the minimal polymorphisms in the genomes of individuals that have this phenotype that are distinct from individuals that don’t have this phenotype. The combinatorics of such a search are very hard (4^(3e9)), but Ising machines like adiabatic
quantum computers could help address that. It would require a huge collection of full genome samples to make the inferences robust. The idea is to work backward from brains that have the desired property to the nucleotide mutations that statistically
are associated with it (and not). If there are pareto-optimality tradeoffs, that should come out in the statistics too. For example, being a gymnast or a Sumo wrestler call for different specializations.
Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Marcus, I am not sure but you may have the wrong impression of employee-owned worker cooperatives. Of course, they have structure and management and decision-making processes just like capitalist-owned companies. Even Forbes think they are a good idea: If Apple Were A Worker Cooperative, Each Employee Would Earn At Least $403K (December 2014). It might be a good project for you to research this more. Check out Mondragon in Spain, for example. Britain under Jeremy Corbin's leadership for Labor is floating a plan to allow employees to have first-refusal rights to purchase companies that want to sell or move offshore. There are all kinds of co-operative institutions with perhaps the best example in this country being the idea, at least, of the public bank, like the Bank of North Dakota, which may be the only one, but not sure. Cooperatives are much more prevalent outside of this country. There may be an insidious reason for this, however. Nonetheless, after you do a little research, I am sure that you will see that employee-owned cooperatives would meet with your concept of good "enterprises." They are inherently community motivated and supported and are not the kind of enterprises that you will see move offshore or park their cash there to avoid US taxation [note: Co-ops actually pay more taxes than capitalist-owned corporations]. Give them a second look ... I give that names like worrying, self-reflection, doubt, analysis, and reading. I believe it is practiced in a widespread way by the type 1 thinkers that Pamela mentioned. You might have to remind me what Type 1 Thinking is all about. I found this--Type 1 and Type 2 thinking--but that isn't what I was trying to explain. If you mean a sort of Closed-Loop Reflect-Analyze-Act type thing, then yes; that could be something akin to Hebbian learning. The most important part is that the process-a self-administered psychodynamic one--is implemented by the individual and not, say, a psychologist or priest. I don't get the worry or doubt part, though, unless you mean that the objective is to diminish those sensations and grow confidence. The other important part is mindfulness ... being consciously aware as much as possible. So much of our awake time is lived on "automatic." Very difficult to break out of this. But, in this thread, I wasn't so much interested in this process at the individual level except to use it as a tangible example to define--for Steve--what it might mean at the level of society, that being the underlying exploratory thrust of this thread. How can Hebbian learning be applied at the level of society? At the moment, it's a rhetorical question. I mean, what are the synapses of a society? All I can think of is the level of a Golden-Rule kind of morality manifest in its so-called zeitgeist. But if the society is basically amoral, then those hypothetical "synapses" are weak. We tend more to use crime and punishment as a way of strengthening these social synapses, but it doesn't result in a positive feedback loop to the members of that society-- many who will eventually figure out how to game the system to their own advantage. People have to actually have faith in the system in a way that they see something egalitarian that emerges. We don't have that in our society and I think the Eric Smith provided some insight into why: Power--to have control over one's destiny--is as unequally distributed as wealth, which Eric may argue is the result of an imbalance between access and constraint. [an interesting aside: employee-owned cooperatives tend to blunt this kind of malignancy from growing 😎]. Anywho ... From your last paragraph, if I follow, you seem to have much more hope that we can improve society with chemicals, gene editing, quantum computing, or with surgical implants than I do. I don't think that I would want to live in such a society. What will emerge, if any of this is at all possible, is a super-smart animal with the same ratty morals and self-interest. That's a very dangerous animal, IMHO. This is why many folks are scared of AI; look who's leading the pack at this technology and buying up the world's brain trust: Google ... one of those "enterprises" that you justifiably don't seem to trust. 🤔 Cheers On Sat, Jan 21, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Robert writes:
“They are inherently community motivated and supported and are not the kind of enterprises that you will see move offshore or park their cash there to avoid US taxation” I make a distinction between people that are primarily goal motivated versus those that are primarily community motivated. Goal motivated folks prefer to talk about work and ideas. Community
motivated people talk about their advisors or bosses, their distinguished colleagues, the benefits and drawbacks of their organization, and they seek mutually-beneficial relationships, among other things. A benefit of large, hierarchical organizations to the goal motivated person is that, provided the organization goals are aligned with that person’s goals (employer and employee), the intra-community
power struggles can be largely ignored. This is not to say the community-builder tactics aren’t also used by other employees, often quite effectively, but they aren’t strictly essential for a sufficiently productive employee.
An objection to community motivated organizations is that they are
about keeping the community afloat, not about progressing goals separate from the welfare of the members of the community. The ideal situation, in my mind, is to solve the welfare problem for everyone. Then discussions could stay on topic and be decoupled
from the needs of people. Another objection to communities is that complicates satisfaction of the “What do you want from me?” constraint. Now there is not just one boss, but a whole set people and constraints to worry about. “From your last paragraph, if I follow, you seem to have much more hope that we can improve society with chemicals, gene editing, quantum computing, or with surgical implants than I do. I don't
think that I would want to live in such a society. What will emerge, if any of this is at all possible, is a super-smart animal with the same ratty morals and self-interest.” There are other phenotypes to consider. Is there an innate explanation for nurturing and compassion? Genetically, what is there to maternal instinct? What is there to sadism? At what point
does emotional empathy become overwhelming and counterproductive to compassion? Does emotional empathy directly lead to tribalism due to attentional limits? These predispositions might be tunable too through gene therapy or epigenetic controls.
Another way is to NOT fix what is broken with all of us through, say, a very long FDA approval and socialization process, but to create a new community offshore or off planet that is designed
for social sustainability given certain environmental limitations. “That's a very dangerous animal, IMHO. This is why many folks are scared of AI; look who's leading the pack at this technology and buying up the world's brain trust: Google ... one of those
"enterprises" that you justifiably don't seem to trust. 🤔 Trumpians are very dangerous animals, IMO. A lot of the output of the AI/ML brain trust is open source, though. I’m more comfortable with the Google world than the world of the fascists. If things go further downhill -- more leaders
like Trump and ultra-conservative governance, a divided Europe, and an ungovernable China -- I’d say there’s reason to start to think about whole new approaches. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
On 01/20/2017 04:33 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
> I dislike the closed-mindedness and willful ignorance of groups I grew up in, probably in a very similar way to the way you do. But I don’t think that kind of thing flowers as it has, when societies are evolving to make a good life better; more like it grows where people are making an unsatisfying life somehow more tolerable to plough on through. Collectives can choose to operate in either mode: 1) reach further, sacrificing their components in the process or 2) stay whole, sacrificing opportunities for more gains. I tend to be a technologist, which biases me toward (1). That also makes me a neoliberal to some extent. And my willingness to sacrifice lives (including my own) so that someone, somewhere will make great strides while the rest of us live in squalor and disease makes neoliberals like seem cruel and ignorant. (This is a false dichotomy, of course, but a useful one.) It seems especially stupid for atheists who can't count on seeing any sort of return on their investment. Having children is one way out of that. It shines a light on occult benefits one can realize while sacrificing their self to the benefit of someone else. And it raises the concept of externalities and unintended consequences into full view. But going back to the conjecture, I don't think morality's purpose (human or not) is a regulator or some sort of disruptive heat source _against_ a stable, scale-free distribution of power or money or land or whatever. Morality seems to me to positively reinforce the scale-free-ness of the system. That would still fit, however, with the idea that it's a regulator. But I don't think it is. It seems to me that morality perpetuates the scale-free, "unfair" distribution. To see this, perhaps we can consider a stable caste society, where it is moral to stick to the role into which you were born and immoral to cross castes. Morality is what allows the salt of the earth to look at Trump and think he deserves his plane and kitsch. This idea that morality is always good or represents a striving for good, e.g. your (8), is utter nonsense. It is moral to work toward the death of Dylan Roof or Charles Manson, and not because you think "humans will flourish when they're dead", but because morality is as much a preserver of the status quo as it is a cause of delusionary all-good futures. Personally, I think Robert's essay does point to something (just not the conclusion he draws). It is that we are are biological system and somewhere inside our mechanisms (at all scales) lies an ur-generator, the cause of the stochasticity, the cause of the churn. Maybe it's quantum reduction of the wave equation. Maybe it's Brownian motion. Maybe the universe is mathematics and it's form of chaos. Whatever. I don't know. But it's that ur-generator (what I've called "twitch") that causes the churn in the distribution of various biological attributes. And to whatever extent we have the ability to guide or bias the ur-generated ephemerides in and around us becomes technology and politics. -- ␦glen? -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
On 01/21/2017 07:35 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I give that names like worrying, self-reflection, doubt, analysis, and reading. I believe it is practiced in a widespread way by the type 1 thinkers that Pamela mentioned. For whatever it's worth: Study reveals for first time that cognitive-behavior therapy changes the brain’s wiring http://www.psypost.org/2017/01/study-reveals-first-time-cognitive-behavior-therapy-changes-brains-wiring-46943 -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen writes:
"It seems especially stupid for atheists who can't count on seeing any sort of return on their investment. Having children is one way out of that. It shines a light on occult benefits one can realize while sacrificing their self to the benefit of someone else. And it raises the concept of externalities and unintended consequences into full view." “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.” -- Robert M. Pirsig ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Robert Wall
On 01/21/2017 06:05 PM, Robert Wall wrote:
> It is conscious and logical. It's the beginning of wisdom. Or, is it just a fool's errand? Not easy. Not something I have achieved. But I do think it is possible. I have a few more years yet ... and then I die. 😕 It does beg the question, "What's the point if this can't be perkolated up to the level of society?" I suppose we need to ask a devoted Buddhist this same question. The purpose of my pointing out that morality reinforces whatever social structure already exists was to imply that _conscious_ programs are the enemy. It is consciously controlled plans that turn out to be based on a false understanding of reality. Of course, this makes sense because the map is not the territory. Our minds essentialize, remove "extraneous" detail. Hence, nothing conscious can be, fundamentally, based on complex reality. It must simplify it and, thereby be false. This is why neoliberalism (kindasorta) works. It is an agenda where we limit our conscious planning and let the full ugliness of our complex reality rain down on us. > The problem is that they drag their crappy minds along with them. Living longer does not change the animal. Here, you and I seem to agree: it's the conscioussness that is the problem. But it seems like you're contradicting yourself. On the one hand, you think (conscious) morality and planning are what we need to codify into reality and on the other hand, you're saying it's our crappy minds that caused the problem in the first place. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
On 01/23/2017 11:25 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> “The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha - which is to demean oneself.” -- Robert M. Pirsig Heh, if I had any respect for Buddhism, I might have to try to understand that. >8^D But the sentiment is a vapid peppering of vague concepts across some actual things ... Sarah Palin is fantastic at such pepperings. I wonder if she's a crypto-Buddhist? I did enjoy the book. I hated Lila, though. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by gepr
"This is why neoliberalism (kindasorta) works. It is an agenda where we limit our conscious planning and let the full ugliness of our complex reality rain down on us."
A centralized experimental protocol rather than a control system for all time. It can work if results can be ingested and models improved in a dispassionate fashion. Like new drug treatments, everyone wants equal access to anything that might possibly work, rather than being in the placebo group. I'm not sure how the `neo' part fits in to it, other than perhaps the practical limits on the experiment designers. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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On 01/23/2017 12:04 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> A centralized experimental protocol rather than a control system for all time. It can work if results can be ingested and models improved in a dispassionate fashion. Like new drug treatments, everyone wants equal access to anything that might possibly work, rather than being in the placebo group. I don't know if that's true. Most of the people I talk to not only want access to the things that _might_ work, they want everything they try to work. Like our previous discussion of whether or not people have an intuitive grasp of probability theory, people don't really seem to grok it when their methods fail to work. When their methods fail to achieve their purpose, they tend to complain about how unfair it all is. It's especially disconcerting when scientists do it ... some of whom spend their entire lives advocating for ideas that they, themselves, helped demonstrate were false. Regardless, of the mechanism were dispassionate, it might work. But who (seriously) wants to live in a world with less passion? Like our methods, we want our passion(d) but often don't want others' passion(s). > I'm not sure how the `neo' part fits in to it, other than perhaps the practical limits on the experiment designers. The neo part is because pure liberalism takes the needs and wants of everyone into account. We neoliberals regret the collateral damage that is poverty, death, starvation, epidemic, etc. but we really only measure success by the top X% of the pyramid. If Peter Thiel lives to be 200 years old, it will be a success we can _all_ claim some part of ... even as I scrounge through dumpsters when Renee' finally gets tired of my contrarian ways. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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"The neo part is because pure liberalism takes the needs and wants of everyone into account. We neoliberals regret the collateral damage that is poverty, death, starvation, epidemic, etc. but we really only measure success by the top X% of the pyramid.
That's the collateral damage of the republicans. Neoliberals protect the very strong and the very weak, avoid existential threats to the collective, while ignoring those that ought to be able to carry on, even though they feel they should be entitled to special treatment. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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On 01/23/2017 12:44 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> That's the collateral damage of the republicans. Neoliberals protect the very strong and the very weak, avoid existential threats to the collective, while ignoring those that ought to be able to carry on, even though they feel they should be entitled to special treatment. I suppose I can see that. The Clintons' and Obama's version of it definitely lean that way. I suppose even Bush2, with the "compassionate conservatism" falls in there. But I think it's reasonable to assert that pure neoliberalism focuses more on allowing whatever the markets (social and economic) determine. Sure, we can kinda clean up after them, preventing the worst consequences (like genocide or pandemics). But too much "caring for the poor" results in too many codified plans with too many unforeseeable kinks/singularities that may well be more catastrophic than the problems we're trying to solve. Neoliberalism is simply the idea that any full exploration of the phenotype requires parallel processing. And the term definitely does not deserve the vitriol poured on it by some. I kinda like the idea that neoliberals like me will become something like socialist democrats (or democratic socialists). As long as it's likely that large populations of cities can sustain a wide diversity of individualist focus, much of which is useless failure but with less death and suffering, then the neoliberal has a path to the fundamental parallelism of the ideology. What has died is rural neoliberalism. You can't globalize and reap the benefits by installing Walmarts and Wells Fargo branches. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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Glen writes:
"Neoliberalism is simply the idea that any full exploration of the phenotype requires parallel processing." Hmm. I had thought of neoliberalism as being more controlled and centralized rather than less controlled compared to liberalism in general, but I think you are right. It is more about agility and parallelism than it is about thoughtful planning. I was distracted by the capital intensiveness aspect. The centralization aspect is just emergent. Spend money to make money. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent
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In reply to this post by gepr
"Neoliberalism is simply the idea that any full exploration of the phenotype requires parallel processing."
Well said, and that does not even include the "extended Phenotype" nor the much hairier and very fearsome," Genotypes". Since I am not a Neoliberal, but was proudly declared an enemy of the state by the previous Conservative Government of Canada, (a bulk application of petty vindictiveness ) I feel it my duty to translate this into the Vulgar language of my Nation, aka English, mixed with many other locally vulgar and barbaric tongues. Neoliberalism is just to "act in affected flamboyant charity, while simultaneously declaring an inflated tax credit, to the least important but sympathetic, while", ..,excuse my confusion German and Old English overlap somewhat..." kissing the arse of those with the biggest codpiece." //Codpiece being a metaphor for Wall Street or the Internal Revenue Service, and in no way should be confused with sexism on my part// I borrowed that phrase from Shakespeare or was it Goethe. If this is an accurate translation, then could we use it as a taxonomic definition. There was a term used by the Vulgar in the 1960's , "Poser", that sums up both definitions in fewer characters. I recall meeting with some at the time at poetry /communist hashish smoking rooms at Rochdale College U of T. I did not have time for "full exploration" since the paddy wagon had just arrived. It also appears that the solution time is so great that no amount of mental/computational effort will ever yield results so therefore no effort is recommended by the authorities. Any such attempt will be judged as hostile. Any and all contradiction will bring down harsh reprisals. That seems to suggest that no self-declared Neoliberal is required to make any effort of any kind except theatrical to earn her/his entitlements. I hope I have interpreted this correctly. Careful scrutiny of such a position then leaves the key distinguishing feature between Conservatives and Neoliberals; clearly unresolved. Since it appears that neither faction is prepared to expend even marginal effort. Really would parallel processing make even the least detectable difference or was the term thrown in to just scare the crap out of everyone... vib -----Original Message----- From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen ? Sent: January-23-17 3:10 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent On 01/23/2017 12:44 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > That's the collateral damage of the republicans. Neoliberals protect the very strong and the very weak, avoid existential threats to the collective, while ignoring those that ought to be able to carry on, even though they feel they should be entitled to special treatment. I suppose I can see that. The Clintons' and Obama's version of it definitely lean that way. I suppose even Bush2, with the "compassionate conservatism" falls in there. But I think it's reasonable to assert that pure neoliberalism focuses more on allowing whatever the markets (social and economic) determine. Sure, we can kinda clean up after them, preventing the worst consequences (like genocide or pandemics). But too much "caring for the poor" results in too many codified plans with too many unforeseeable kinks/singularities that may well be more catastrophic than the problems we're trying to solve. Neoliberalism is simply the idea that any full exploration of the phenotype requires parallel processing. And the term definitely does not deserve the vitriol poured on it by some. I kinda like the idea that neoliberals like me will become something like socialist democrats (or democratic socialists). As long as it's likely that large populations of cities can sustain a wide diversity of individualist focus, much of which is useless failure but with less death and suffering, then the neoliberal has a path to the fundamental parallelism of the ideology. What has died is rural neoliberalism. You can't globalize and reap the benefits by installing Walmarts and Wells Fargo branches. -- ☣ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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