What Computer Science Can Teach Economics 421
eldavojohn writes "A new award-winning thesis from an MIT computer science assistant professor showed that the Nash equilibrium of complex games (like the economy or poker) belong to problems with non-deterministic polynomial (NP) complexity (more specifically PPAD complexity, a subset of TFNP problems which is a subset of FNP problems which is a subset of NP problems). More importantly there should be a single solution for one problem that can be adapted to fit all the other problems. Meaning if you can generalize the solution to poker, you have the ability to discover the Nash equilibrium of the economy. Some computer scientists are calling this the biggest development in game theory in a decade."
The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:4, Interesting)
Polynomial time approximate, probabilistic or special case solutions to NP problems are wide spread. The problem is that real human being in economics can not be easily described by an equation - and when they can be, they quickly change their behavior based on that knowledge. What both computer scientists and economists need to learn is stop being geeks addicted to a single theory and start dealing with people.
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:4, Insightful)
The emergent intelligence of the market will likely never be able to be simulated.
A centralized model can't react in real time to factors that change by the minute or by the second like human actors can.
What was desirable to us one minute ago may no longer be desirable to us.
What was desirable one minute ago to me may have never been desirable to you!
No formula can ever quantify that value. It's subjective.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the point is, however, that its probable that a certain product or commodity will be desirable by somebody, or even a group of somebodies, at some point in time, based on past interactions in the marketplace.
Re: (Score:2)
the point is, however, that its probable that a certain product or commodity will be desirable by somebody, or even a group of somebodies, at some point in time, based on past interactions in the marketplace.
And of course, the marketplace is the best engine for measuring said probability.
Trying to use game theory to evaluate the behavior of people in an attempt to explain the behavior of the market is, at best, some sort of first or second derivative approach.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, you said probable. But I paid top dollar for a bunch of buggy whips. Know any buyers?
The point here is that new tech devalues old tech.
Anyway, on past (distance past) interactions in the market, I should be to find a buyer. If nothing else, I should be able to rely on the bigger fool theory like eveyone else. Then again, that has not worked out so well lately. But there is always the government to bail me out.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Hah, I did not think of that. Perhaps they could put them in their retail stores and sell them to the tourists as souveniers. But it sort of illustrates the problem. If you view wealth as related to something having to do with actual production, they are worthless in a modern economy. Sure they might be collectors items, maybe high priced items, but having a lot of money does not guarantee you are rich. The last banknote Weimar printed was a 100 trillion mark banknote. And if you are a gold bug, Spain
Re: (Score:2)
Pet Rock, Hula Hoop, Mood Ring...
The large scale aspects can be modeled but the confidence can never be 100%. Smaller scale movements might as well be quantum foam. Something like the uncertainty principle will likely be in play somewhere as well.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say it goes beyond that: humans can't react to those factors either. Where do you think the current credit meltdown came from? Humans were not able to model the credit market behavior, just as much as the mathematical models were unable to do so.
It is not even subjective - I'd argue it's almost quantum mechanical: the mere act of looking at a market changes its behavior. The advantage of modeling quantum mechanical systems though is that they don't change their rules just to spite you. The certainty for
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, some were [wordpress.com]. The people in charge just didn't listen to the right people.
Re: (Score:2)
That's false, I think. If you already have the algorithm, and the same access to data that the human actors have, then the model is faster than the human actors... provided you have the computational equipment. Humans need to execute decisions, which can take far longer than a sufficiently powerful computer.
The problem is that it'd take trillions or more years to arrive at the Nash eq
Re: (Score:2)
well, causation is something that can be easily predicted up to a margin, but the rest of this, not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
actually, it has nothing to do with reaction time. you hinted at the correct issue: desirability
you can program a computer to model desirability within an economic actor, but it will never be more than a simplified model of the real thing. the possibility for tangential expansion of error is enormous.
The implication is, can money be accurate? (Score:2)
What you are really saying is, in other words, is that money can never be really accurate, and it follows that the trend towards globalization and consolidation of currencies is a mistake. This makes some intuitive sense. If Japanese cars are better than American cars, then why do they cost more in America?
Re: (Score:2)
A central model is not the problem. This result has a bit of generality. Or emergent intelligence of the market, if such a thing exists. But you might want to criticize equilibrium assumptions or even axiom based systems.
Re: (Score:2)
No formula can ever quantify that value. It's subjective.
Ridiculous. Modeling aggregate behaviour is perfectly reasonable. How do you think quantum mechanics works? We can't precisely model individual particle characteristics, but aggregate behaviour can be studied to remarkable precision. At the moment, quantum mechanics is one of the most precise scientific theories of all time.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that the model of the market is part of the market. Therefore the correct model could only be true for a brief period, if at all. Any model will become a subset of a new model ... ad infinitum. However, it is an interesting result nonetheless.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a true believer. Excelcior!
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I'm not surprised there is such school. My impression is, that economists in general don't have a good grasp of math, specifically, they don't seem to understand the exponential function, otherwise they would not speak of "growth" all the time.
I'm not saying one should not take human behavior into account, but at least they should get the boundary conditions right, and one of those is that our resources are limited.
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:5, Informative)
That does not mean that additional wealth cannot be created without infusion of additional resources.
I know it's counterintuitive for most people with a "hard science" background... I struggled with it as an undergrad. But economics is not a zero-sum game. I give you $150 and you give me an hour of labor. We've both benefited by the trade. If we are really acting freely, we've both benefited (or we wouldn't have engaged in the trade), so we are both wealthier than we were before. This is the fundamental basis of perpetual economic growth... given a free market* in which to pursue trades, wealth increases as trades are made.
* Free as in some-kind-of-approximation-of-an-ideal-free-market, not free as in no-legal-restrictions-on-activity.
Bullshit! (Score:4, Insightful)
This argument echoes the exact same stupidity of the "perpetual growth" nuts that got us into this economic mess in the first place. You believe that infinite trades are possible, and that resource limitations don't apply. But even in your own example, you're talking about trading one limited resource (labor) for another (money). And yes, money is a limited resource - you can print all the money you want, but since doing so doesn't increase the amount of actual value that that money represents, all you're really doing is devaluing the existing money supply in order to redistribute the underlying value (i.e., stealing a little bit of value from everybody who's currently holding any of the existing bills, and giving the loot to someone else - usually a central bank).
Perpetual growth is nothing more than an illusion shared amongst fools. Value doesn't magically spring into existence by the mere act of trading something back and forth. Value can only be created by consuming resources. Whether that resource is energy, or some natural resource such as coal or iron, or human labor, etc, there is only a finite amount of that resource. Furthermore, many of these resource limits are things we are either already bumping into, or things that we will bump into in the foreseeable future, such as in the case of the various natural resources we've come to rely on.
Mod this AC up (Score:2)
All the complex work that these economists have done seems impressive, yet it will crumble because they built it upon delusion.
We have come to the end game of the infinite growth charade. The simple truth is that calling the valueless valuable does not really make it valuable, and nothing can change that.
Creating value - super simple example (Score:4, Insightful)
Value can only be created by consuming resources. Whether that resource is energy, or some natural resource such as coal or iron, or human labor, etc, there is only a finite amount of that resource.
Wrong.
Simplified example: Let us assume you require 2 tons of rock to build a home. Then somebody teach you to build a better home from 1 ton of rock.
Now you have 1 spare ton of rock and a better home. Obviously, we have created value.
Economics is not about measuring the total amount of resources on earth. In the end, it is about efficiency, trading work and resources to always make more efficient use of resources.
Improved efficiency = Satisfying needs of more people with the same amount of resources = value.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Completely wrong. Lots of people buy bits all the time. If I buy an album from iTunes for $9.99, we have to assume that album is probably worth $9.99 to me, and hence I'm better off with it. In the meantime, other people divvy up my ten bucks, and since they spent almost nothing they're better off. Hence, wealth has been created. It doesn't matter if I pay for it or get it for free, as long as I find value in it. For negligible transaction cost, I've got something worth at least ten bucks to me.
Of
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
>>That software did not come out of thin air. Yes, the copies you made were essentially free but resources were initially consumed to produce it. The value of copies of that product when access and distribution are nearly free is essentially zero.
The "value" of something (sorry to break it to you) is whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
If I think MATLAB is worth $1,000, but I can find a used copy for $100, am I now effectively $900 richer or $100 poorer? By your definition, I would be poorer (si
Re: (Score:2)
Rather too many negatives there. But you still can't create infinite wealth from finite resources. Something, somewhere - laws of thermodynamics, rarity of some resource - sets a limit on what you can create.
Psychonomics (Score:3, Interesting)
But economics is not a zero-sum game. I give you $150 and you give me an hour of labor. We've both benefited by the trade.
In all but the world's oldest profession, I'm inclined to disagree.
Here's one:
Person A runs a tavern. Person B (after a few beers) drives his car into that of Person A. Person B pays $150 to Person C to fix the scratches on Person A's car. Person C uses his $150 income at Person A's tavern.
Who profited by the exchange of $150? Are all three people better off?
Here's another: Person
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think in all but the most ideal circumstances, it is indeed zero-sum game.
I think it should be palpably obvious that the obvious is true, from a simple examination of the world around you, and of history. If the economy (let's use the right term, economics is an area of study) of the world as a whole is a zero sum game, then wealth in the world could not consistently increase. And yet, for 100's of years, wealth has consistently increased, and has done so for virtually everyone in most economies. The
Cart before the horse. (Score:2, Insightful)
No. This is really much simpler than you're thinking. "Growth" really just means that people, in the aggregate, obtain more or better real goods and services. Or to put it in crude terms, economic growth = people obtain more and better stuff than they used to be able to.
All the stuff about markets, currencies, banking and investment is just a set of schemes to make it possible for more stuff to be built. For example, using money instead of barter to
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's still a zero sum game in terms of the resources. Pretending it's not is exactly why the economic system is so damn broken.
That's not a useful way to look at an economic system. My value and whether I can fulfill my desires is not a function of how many tons of tin I use up or slaves I control. Plus, it's worth mentioning that we have more resources now than we did a century ago. Our knowledge (a typical good that doesn't depend on available resources) has grown allowing us to access resources that we couldn't access earlier.
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:5, Informative)
Well, I'm not surprised there is such school. My impression is, that economists in general don't have a good grasp of math, specifically, they don't seem to understand the exponential function, otherwise they would not speak of "growth" all the time. I'm not saying one should not take human behavior into account, but at least they should get the boundary conditions right, and one of those is that our resources are limited.
Your impression is wrong. Every economist knows about Thomas Robert Malthus [wikipedia.org] and Malthusian economics -- for the pre-industrial era his model best explains demographics and the limits of growth. It only so happened that just after he published his thoughts, the industrial revolution happened and technological progress pushed the boundaries of growth further and further - in an exponential manner.
Would you dare to make an exact forecast where the limits of growth lie? Limited by fossil fuels? Or a single planet's worth of solar energy? Maybe a Dyson sphere's worth of solar energy? Technological progress moves the goalposts rapidly enough that you have to assume exponential growth punctuated by occasional catastrophes - at least for the next 50 years.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Fundamentally, Malthus was right. Exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely. At some point, resources will become limiting and exponential growth of human populations (and economies) will not be possible. The most extreme example of a limiting resource could be the number of atoms in the universe, but in practice, a realistic limit could very well end up being something as simple as oil.
Perhaps it is true that the assumption of constant exponential growth is a safe for the next one or few generati
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not saying one should not take human behavior into account, but at least they should get the boundary conditions right, and one of those is that our resources are limited.
But those limits are not so easily fixed or defined.
The microchip is the perfect example.
It doesn't exist before 1958. It's economic, technological and social impact scarcely felt before the 1980s.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think the biggest problem is economists' grasp of math. Rather, it's that (a) the people implementing the economists' mathematical theories don't have a good grasp of the math [wired.com], and (b) economists don't have a good grasp of the people their math is supposed to model [nytimes.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Is that a "school" or a couple ranting old kooks?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Rothbard heavily criticized Friedman (not to mention Krugman et al).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
That's because their absurd notions don't stand up to mathematical scrutiny. "We don't use math because what we say can be disproven by math"
What sort of conclusions have they come to that are A) absurd and B) demonstrated to be absurd with the application of math? I hear many economists dismiss them out of hand, but I have seen very few actually go into depth as to why they must be absurd. Bryan Caplan has a critique of the Austrians, but his is one of the few I've read.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you have a source for the assertion that Austrians view monopolies as being non-evil?
or perhaps more importantly, is there any source for the assertion that anti-trust action restores a competitive marketplace?
I am not an expert in economics, nor do I hold a strong opinion on whether anti-trust action is good or not, but I've seen comments that breaking up Standard Oil was good for them rather than the market. I haven't tried to verify whether this is true. I've seen anti-trust be completely ineffective at stopping MS bundling IE with windows but competition, especially from firefox very ef
Re:The problem is not an efficient algorithm (Score:5, Insightful)
I was about to say the same thing. Unlike poker, the rules of the games are altered based on the current knowledge about the state of the game. This means that as soon as someone proclaims "We know the rules of Economics!", someone else is going to look at those rules and either game them to their benefit, or rewrite them to better suit their own purpose.
Computer Scientists - and Economists - have a habit of assuming that they just need to find the proper model for human behavior, and all the problems will be solved. That's because that's how it works in a science: you assume the rules don't change in an arbitrary fashion. Humans, however, do. This makes any prediction of human behavior a statistical undertaking at best. Your success will be measured by how much better you compared to a random decision making process. At worst, the statistical anomaly completely wrecks your model - see the Black Swan Theory in Economics.
Re: (Score:2)
This means that as soon as someone proclaims "We know the rules of Economics!", someone else is going to look at those rules and either game them to their benefit, or rewrite them to better suit their own purpose.
Which means that economists will always have a profession, and more concretely, a job. Now THAT's job security (just talk to any humanities scholar going up for tenure)...
Re: (Score:2)
So really economics is best modeled as mutating finite automata, with the economist being an actor in the simulation. Maybe Steven Wolfram was onto someth
Re: (Score:2)
I have heard similar arguments about applying metrics to the management of software development. This is the scenario where you set a standard of 100 lines of code per day or 0.5 bugs per hour or something, then evaluate engineers against it.
Once the algorithm is known the engineers just work around it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This means that as soon as someone proclaims "We know the rules of Economics!", someone else is going to look at those rules and either game them to their benefit, or rewrite them to better suit their own purpose.
So what you're saying is that it's really just Calvinball.
Re: (Score:2)
Computer Scientists - and Economists - have a habit of assuming that they just need to find the proper model for human behavior, and all the problems will be solved.
I am not an economist, so I cannot speak for the economists out there, but I am a computer scientist (my BS degree is in CS for whatever that is worth) so I can speak for myself as a computer scientist. In this regard I would say that many computer scientists are interested not in modeling human behavior per se, but rather understanding the limits of what can be accurately modeled or computed and to what margin of error. That is why we study the computational complexity and classes of problems which can be
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Computer Scientists - and Economists - have a habit of assuming that they just need to find the proper model for human behavior, and all the problems will be solved.
There are two problems with that statement. First, that's not how computer scientists and economists work. Second, even if they did, how do you know they would be wrong in that assumption? I ignore here the laziness of claiming that economists would consider a mathematical model of human behavior a solution to "all" problems, including completely unrelated problem like opening a stiff door or how to wash the small of one's back while in the shower.
Re: (Score:2)
If you just assume then it is not science. Science is about testing your assumptions.
Even science has some untestable working assumptions.
1) There is no old guy with a beard in the sky who arbitrarily changes the rules.
2) Humans have enough intelligence and sensory input to build a consistent model of the world.
Re: (Score:2)
If you just assume then it is not science. Science is about testing your assumptions.
Not necessarily, but you should at least state them.
Newton's theory was based on the assumption that time is the same for all observers. An assumption so obvious that it took a brilliant man like him to even note that he was making it.
If you can think of how Newton could have plausibly tested this assumption, then bravo to you. If you think you can argue that Newton was not doing science by not testing this assumption, t
Not quite... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I'd say that we're dealing here with two facets of the same problem: the unreality of Homo economicus. The classic objection to economic theory is that people don't act "rationally" in the sense that economic theory requires them
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree wit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure it's great to repeat cliche lines when it comes to economics and computer science, and I know it's super popular with the recent quant economics and stock market debacle. But it'd be kind of nice if people knew what a Nash equilibrium is in the first place. If I use a Nash equilibrium strategy, it doesn't matter *how* you change your behaviour, you can't benefit from it. Think minimax algorithm in zero-sum games.
This is a perfectly sound mathematical concept, in a mathematical sense it's as true as
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that real human being in economics can not be easily described by an equation - and when they can be, they quickly change their behavior based on that knowledge.
Despite popular belief, scientists are usually not stupid. Have you considered the possibility that maybe one or two of them through the centuries have gone through this train of thoughs before?
If my memory serves me, a Nash equilibrium is roughly defined as a state where no single player has any particular incentive to change their strategy - that means that if you change your strategy you loose more money. These states are considered important because if people somhow discover strategies corresponding to
Re: (Score:2)
Just because no model can effectively predict what the stock market will do tomorrow does not mean that economic modeling is useless.
That reminds me of a favorite quote of mine: All models are wrong. Some are useful.
I'm neither an economist nor a computer scientist, but it seems to me that if you look at sets of economic data, such as wealth distributions, it really seems that there must be some "fundamental law" driving the patterns - since they seem to come up over and over again. Determining that law
Hayek (Score:5, Insightful)
Hayek [wikipedia.org] showed that about 50 years ago:
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." (The Fatal Conceit, p. 76)
Unfortunately, there is a lot of designing going on right now.
Re:Hayek (Score:5, Informative)
And his teacher, Mises, before him in his work Human Action devoted an entire section of that massive tome to just this very topic: that humans are not equations.
From said tome:
No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action. We are never in a position to observe the change in one element only, all other conditions of the event remaining unchanged. Historical experience as an experience of complex phenomena does not provide us with facts in the sense in which the natural sciences employ this term to signify isolated events tested in experiments. The information conveyed by historical experience cannot be used as building material for the construction of theories and the prediction of future events. Every historical experience is open to various interpretations, and is in fact interpreted in different ways.
The postulates of positivism and kindred schools of metaphysics are therefore illusory. It is impossible to reform the sciences of human action according to the pattern of physics and the other natural sciences. There is no means to establish an a posteriori theory of human conduct and social events. History can neither prove nor disprove any general statement in the manner in which the natural sciences accept or reject a hypothesis on the ground of laboratory experiments. Neither experimental verification nor experimental falsification of a general proposition is possible in its field.
Re:Hayek (Score:5, Informative)
No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action.
One of the most profoundly stupid statements ever uttered by an economist. Sure you can't stick the global economy in a beaker and have controls and the other paraphernalia of controlled lab tests, the highest standard of science. But you can experiment with human action at the individual or small group in a controlled lab. It's routinely done these days. There is such a thing as experimental verification and falsification.
My bet: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If it were, it would be deterministic, hence not NP.
Which assumes NP != P, which is unproven. We think they are non-deterministic, but they might not be.
But if I had to bet, I'd bet that NP != P. And I'd bet even more that the OP's bet is bollocks. :)
Though if they are right, and can somehow prove it, they should end up more than wealthy enough not to care about what anyone thought of them beforehand. :)
another intersection of CS and econ (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's a proof that detecting "toxic assets" is impossible [dailykos.com] (or at least NP)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:another intersection of ANUS and econ (Score:2)
Someone, somewhere, is going to use this to fuck us all in the financial sector. And not in the good way. And by "financial sector" I mean unlubed arsehole with a cactus.
Re: (Score:2)
I note that you over-condensed the linked article's statement to a meaning much different than your summation.
That is true. Since what I said was basically the headline text of the article I linked to, I feel the over-condensation was justified.
Its easy! (Score:5, Funny)
Meaning if you can generalize the solution to poker, you have the ability to discover the Nash equilibrium of the economy
The general solution to poker is to end the game with everyone elses money to make yourself richer. Some people have already applied this strategy to the economy.
Only works with real money (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you factor debt and fractional reserves into the picture, the game changes quite a bit. The current crisis is that the players bet WAY more than they had, and they are all afraid to call, since they secretly know that EVERYBODY is bluffing. So the game (and the stock market) keeps going up as the players trying to outbluff each other with "I'll see your billion and raise you three more". And it will keep going up until somebody has to actually put something of value in the pot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as people are allowed to keep extraordinary profits, the motivation is there to game whatever system is in place and this leads to a neverending race. Only strong levels of taxation (where by strong, I mean 95% taxation on all forms of personal income above a certain threshold, eg 200k) can make people
Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
Economics involves people. So...
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." - Douglas Adams
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
I think that Stalin said that this problem is fixable...
Article misrepresents complexity theory (Score:3)
risk vs uncertainty (Score:2)
Wikipedia's Altered Theory of Computation (Score:3, Funny)
Now would be a GREAT time to go alter the wikipedia articles on NP completeness and such, then watch the aftermath on slashdot as the n00bs go do their research and learn what it is for the first time!
Nice setup (Score:5, Funny)
What can CS teach ECON?
How to crash routinely and have people shrug it off as normal.
So, this economist and... (Score:3, Insightful)
So, this economist and a computer scientist are sitting at a bar.... and these 5 girls walk in....
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Economics can never be modeled succesfully (Score:2)
ummm (Score:2, Insightful)
Computer scientists and economists? What about the actual mathematicians?
Three person games (Score:2)
I am pleased to see this result. It agrees with some of my own suspicions. Let me describe a simple three person game (players A, B, and C). Here is the rule for each player when it is their turn.
A player must take $1.00 away from one opponent and give at least half of it to the other opponent. Whatever is not given to the other opponent can be kept by the acting player.
Each player in turn gets to choose which player to steal a $1.00 from and how much of it they will keep (they can keep at most half) and ho
Re: (Score:2)
I have more to say. I forgot to mention another reason why I think this result is so exciting.
Assume you have a game being played by N people (N > 2, but think of N > 8 as a typical example). By what I said in the prior post, everybody is playing a BAD strategy, a strategy that is far from the Nash Equilibrium because it is IMPOSSIBLE to effectively calculate a better strategy in a reasonable amount of time.
Although it is impossible to create a perfect strategy, it is possible to create an exploiting
overstated (Score:2)
The implications of such a result are overstated:
* It's easy to construct markets in which finding the optimal solution is NP-hard, and many real-world problems are already of that form--for example, any economic decision that involves an NP-hard optimization problem.
* Participants already don't find optimal solutions even given infinite computational resources simply because people lack the necessary information to find optimal solutions to begin with.
* NP-hardness is nearly useless in characterizing the d
Misses the post-scarcity point; digital abundance (Score:3, Interesting)
The biggest problem we face is post-scarcity technologies of abundance wielded by scarcity-obsessed people, because things like biotech, robotech, infotech, nanotech, nucleartech, and so on make terrible, if ironic, weapons. It is ironic to use military robots to fight over economic issues the robots make obsolete. It is ironic to use nuclear missiles built with advanced materials to fight over oil supplies that nuclear power or solar energy make unimportant. It even takes more electricity to produce a gallon of gasoline than an electric car takes to go the same distance, if you really want some deep irony -- we'd use less electricity if we switched to electric cars. So, as an example of post-scarcity thinking, considering that and safety issues, our society would save money and have lower taxes if everyone got a free-to-the user safe luxury electric car.
http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/09eb7f4c973349f2?hl=en [google.com]
From Post-scarcity Princeton:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html [pdfernhout.net]
"""
* Some comments on the PU Economics department and related research directions from a post-scarcity perspective
The PU economics department, of course, should be abolished as part of this transition. :-)
OK, that will never happen, so it should be at least "strongly admonished" for past misbehavior. :-(
What misbehavior? Essentially, the PU Economics department has taken part in a global effort to build an economic "psychofrakulator". How does a psychofrakulator work? Consider a paraphrase of something Doc Heller says in the movie Mystery Men:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0132347/quotes [imdb.com]
Dr. Heller: It's a psychofrakulator. They used to say it couldn't be built. The equations were so complex that most of the scientists that worked on it wound up in the insane asylum [in Chicago]. ... It creates a cloud of [dollar denomiated] radically-fluctuating free-deviant chaotrons which penetrate the synaptic relays [via television]. It's concatenated with a synchronous transport switch [of values from long term seven generation life-affirming love of caring to short-term immediate profit and immediate gratification suicidal death-affirming love of money] that creates a virtual tributary [back to large corporations]. It's focused onto a biobolic reflector [of the elite controlled mass media] and what happens is that [economic] hallucinations become reality and the [global] brain [and global ecosystem] is literally fried from within.
Or in other words:
"Screwed: What 30 Years of Conservative Economics Feels Like"
http://granby01033.blogspot.com/2008/04/screwed-what-30-years-of-conservative.html [blogspot.com]
Or:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-autistic_economics [wikipedia.org]
And:
"Obituary: Conservative Economic Policy"
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/10/19/obituary_conservative_economic/ [talkingpointsmemo.com]
Conservative economic policy is dead. It committed suicide. Its allegiance to market solutions, tax cuts and spending cuts, supply-side nonsense, manipulative and corrosive ties to industry and the rich, have left it wholly unable to cope with the challenges we face. Its terribly limited toolbox simply cannot address the economic insecurities and opportunities generated by today's global, interconnected, polluted, insecure, dyna
One simple lesson for politicians (Score:2)
Don't put into kernel, what can be done in user space.
Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, one thing they could learn from open source is that it can be rewarding to forgo profits altogether. Now that WOULD be a revolution.
WoW! (Score:3, Funny)
I would love to see how this might be able to harness me some more gold while farming on WoW!
WOW (Score:3, Interesting)
That is what the World of Warcraft should do:
A) Allow players to go into debt
B) Allow players to have credit
C) Create things like derivatives that players can trade around.
Would be interesting to see what happens and how they manage it. They could also try to have one AH across all the servers (likely technically problematic). They all ready have the numbers for a pretty grand experimental in virtual economics, the closer they model reality, the more interesting it would be to see how things react.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
WoW players have all the tools necessary to do this now, except one -- there are no effective tools to enforce player-created rules. You of course can't do anything to the players themselves, and there's almost nothing you can do to the characters. As such, people will simply borrow money and not pay it back. In the real world, this is fixable (though ugly).
Re:No shit (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why the goal [wikipedia.org] is to dumb down the average person and limit his choices until we're at the level of a THX 1138/Brave New World society.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Don't be shocked, the MIT article doesn't even get the simple example of game theory right:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And the best strategy for the shooter is to place the ball in the corner where the goalie can't reach it even if guesses the right side. The only problem with this strategy is that it increases the risk of missing the goal entirely, which not only losses the 50-50 chance but is also extremely embarrassing. So the optimal strategy is only valid for really good shooters.
And we are not even covering the options of feints, but game theory of feints gets silly. Is is feinting for real or is he feinting to make m
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not so. There is a reason this class of problems is called "non-deterministic". That is because there is no way to determine, ahead of time, whether a finite solution for this problem exists!
No, that's just wrong. The problems are called non-deterministic polynomial (NP) because they can be solved in polynomial time by a non-deterministic turing machine. A non-deterministic turing machine is a turing machine that can take go into multiple states and accepts an input if any of it's states end up leading to an accept state. Think superposition of states with a wave collapse if you're a physicist.
All of these problems have finite solutions and in fact one of the requirements is that a NP proble
A simpler way to say it... (Score:2)
Is that you can think of a non-deterministic machine as the inverse of a deterministic machine. For my own education into the problem, I wrote a program that simulated an instruction set running backwards, but in the complete set sense.
So, if I put in a program to multiply, I could feed it two inputs A and B and get the multiplied value C. If I supplied C, the machine would be crunched "backwards" to get the various possibilities of A and B. Of course, in order for this to work without an explosion of po
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wait a minute (Score:3, Insightful)
Poker is a game?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
If all else fails, at least we can still exchange a few funny stories about crashes...
Fail to see the big deal (Score:3, Informative)
I have graduate degrees in both Computer Science and Economics and this commonality was so obvious to me over a decade ago that it wouldn't have seemed worth writing about. Hell, you even study Von Neumann in both of these fields at the undergraduate level.
Re:Fail to see the big deal (Score:4, Funny)
Proof by obviousness isn't accepted by most peer-reviewed journals.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because it can't make perfect predictions all of the time doesn't mean that it is useless. You're right, people aren't rational and random chance plays into most things. If you ever take an Econometrics class, you'll learn that predictive Econometric equations always include a random error variable.
Furthermore, in your example, I don't think that showing that people don't take the most selfish path is a "useless" finding. What they did was generate data about how people usually behave. Concepts from Ps