http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol15/?pg=173
Here is a beautiful article by George Dyson that is truly one of the
clearest examples of the current problems with complexity theory
especially its relationship to economics , what it is trying to do and
what it actually did with the mess created on wall street it should make
every every CTO and CEO sit up and shudder.
Basically the credit models created by complexity science geniuses, that
are the foundation of most high flying arbitrage financial houses,
created there own version of reality that had very little relevance to
the real world. These same geniuses made enormous amounts of money by
designing this fake world and convincing there neophyte non tech masters
they should be paid millions for its discovery conveniently forgetting
that its roots were firmly built in fiction Someone shouts the Emperor
has no clothes and presto the whole house comes tumbling down
The FBI is also apparently digging into this cesspool so expect to see a
large number of these bright software phds entering federal prison in
the not to distant future
It also has relevance to the scary statement by Janet Wing at the
institute when she said that future computer models need not be grounded
in reality but could create there own.
Think also on the connection that not only are these complex models non
verifiable but so are most databases and agent modeling systems. Without
easy verifiability I would submit they are worse than
useless
As Dyson points out the tally sticks " stocks" that where used in the
13th century are far superior to the billions of dollars of hardware and
software used today. A stick " Stock " lived in the real world and was
verifiable at the lowest level of inspection. Sadly today our complex
system have proved to be totally non verifiable with the associated
collapse of trust.
Its also a stark example to our 1st mile friends about the higher
relevance of what goes into the pipe rather than the pipe itself and why
hi speed verification of what is happening in the real world is so much
more important
The quicker we realize that the raison d'etre of the digital world is to
improve the quality of life and include some moral directives in our
work based in reality the more we will be able to sleep at night
( : ( : pete
--
Peter Baston
*IDEAS*
/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
