Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[Jim Choate]

On Sat, 27 Apr 2002, R. A. Hettinga wrote:

> Except if they're, paradoxically, "Austrian" economists, like Hayek, or von
> Mises, who reject "scientism" and, oddly enough, equilbrium theory.

Then again Mises equated 'capitalism' with 'economics'...even the great
fallfor a good intro to some quick handwaving and jive playing you
should read just the intro to Mises "The Anti-Capitalist Mentality". It's
a hoot if you read the entire book.


 --


 The law is applied philosophy and a philosphical system is
 only as valid as its first principles.
 
James Patrick Kelly - "Wildlife"
   
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]  www.open-forge.org

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[Jim Choate]

On Sat, 27 Apr 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

> No.

Maybe.
 
> People who think like economists or libertarians will conclude
> that markets tend to stability, because humans will analyze
> fluctuations,

The examples of stable free markets include lots of examples that are not
involved with humans, ants for example. Or the way pigeons divide up the
seed in a given area so that each gets apportioned to their pecking order.

> attempt to predict them, and then take precautionary
> action to protect themselves, which will have the affect of
> smoothing the fluctuation, unless prevented by forceful state
> action as in the 1930s.

Actually you can't control the market, to try kills the market.

> Those who think like ecologists or totalitarians will conclude
> markets are unstable, because they think that humans lack the
> wisdom to anticipate the future. 

Actually the only time a market is stable is when the participants -don't-
analyze the market as a whole, in fact may be completely ignorant of the
existance of a 'market' for that matter. The instant 'control' gets
applied the market will break down. All the examples, mathematical and
biological, that demonstrate market stability are examples where the
agents are following a simple set of rules and this doesn't include global
market state info.

The reality is that both free and control markets fall down. It isn't a
matter of people or not. It's a matter of the 3 laws of thermodynamics.
You can't satisfy all the market agents all the time. Some time, just
because, all the air in the room does rush to one corner.


 --


 The law is applied philosophy and a philosphical system is
 only as valid as its first principles.
 
James Patrick Kelly - "Wildlife"
   
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]  www.open-forge.org

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[Jim Choate]

On Thu, 25 Apr 2002, Ken Brown wrote:

> One of the classic examples of what is now called "chaos" (a word that I
> don't like in this context). The exact trajectory taken by simple models

Uhuh...

> of predator-prey systems is often very sensitively dependent on initial
> conditions.  Of course in real life these things are stochastic anyway

Then I take it you don't like 'stochastic' since they really mean the same
thing in this context. At least one of the variables in the system -must-
be modeled as some sort of (P)RNG.

False distinction (see hand waving below)

> so the variables in your model should actually be probability
> distributions, which makes the sums much harder and leads to
> considerable handwaving. 

unpredictabilty <> hand waving.


 --


 The law is applied philosophy and a philosphical system is
 only as valid as its first principles.
 
James Patrick Kelly - "Wildlife"
   
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.ssz.com
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]  www.open-forge.org

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[jamesd]

--
At 12:15 PM -0700 on 4/27/02, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > People who think like economists or libertarians will conclude 
> > that markets tend to stability, because humans will analyze 
> > fluctuations, attempt to predict them, and then take
> > precautionary action to protect themselves, which will have
> > the affect of smoothing the fluctuation, unless prevented by
> > forceful state action as in the 1930s.
> >
> > Those who think like ecologists or totalitarians will conclude 
> > markets are unstable, because they think that humans lack the 
> > wisdom to anticipate the future.

On 27 Apr 2002 at 15:45, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> Except if they're, paradoxically, "Austrian" economists, like
> Hayek, or von Mises, who reject "scientism" and, oddly enough,
> equilbrium theory.

Rejecting equilibirum theory is not equivalent to doubting that
markets tend to stability.  Austrians attribute business cycles to
misjudgments, thus cycles will be limited by information and
skill. They disagree with each other, and keep changing their
story, on which misjudgments matter, and how one misjudgment
influences the next but the basic idea -- that business cycles are
the result of public and private errors -- is the same as the
chicago theory.


--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 pP3cbxd4sOb1HF66EW/XKVirGNYHSgHO/DMl1vyv
 4C66aZwLHi4nKNneFStStFw688CuEpfkBghGrL0qV

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[R. A. Hettinga]

At 12:15 PM -0700 on 4/27/02, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


> People who think like economists or libertarians will conclude
> that markets tend to stability, because humans will analyze
> fluctuations, attempt to predict them, and then take precautionary
> action to protect themselves, which will have the affect of
> smoothing the fluctuation, unless prevented by forceful state
> action as in the 1930s.
>
> Those who think like ecologists or totalitarians will conclude
> markets are unstable, because they think that humans lack the
> wisdom to anticipate the future.

Except if they're, paradoxically, "Austrian" economists, like Hayek, or von
Mises, who reject "scientism" and, oddly enough, equilbrium theory.

;-).

Cheers,
RAH


-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[jamesd]

--
On 25 Apr 2002 at 18:26, Ken Brown wrote:
> This kind of thing has implications for economics & technology & 
> markets of course (cf Santa Fe, ad infinitum).  People who think
> like ecologists tend to assume that a more complex market, with
> more participants, and more kinds of interaction between them,
> will be in the long run more "stable" - perhaps because that is
> what they think they see in nature. People who think like
> engineers may disagree and talk of excessive market volatility,
> and the dangers of new forms of trading & so on, and they need
> for regulation, looking for a few global variables to track and
> control.

No.

People who think like economists or libertarians will conclude
that markets tend to stability, because humans will analyze
fluctuations, attempt to predict them, and then take precautionary
action to protect themselves, which will have the affect of
smoothing the fluctuation, unless prevented by forceful state
action as in the 1930s.

Those who think like ecologists or totalitarians will conclude
markets are unstable, because they think that humans lack the
wisdom to anticipate the future. 

--digsig
 James A. Donald
 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG
 4dxgdqKiQ3g0bnnNKnUHsc/AUSQgFBlvI5xlq/AK
 4vd83fo2PdcBTLv/a2Smu6+bgng5cqLuPeSq2GHSL

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[Ken Brown]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

[...]

> For example, when a sheep dies you get more
> grass for the remaining sheep, which gets you more sheep again,
> so you can do a reasonable job of predicting sheep population
> without knowing anything about the fates of individual sheep.

Actually as the cycle time for the sheep population  & the cycle time
for the grass are not the same or multiples of each other, what you get
from a deterministic continuously variable model is wild oscillations of
sheep and grass populations that make it nigh on impossible to predict
the sheep population at any given time in the future. Things get more
steady if you introduce predators that eat the sheep, but never
completely predictable in the long run. The only way to know how the
model system would stand at any time in the future beyond the typical
cycle time is to do the sums. And there is no guarantee that the real
world analogue of the model would be in a similar state at that time.

One of the classic examples of what is now called "chaos" (a word that I
don't like in this context). The exact trajectory taken by simple models
of predator-prey systems is often very sensitively dependent on initial
conditions.  Of course in real life these things are stochastic anyway
so the variables in your model should actually be probability
distributions, which makes the sums much harder and leads to
considerable handwaving. 

Known about since the 1920s, pretty exhaustively described by Robert
May, John Maynard-Smith & others in the 1970s, but still argued about
today. Whether or not more complex systems (more species, more levels of
predation, more kinds of resource) are more "stable" is still a moot
point, opinions tending to depend (sensitively) on what the opinionated
one actually means by "stable". And on whether they have a background in
maths, or physical sciences, or molecular biology, or real biology.

This kind of thing has implications for economics & technology & markets
of course (cf Santa Fe, ad infinitum).  People who think like ecologists
tend to assume that a more complex market, with more participants, and
more kinds of interaction between them, will be in the long run more
"stable" - perhaps because that is what they think they see in nature. 
People who think like engineers may disagree and talk of excessive
market volatility, and the dangers of new forms of trading & so on, and
they need for regulation, looking for a few global variables to track
and control. 

Apologies for off-topicness, but this is probably the only subject
that's come up here about which I suspect I'm better read than the list
in general.  I'm working towards a doctorate in which I intend to argue
(in effect) that for many kinds of investigation (such as the
relationship between complexity and stability of the whole system) you
do need to know about the fates  of the individual sheep. (Or, in my
case, imaginary protobacteria,  to  keep it simple :-)


> Similarly, if i cut a fart in an elevator,  there's no telling where an
> indvidual stink molecule will go, but in not too long they'll
> be more or less uniformly spread throughout the elevator.

I suspect they probably won't, not unless you spend a lot more time in
the lift than is healthy for you. Whiffs  will be whisked about
chaotically, some being lost every time the door is opened or anyone
walks around. So some poor guy on the 3rd floor will get a noseful, but
someone else standing next to him might miss out entirely.

Re: Quantum mechanics, England, and Topos Theory

[georgemw]

On 23 Apr 2002 at 18:56, Tim May wrote:

> On Tuesday, April 23, 2002, at 11:18  AM, Ken Brown wrote:
> > Back nearer to on-topic, Tim's explanation why the world could not be
> > predicted even if it were locally (microscopically) predictable sounds
> > spot-on.
> 
> It's not my idea, obviously. But the fact that I wrote it so quickly, 
> and so glibly (he admits), is because it's so internalized to everything 
> I think. I simply cannot _conceive_ of anyone thinking the Universe, let 
> alone the Multiverse, is predictable in any plausible or operational 
> sense. The sources of "divergence" (aka chaos, aka combinatorial 
> explosion, aka Big O with a Vengeance) come in from all sides.

I can explain why people might think it were.  You could imagine
that due to feedback mechanisms or statistical averaging,
these small uncertainties tend to cancel each other
out, provided you're confining your interest to macroscopic
observables.  For example, when a sheep dies you get more
grass for the remaining sheep, which gets you more sheep again,
so you can do a reasonable job of predicting sheep population
without knowing anything about the fates of individual sheep.
Similarly, if i cut a fart in an elevator,  there's no telling where an
indvidual stink molecule will go, but in not too long they'll
be more or less uniformly spread throughout the elevator.

I can't see how anyone would believe you would ever be able to
predict, say, radio static.  But I think 50 years ago
most people believed that in principle you could predict
the weather arbitrarily far into the future.  And there are still
people who believe you can predict stock prices based
solely on the squiggles.  These people are called "technical
traders" by themselves and "fools" by others.

George 



> 
> --Tim May
> "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a 
> monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also 
> into you." -- Nietzsche
> 
>