Re: [FRIAM] How brand-new words are spreading across America
I have to admit to a fascination on evolution of language. Remember The MacNeil/Lehrer Report? Robert MacNeil had a great series on the evolution of English, even to influence of the sea islands (Gullah), There are some downsides. I'm bitchy about a few usages: If I *was* should be If I were, subjunctive. Loan is a noun so I can not loan you something .. lend (verb) you something. Less - Fewer. It goes on. I bet we all have our own favorites. -- Owen On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Gary Schiltz g...@naturesvisualarts.com wrote: Enough is enough. If bro and bruuh are added to the dictionary, I will start speaking Spanish exclusively. And what the fuck is on fleek? Wait, I really don't want to know. Seriously *not* unbothered :-( On Tuesday, August 4, 2015, glen ep ropella g...@tempusdictum.com wrote: http://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/ -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com 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 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
My wife hates New and Improved and news-stories about vehicular homicide that state the car hit the group of children at the school bus stop. The first has been a staple of language comedy - how can something be new and improved at the same time? Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children. Speaking of autonomous vehicles, as I was commuting to work this morning, my Prius did it's oh noes, I'm skidding thing when I accelerated quickly out of my side street - there's always a patch of gravel and the anti-skid thinks the drive wheels have lost traction, drops power to the wheels, and suddenly I'm not accelerating into the hole in traffic that seemed plenty big enough. After that, the anti-skid did the opposite (accelerated) when the car bumped over the potholes at Alameda and Rio Grande. That made me think that the real problem with autonomous vehicles is how do they handle the abnormal environment. In nuclear safety, we consider that any system has to operate in a normal (i.e. expected) environment, in abnormal (i.e. rare, not expected) environments, and malevolent (i.e. bad guys attacking) environments. The edge cases of the abnormal environment will be the second biggest problem for autonomous vehicles (the malevolent environment is the biggest problem). I expect, however, that those edge cases will happen more often than outright attacks and will have equally spectacular failure modes. How will autonomous vehicles handle construction zones (that should be part of the normal environment, but I don't know if the programmers have thought about the infinite variations that can be encountered)? How will autonomous vehicles handle GPS mapping errors? Humans seem to have trouble when their GPS tells them to turn into a one-way street or over a non-existent bridge - will autonomous vehicles do better? How will autonomous vehicles handle low-water crossings? That, too, should be part of the normal environment, but sometimes an exceptionally heavy rain moves them into the abnormal environment. Presumably, autonomous vehicles will detect the tree branch that fell into the roadway - but will they notice the tree branch starting to fall? I'm not sure most humans would notice the latter, but some would. I've driven in the mountains after some heavy rains and noticed on a curve ahead that the dirt under the blacktop had been washed out. I knew from my long-distance observation not to drive over that section of road. Would an autonomous vehicle notice that? Sorry to hijack the thread, but feel free to answer with a new subject. At least the first paragraph is on topic. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 On Aug 5, 2015, at 10:14 AM, Owen Densmore wrote: I have to admit to a fascination on evolution of language. Remember The MacNeil/Lehrer Report? Robert MacNeil had a great series on the evolution of English, even to influence of the sea islands (Gullah), There are some downsides. I'm bitchy about a few usages: If I *was* should be If I were, subjunctive. Loan is a noun so I can not loan you something .. lend (verb) you something. Less - Fewer. It goes on. I bet we all have our own favorites. -- Owen On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 4:27 PM, Gary Schiltz g...@naturesvisualarts.commailto:g...@naturesvisualarts.com wrote: Enough is enough. If bro and bruuh are added to the dictionary, I will start speaking Spanish exclusively. And what the fuck is on fleek? Wait, I really don't want to know. Seriously *not* unbothered :-( On Tuesday, August 4, 2015, glen ep ropella g...@tempusdictum.commailto:g...@tempusdictum.com wrote: http://qz.com/465820/how-brand-new-words-are-spreading-across-america/ -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847tel:971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.comhttp://tempusdictum.com/ 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 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Ooh, is rekt one of the new words from the original article on Quartz? Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.govmailto:rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.govmailto:rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.govmailto:dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Aug 5, 2015, at 11:46 AM, cody dooderson wrote: While this is not totally related, xkcd had a funny cartoon on self driving cars yesterday. http://xkcd.com/1559/ . The situation in the cartoon might qualify as a a malevolent situation. Others might just say that the self driving car got rekt. Cody Smith 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Ok, I think I get the reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics III regarding voluntary action or volition. However, you have once again puzzled me as I don't understand how Robert Rosen is relevant. Are you thinking that the programmers of an autonomous vehicle do not have a relationship with the actions of that vehicle? They are responsible for the metabolic and repair subsystems of the vehicle. I would argue that the software algorithms that control the vehicle are metabolic. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 On Aug 5, 2015, at 1:04 PM, glen wrote: Heh, Aristotle and Robert Rosen just rolled over in their graves. On 08/05/2015 10:25 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote: Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children. -- ⇔ 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Sorry for being vague. I meant the 4 causes: formal, efficient, material, and final. Rosen yapped endlessly about agency, efficient cause. They're rolling over in their graves because the idea that the automatic car is _not_ responsible but the programmers or the drivers _are_ avoids the separation of cause into the 4 types. Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. On 08/05/2015 12:26 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: Ok, I think I get the reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics III regarding voluntary action or volition. However, you have once again puzzled me as I don't understand how Robert Rosen is relevant. Are you thinking that the programmers of an autonomous vehicle do not have a relationship with the actions of that vehicle? They are responsible for the metabolic and repair subsystems of the vehicle. I would argue that the software algorithms that control the vehicle are metabolic. On Aug 5, 2015, at 1:04 PM, glen wrote: Heh, Aristotle and Robert Rosen just rolled over in their graves. On 08/05/2015 10:25 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote: Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children. -- ⇔ 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. And the keg _in the office_? It just got there all by itself? 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
On 08/05/2015 12:49 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. And the keg _in the office_? It just got there all by itself? What are you implying? Are you saying that the alcohol (materially) caused the broken regulator? And hence the efficient blame lies on the agent who placed the alcohol there? Pfft! If anything, alcohol is a depressant and would stabilize the motor control system of the consumer so as to make regulator breakage _less_ likely. Something like carbonated kombucha is way more dangerous, in my not so humble opinion. -- ⇔ 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Aha, so I was wrong about which of Aristotle's writings you were referencing. The telos of an autonomous vehicle is transportation of cargo (human or not) from point A to point B. The autonomous car in the xkcd cartoon Cody found is fulfilling its telos. The efficient cause of an autonomous vehicle includes human user(s) and the humans who made the vehicle. The programmers are part of that second group. Black Hat in the xkcd is a human user and the efficient cause of the vehicle in the comic trying to drive to Alaska. The formal cause of an autonomous vehicle is the form of a vehicle. The material cause of the vehicle is probably the weakest of the four causes. Such a vehicle will be made of metal, plastic (oil), glass (sand, fire), and lots of other materials. This is where Aristotle's philosophy smacks into modern technology. In Aristotlean terms, the material cause of an autonomous vehicle is mostly earth with some fire. However, I have no idea how the virtual would fit into his philosophy - is software air or water? At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 On Aug 5, 2015, at 1:35 PM, glen wrote: Sorry for being vague. I meant the 4 causes: formal, efficient, material, and final. Rosen yapped endlessly about agency, efficient cause. They're rolling over in their graves because the idea that the automatic car is _not_ responsible but the programmers or the drivers _are_ avoids the separation of cause into the 4 types. Useless anecdote: I opened the fridge one day and noticed the CO2 regulator on the keg was broken. I asked my office mate about it. He said: Yeah, the regulator broke. I asked: It just spontaneously broke all by itself? He didn't respond. On 08/05/2015 12:26 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: Ok, I think I get the reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics III regarding voluntary action or volition. However, you have once again puzzled me as I don't understand how Robert Rosen is relevant. Are you thinking that the programmers of an autonomous vehicle do not have a relationship with the actions of that vehicle? They are responsible for the metabolic and repair subsystems of the vehicle. I would argue that the software algorithms that control the vehicle are metabolic. On Aug 5, 2015, at 1:04 PM, glen wrote: Heh, Aristotle and Robert Rosen just rolled over in their graves. On 08/05/2015 10:25 AM, Parks, Raymond wrote: Her gripe with the second is that a car (or truck or ...) has no volition - it must be controlled by someone. The driver hit the group of children with the car under their control. This will still be true for autonomous vehicles - even if the passengers in the car have no control (unlikely), the software developers who program the algorithms of the autonomous vehicle will be liable when the car hits the school children - the programmers hit the school children. -- ⇔ 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative position that God did it for you, or allowed you to do it is an interesting hedge.) Most liberals tend to place at least a little more weight on luck or circumstance when considering one's success. So, it's not spontanous firing the gun control people are worried about. It's not even the rational, intently intentional firing they're worried about. It's the accidental and/or rash, semi-intentional firings they're worried about. Hence the solution: remove the material cause. -- ⇔ 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
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918 On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative position that God did it for you, or allowed you to do it is an interesting hedge.) Most liberals tend to place at least a little more weight on luck or circumstance when considering one's success. So, it's not spontanous firing the gun control people are worried about. It's not even the rational, intently intentional firing they're worried about. It's the accidental and/or rash, semi-intentional firings they're worried about. Hence the solution: remove the material cause. -- ⇔ 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
Another wrinkle in this is how the “businessman’s tragedy of the commons” gets reflected in the thinking of employees. Employees, when faced with enduring inequality, may well object to progress, out of a sense it isn’t fair. I find this really remarkable. An employer that wants the employees poorer must be very amused indeed to see a backlash such as in the URL below. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/business/a-company-copes-with-backlash-against-the-raise-that-roared.html From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2015 5:00 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America So business people are anti-union not because unions interfere with the running of their own businesses, but because unions interfere with their ruining of other peoples businesses? I think we could get a whole new freakonomics franchise out of this. -- rec -- On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:22 PM, David Eric Smith desm...@santafe.edumailto:desm...@santafe.edu wrote: You know what I find curious about the various econ conversations around this topic? What I am about to say is not any deep insight, and I have heard Hanauer say the same things in his TED talk (nearly verbatim to the article), but just this time, reading it led to the realization. In the sense of where the agency lies, this is a simple non-cooperative game played by the owners of firms _against each other_. Powerless labor is essentially a background fabric that responds mechanically to the strategic choices of those who have the bargaining power over terms of employment, in the society as we currently have it structured. So essentially, as Hanauer says, every business wants its customers richer and its employees poorer. That is: they want all _other_ employers to provide richer citizens who can be customers, while they then return less of that wealth to their own employees as members of the customer pool. It can be framed as one of the simple standard public-goods games, in which a public resource (a non-desperate pool of people who both sell wage labor and buy products and services) is either contributed to, or not, by firms' wage-setting policies. The strategy of public contribution is dominated under the non-cooperative equilibrium, so the businessman's tragedy of the commons has everybody trying to cheat and not pay labor, until the whole populace is decimated and there are no customers. This is the descent into the Walmart effect on towns, though the way it plays out into a final locked-in ruined state is more complicated than this simple game has the structure to describe. All this is obvious, and putting it into a game-theoretic frame doesn't really add anything to the substance of the argument, though for me it does state more transparently who the players are and makes the useful point that it is the firm owners competing with each other as adversaries that drive this dynamic. Firm owners don't, as a class, destroy the economy through low wages because they are colluding: rather, they are being coordinated by the bad version of Adam Smith's invisible hand as they jointly independently and competitively choose the same destructive use of their power in the labor market. This is why the notion that firms will voluntarily raise wages once a few do, mentioned by opponents in Hanauer's essay, is false (and disingenuously so). Now, certainly, maintaining market power over wages by putting a fence around the labor pool is a collusive act, but it is carried out through different institutions (particularly, lobbying legislators etc.) and other levels than the competitive pricing one. Thus, the game has a few layers with different structure that interact, but it wouldn't be all that hard to lay out which parts are which. The thing that surprises me -- given how many statements of the obvious Complex Systems academics make lots of press putting into formalism -- is that I haven't seen anyone write this down in those terms. Maybe everyone realizes it would be kind of silly, and that is why they don't bother to do it? Would make sense, except that we see it done in so many other areas that are equally shallow and silly. ? Eric On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:24 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918tel:%28505%29%20670-9918 On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired.
[FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
You know what I find curious about the various econ conversations around this topic? What I am about to say is not any deep insight, and I have heard Hanauer say the same things in his TED talk (nearly verbatim to the article), but just this time, reading it led to the realization. In the sense of where the agency lies, this is a simple non-cooperative game played by the owners of firms _against each other_. Powerless labor is essentially a background fabric that responds mechanically to the strategic choices of those who have the bargaining power over terms of employment, in the society as we currently have it structured. So essentially, as Hanauer says, every business wants its customers richer and its employees poorer. That is: they want all _other_ employers to provide richer citizens who can be customers, while they then return less of that wealth to their own employees as members of the customer pool. It can be framed as one of the simple standard public-goods games, in which a public resource (a non-desperate pool of people who both sell wage labor and buy products and services) is either contributed to, or not, by firms' wage-setting policies. The strategy of public contribution is dominated under the non-cooperative equilibrium, so the businessman's tragedy of the commons has everybody trying to cheat and not pay labor, until the whole populace is decimated and there are no customers. This is the descent into the Walmart effect on towns, though the way it plays out into a final locked-in ruined state is more complicated than this simple game has the structure to describe. All this is obvious, and putting it into a game-theoretic frame doesn't really add anything to the substance of the argument, though for me it does state more transparently who the players are and makes the useful point that it is the firm owners competing with each other as adversaries that drive this dynamic. Firm owners don't, as a class, destroy the economy through low wages because they are colluding: rather, they are being coordinated by the bad version of Adam Smith's invisible hand as they jointly independently and competitively choose the same destructive use of their power in the labor market. This is why the notion that firms will voluntarily raise wages once a few do, mentioned by opponents in Hanauer's essay, is false (and disingenuously so). Now, certainly, maintaining market power over wages by putting a fence around the labor pool is a collusive act, but it is carried out through different institutions (particularly, lobbying legislators etc.) and other levels than the competitive pricing one. Thus, the game has a few layers with different structure that interact, but it wouldn't be all that hard to lay out which parts are which. The thing that surprises me -- given how many statements of the obvious Complex Systems academics make lots of press putting into formalism -- is that I haven't seen anyone write this down in those terms. Maybe everyone realizes it would be kind of silly, and that is why they don't bother to do it? Would make sense, except that we see it done in so many other areas that are equally shallow and silly. ? Eric On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:24 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918 On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative position that God did it for you, or allowed you to do it is an interesting hedge.) Most liberals tend to place at least a little more weight on luck or circumstance when considering one's success. So, it's not spontanous firing the gun control people are worried about. It's not even the rational, intently intentional firing they're worried about. It's the accidental and/or rash, semi-intentional firings they're worried about. Hence the solution: remove the material
Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
So business people are anti-union not because unions interfere with the running of their own businesses, but because unions interfere with their ruining of other peoples businesses? I think we could get a whole new freakonomics franchise out of this. -- rec -- On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:22 PM, David Eric Smith desm...@santafe.edu wrote: You know what I find curious about the various econ conversations around this topic? What I am about to say is not any deep insight, and I have heard Hanauer say the same things in his TED talk (nearly verbatim to the article), but just this time, reading it led to the realization. In the sense of where the agency lies, this is a simple non-cooperative game played by the owners of firms _against each other_. Powerless labor is essentially a background fabric that responds mechanically to the strategic choices of those who have the bargaining power over terms of employment, in the society as we currently have it structured. So essentially, as Hanauer says, every business wants its customers richer and its employees poorer. That is: they want all _other_ employers to provide richer citizens who can be customers, while they then return less of that wealth to their own employees as members of the customer pool. It can be framed as one of the simple standard public-goods games, in which a public resource (a non-desperate pool of people who both sell wage labor and buy products and services) is either contributed to, or not, by firms' wage-setting policies. The strategy of public contribution is dominated under the non-cooperative equilibrium, so the businessman's tragedy of the commons has everybody trying to cheat and not pay labor, until the whole populace is decimated and there are no customers. This is the descent into the Walmart effect on towns, though the way it plays out into a final locked-in ruined state is more complicated than this simple game has the structure to describe. All this is obvious, and putting it into a game-theoretic frame doesn't really add anything to the substance of the argument, though for me it does state more transparently who the players are and makes the useful point that it is the firm owners competing with each other as adversaries that drive this dynamic. Firm owners don't, as a class, destroy the economy through low wages because they are colluding: rather, they are being coordinated by the bad version of Adam Smith's invisible hand as they jointly independently and competitively choose the same destructive use of their power in the labor market. This is why the notion that firms will voluntarily raise wages once a few do, mentioned by opponents in Hanauer's essay, is false (and disingenuously so). Now, certainly, maintaining market power over wages by putting a fence around the labor pool is a collusive act, but it is carried out through different institutions (particularly, lobbying legislators etc.) and other levels than the competitive pricing one. Thus, the game has a few layers with different structure that interact, but it wouldn't be all that hard to lay out which parts are which. The thing that surprises me -- given how many statements of the obvious Complex Systems academics make lots of press putting into formalism -- is that I haven't seen anyone write this down in those terms. Maybe everyone realizes it would be kind of silly, and that is why they don't bother to do it? Would make sense, except that we see it done in so many other areas that are equally shallow and silly. ? Eric On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:24 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918 On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative position that God did it for you, or allowed you to do it is an interesting hedge.) Most liberals tend to place at least a little more weight on
Re: [FRIAM] [ SPAM ] Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: How brand-new words are spreading across America
On Aug 6, 2015, at 7:59 AM, Roger Critchlow wrote: So business people are anti-union not because unions interfere with the running of their own businesses, but because unions interfere with their ruining of other peoples businesses? Very nice! E I think we could get a whole new freakonomics franchise out of this. -- rec -- On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 4:22 PM, David Eric Smith desm...@santafe.edu wrote: You know what I find curious about the various econ conversations around this topic? What I am about to say is not any deep insight, and I have heard Hanauer say the same things in his TED talk (nearly verbatim to the article), but just this time, reading it led to the realization. In the sense of where the agency lies, this is a simple non-cooperative game played by the owners of firms _against each other_. Powerless labor is essentially a background fabric that responds mechanically to the strategic choices of those who have the bargaining power over terms of employment, in the society as we currently have it structured. So essentially, as Hanauer says, every business wants its customers richer and its employees poorer. That is: they want all _other_ employers to provide richer citizens who can be customers, while they then return less of that wealth to their own employees as members of the customer pool. It can be framed as one of the simple standard public-goods games, in which a public resource (a non-desperate pool of people who both sell wage labor and buy products and services) is either contributed to, or not, by firms' wage-setting policies. The strategy of public contribution is dominated under the non-cooperative equilibrium, so the businessman's tragedy of the commons has everybody trying to cheat and not pay labor, until the whole populace is decimated and there are no customers. This is the descent into the Walmart effect on towns, though the way it plays out into a final locked-in ruined state is more complicated than this simple game has the structure to describe. All this is obvious, and putting it into a game-theoretic frame doesn't really add anything to the substance of the argument, though for me it does state more transparently who the players are and makes the useful point that it is the firm owners competing with each other as adversaries that drive this dynamic. Firm owners don't, as a class, destroy the economy through low wages because they are colluding: rather, they are being coordinated by the bad version of Adam Smith's invisible hand as they jointly independently and competitively choose the same destructive use of their power in the labor market. This is why the notion that firms will voluntarily raise wages once a few do, mentioned by opponents in Hanauer's essay, is false (and disingenuously so). Now, certainly, maintaining market power over wages by putting a fence around the labor pool is a collusive act, but it is carried out through different institutions (particularly, lobbying legislators etc.) and other levels than the competitive pricing one. Thus, the game has a few layers with different structure that interact, but it wouldn't be all that hard to lay out which parts are which. The thing that surprises me -- given how many statements of the obvious Complex Systems academics make lots of press putting into formalism -- is that I haven't seen anyone write this down in those terms. Maybe everyone realizes it would be kind of silly, and that is why they don't bother to do it? Would make sense, except that we see it done in so many other areas that are equally shallow and silly. ? Eric On Aug 6, 2015, at 6:24 AM, Frank Wimberly wrote: Nick Hanauer is clear that he is a multi-billionaire because Jeff Bezos called him back before another guy when Hanauer had some venture capital to invest. See: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html#.VcJ-ElDnbqA Frank Sent from my Verizon 4G LTE Phone (505) 670-9918 On 08/05/2015 01:20 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: At the risk of being unpopular on this group, I would point out that many gun-owners have made the argument that none of their guns have spontaneously fired. Referring back to Ethics - an arm (whether or not it holds a sword) does not harm without voluntary movement by the person. I don't think that's true at all. It's not the voluntary movement that concerns most. It's the involuntary movement that concerns most, especially liberals, because most liberals (I think) tend to give more weight to unintential or coincident circumstances than most conservatives. An analogous consideration is the (seemingly) popular conservative position that if you have succeeded at something (e.g. making money), it's because _you_ did it, not because you were lucky or fortunate. (The alternative
