Tue 20 May 2008

30 Responses to “ Can Chaoplexity Save Economics? ”

Comments:

1. Barkley Rosser says:
   May 20th, 2008 at 11:32 am

   I want to thank John Horgan for accepting my invitation to attend our conference on “Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Economic Complexity.” His remarks here fairly faithfully reflect his remarks at the end of the conference right after my plenary “yell,” as he described it (my wife is on my case for my overly high volume in general and at this conference in particular, ). I was pleased to have a skeptic who would keep us honest and also provide some grist for vigorous debate and discussion, which did follow his remarks.

   John is right that I despair of finding “The Truth” in the sense of a final model that solves everything in economics. Many of the papers at the conference were motivated by searching for alternatives to the conventional models of mainstream economics (often viewed by many as representing “the Truth” or the closest we are likely to get to it) that we find inadequate and dysfunctional, both in terms of analysis and policy; see the problems in global financial markets in recent months as an example, which are not supposed to be happening according to the standard textbook views. For better or worse, however, there is much disagreement on what is to replace this essentially dead orthodoxy.

   I would only add two comments here and now, and hope to have further opportunities to discuss these matters with John in more detail later. One is that his point regarding how humans mess things up in economics in ways that they do not do in the harder natural sciences has actually been put forward by various folks, Donald Saari who was editor of the Annals of the American Mathematical Society for several years for one, as an argument for the greater relevance of what John labels “chaoplexology” in economics and the social sciences than in the natural sciences, even if many of these methods were first developed for math or physics or biology or whatever. The economic system is more complex than those systems (by almost any of the many definitions of complexity) precisely because of the fact that there are these complicated agents acting and reacting and reshuffling the landscape and the system as they do so in responding to what it does. To revise the late Art Linkletter, it is not just kids, but people who “do the darndest things.”

   Second is that many economists and observers have long argued that economists in particular should aspire to develop a “toolbox” that can be useful for specific problems rather than aspire to grand theories. That economists should seek to be like “dentists,” able to solve specific issues with those tools (the late Joan Robinson, who should have been the first woman to get the Nobel Prize in Economics (none have yet so far) argued this). One of the participants, David Colander, who is author of a widely used Principles of Economics textbook, once wrote a book “Why Aren’t Economists as Useful as Garbagemen” (or some title like that). And, regarding the bridge analogy, quantitative finance is often also called “financial engineering,” and one of the participants to whom John was referring is Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, an econophysicist who both edits the academic journal Quantitative Finance while also running the largest hedge fund in Paris, Capital Fund Management.

   I confess that I also still hope to get a bigger picture, but it will probably remain elusively fuzzy and chaoplexological ultimately.

2. Uncle Al says:
   May 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am

   If economics worked it would be self-funding, e.g., Long Term Capital Management and its implosion. Nothing screaming “heteroskedasticity!” is to be trusted. Balancing a home budget is not like running a national economy (both enjoying increasingly violent contemporary disrepute).

3. Andrei Kirilyuk says:
   May 21st, 2008 at 1:11 pm

   So there is a practically inefficient, openly postmodern (but officially recognised and generously supported!) science of “economic chaoplexity” that cannot even provide any reasonable (let alone rigorous!) definition of the main quantity of interest, (dynamic) complexity. [For example, one may have a look at its version in Barkley Rosser's papers sounding like “some particular kinds of irregular behaviour, probably” (each of these remaining ill-defined in its turn!) – and that's top-level American science, from their best universities and scientific conferences! Land of miracles...] On the other hand, there is another kind of science that does provide a rigorous and universal concept and definition of real-system (rather than “model”!) complexity confirmed by applications to various, physical, biological and social systems, including modern social and economic development analysis with its well-specified conclusions ( http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00008993 ). [It becomes clear, in particular, why the unreduced, real-system complexity of “models” exclusively considered in “chaoplexity” and “santafetics” is strictly ZERO.] Needless to say, only the former science of complexity with zero complexity is accepted, supported, discussed by leading journalists and media, invited to high-level conferences, etc., while the latter cannot even be officially mentioned, let alone discussed. In economical terms, it’s called (ultimately) unfair competition that can exist only within a totalitarian, “administrative” system of society or knowledge organisation. And while we have basically decentralised, competition-driven system of material production (determining its general success and rapid progress), the world of science is still absolutely dominated by “self-organised”, result-independent and therefore evidently inefficient totalitarian regime that has actually realised the criminal, uncontrolled privatisation of knowledge guided by totally selfish, subjective interests, rather than any “Truth” or “truth” desire. What is the sense, then, to discuss the (official) absence or possibility of the latter?! The unified Truth about unreduced complexity of civilisation development does exist, solves real problems and naturally includes all particular, “practical” (e.g. ecological) truths (as it should!), but it’s neither the desired purpose, nor a feasible result of the official science hierarchy.

   After which our younger friend Suhas Sreedhar complains on this blog about the absence of more optimistic and imaginative science-fiction stories ( http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=149 ). What can you imagine, Suhas, starting from SUCH reality (in its best, generously supported realisation)? With such science, every moment without explicit catastrophe is a miracle (even though the general catastrophic degradation of knowledge IS here “and counting”!). The true difference between science fiction and fairy tales is not any greater “rigour” of the former, but just its relation with today’s real life and tendencies. Do you remember the idea of the film Sphere with Dustin Hoffman and Sharon Stone? It was enough to truly liberate THEIR imagination and only monsters and disasters could emerge from it. Today’s science and art (even more than the rest) are totally dominated just by such, very SPECIAL, self-destructive kind of “intelligence”, in the same way as today’s dominating concept of e.g. “mathematical physics” provides a very special version of physics (needless to mention the official “science of complexity” … without genuine complexity!). However, the “trick” consists in saying and implying everywhere (thank you science journalists!) that ANY scientific knowledge, including concept of complexity, physics, or development science can only be like those their very special, “officially unique” versions, or a product of continuous, straightforward development (now finished) of those officially imposed imitations and practices.

   Returning to ecoplexity, here are a few particular comments on John’s ideas about it. If you substitute “physics” for “anthropology” in the last but one paragraph of your post, you’ll see that everything remains perfectly true, which shows that the problem is not specific for “soft” disciplines. Correspondingly, the “self-referential” (self-interacting) structure/dynamics of complexity is neither a distinctive feature of its “human-dominated” levels: if “subjective” (can’t say “intelligent”!) humans are “components” of a system considered, it doesn’t mean that “objective” interacting particles at lower levels would behave qualitatively differently (they are simply “less diverse” in their “results” and yet with such “humans” … I’m not sure!). That unreduced “self-interaction” and the resulting “dynamic multivaluedness” is just the basis of real dynamic complexity at ANY level of existence (because ALL real objects, starting from massive elementary particles, have positive – and non-small – values of that universal dynamic complexity). On the other hand, if all those human – or rather inhuman – dealers (in both stock exchange and science!) have their small and big subjective ideas and desires, it doesn’t mean that the result of the whole huge hierarchy of interactions involved does not converge to a well-defined limit. The latter is just called unreduced dynamic complexity, rigorously derived and variously specified in my description (see e.g. the above paper or a recent review, http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00156368 ). In the case of official science (economics and chaoplexity including), the limit is known even too well, alas: it’s the ultimate degradation of knowledge, absence of any its progress (real problem solutions) and unlimited growth of all corrupt practices (the worst in the best positions, etc.).

   In any case, I think we agree that “economics” cannot be a scientific discipline in principle, already because it involves other – and more essential – non-economical aspects (e.g. “motivations” but not because they are “subjective”!). One should rather deal with something like “development science” and separating there “economical” aspects into a well-defined discipline is the same as separating purely financial factors from production and technology trends in economical analysis. Take the difference between “developed” and “other” countries for an evident example of objective importance of society development as a whole that determines and includes economical aspects. As to those officially great ecoplexologists from particularly “advanced” institutes (according to their own estimates) … they’re just very good, swift-handed market dealers: financial giants are right to hire them and use directly their commercial abilities, but scientific institutions are wrong when they hire them (and only them!), for the same reason (cf. “More is different”, etc. – no, but they’re really great dealers if they succeed in selling such evident pseudo-philosophic bullshit as the greatest science at the highest possible price!). It remains thus to wish successful market deals to all scientists and journalists of this highly intellectual and scientifically engaged community!

4. Barkley Rosser says:
   May 21st, 2008 at 2:52 pm

   Uncle Al,

   LTCM got in trouble at least partly because its owners, Nobel Prize winners Myron Scholes (of the Black-Scholes formula) and Robert Merton were using models based on conventional neoclasssical economics and assuming normal or Gaussian distributions. There was also the hard fact that they got greedy and did not hedge properly, taking risky bets with large sums that went bad. While it was ugly. the LTCM crash-mess was relatively easy to clean up. Was able to be done by then NY Fed Prez McDonough by getting a small group of key players, mostly the most affected bankers and the LTCM people in a room with Alan Greenspan on the phone and cutting some deals. More recent problems have been much worse. But, LTCM was more an indication of the limits of conventional economics rather than a disproof of the usefulness of “chaoplexity” approaches.

   Andrei,

   I read your main paper. I would say that rather than providing “the” universal definition of complexity you have simply added a 46th or 47th or whatever to the list that John Horgan reproduces in his book from Seth Lloyd. Its narrowness is given by the fact that it is based on a characterization of dynamics drawn from Hamiltonian systems, which are quite special. There are whole categories of complexity it is simply irrelevant to.

   The “dynamic” definition I provided is not just “some irregular fluctuations,” but quite precise about which ones: those that are not converging on a point, a limit cycle, or simple smooth growth or implosion trajectories. One can fuss about limit cycles or higher periodicity cycles, but this is pretty clear, even if some do not like this definition. It is, however, effectively what has been used by many economists over the last couple of decades, for better or worse.

   The main competitor is computational complexity, which comes in many varieties, most of them some sort of adumbration off of the bit length of an algorithm or program, with such categories as ones that are polynomial, exponential, or infinite (have a halting problem), which in computational discussions constitutes the highest form of complexity. This is increasingly the rival in economics (and in many other areas) to the dynamic definition I provided, which is not even on Seth Lloyd’s list of 45, although there are many varieties of computational complexity. I have discussed this matter in some other papers on my website at http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb.

   John Horgan,

   You sort of seem to put it that the point of studying economics is to “get rich” or maybe to tell people “how to get rich,” with the fact that Bouchaud is doing so making him a winner (and I am not about to take anything away from Bouchaud here). However, quite a lot of economists think there is a lot more to it than that, namely trying to improve the real quality of life in society, which can involve a lot of things.

   Thus, the major professor of my major professor is Richard Easterlin, a member of my editorial board at JEBO, also of the US National Academy of Sciences, and generally considered to be the “father of happiness studies,” one of the more recent fads that economics (and many other social sciences) have been lurching towards recently (and which we have published quite a few papers on in JEBO). The most fundamental finding is the “Easterlin Paradox,” which amounts to the fact that raising everybody’s income does not make everybody happier, although at any given time, richer people in a society tend to be happier than poorer people, which says that it is relative not absolute income that matters for happiness on average.

   Thus, average reported happiness was at its highest in the US in 1956, although our real per capita incomes are much higher today than they were then. An implication of this business about relative incomes is that increasing inequality may reduce happiness, as lots of people become more envious of the ever-higher-ahead of them rich (who in turn are not really all that much happier than they were before). Robert Frank has wisecracked that “the happy man is he who makes more money than his wife’s sister’s husband,” a deeply insightful observation, if perhaps literally applying more to an earlier era.

   Dick Easterlin himself is very happy and is very clear that the real keys to happiness are not wealth or money (above a level of actual poverty), but those old-fashioned things such as personal relations, family, health, and so on, with having a job if one wants one more important than what one makes from it (again, above a poverty level). People like the Dalai Lama really are happier than most multibillionaires (and the wiser economists actually know this).

5. Andrei Kirilyuk says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 am

   Thank you for your reaction, Barkley. It’s good that you’re not avoiding open interaction as the absolute majority of your “officially great” scientific colleagues does (which is but another sign of their doomed situation, despite its official “highness”).

   However, your definition of complexity remains fantastically unscientific. Just listen to yourself: complexity is everything that is not a small number of postulated “non-complex” behaviour types (which themselves are but purely abstract, unrealistic “models” of reality, one should add!). Everything that is not (specified) exceptions is the rule. Ah, that’s really a new kind of science… It should be evident that such a “definition by exclusion” cannot be consistent in principle, even irrespective of details. In the best case, you can obtain in that way only a rather uncertain QUALITY definition, a kind of behaviour that can be (objectively?) considered “complex” (it’s an adjective!). But what about the QUANTITY of complexity (noun), how would you measure it starting from that “rigorous” definition? And without measurement (or objective quantitative estimate), all that you get can be quite amusing as belletristic literature or idle philosophy (this is the true origin of official “complexity science” success!), but it cannot lead us to the necessary OBJECTIVE criteria and conclusions about real problems we have with real systems (which are dramatically different, by the way, from all those abstract “models” you exclusively deal with).

   The results of official econoplexity only confirm it: there are NO noticeable, truly indispensable results, after decades of efforts. If all that technocratic hype somehow magically disappears right now, what will change essentially in the world economy or civilisation development? Absolutely nothing, we know the answer (apart from an essential local growth due to a much more efficient use of the liberated funds!). All those dirty dealers will continue the same tricky business they do today allegedly with the help of advanced econoplexity (as they did it before without it). You don’t solve real problems, Barkley, even in theory (although you did have all the best practical possibilities for it, contrary to us others!), and that’s the ultimate criterion, “time will show”. Time has already shown everything, it goes so quickly today…

   You are much more interesting and consistent when you drop that broken cover of pseudo-scientific games and start talking, addressing yourself to John, in terms of general human values and intuition. But as you noted yourself, the resulting appeals for humans “to be better now” have nothing “scientifically” special: the Dalai Lama, a lay citizen or a scientist can have the same attitude (fortunately!). Yes, let’s make the world a better place, but let’s not call it “interdisciplinary science”, in exchange to unmerited remuneration, because such substitution and arbitrary mixture of genres doesn’t make the world a better place and it doesn’t advance human knowledge, it’s a fact.

   Now, let’s have a similar look at my complexity definition. It is defined first of all as a universal, obviously measurable physical quantity obeying rigorously derived equations. Therefore not only can it be empirically “counted” (which is the necessary minimum!), but its behaviour can be analysed objectively for any real system. I perform such analysis for modern civilisation ( http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00008993 ), rigorously derive the relevant objective, quantitative criteria (including even that of “happiness” you’re talking about only in terms of “general” estimates!) and well-specified, “strong” conclusions about what’s really going on and what should be done to have real progress. It can naturally be disproved (“falsified” if you prefer) or simply neglected by a profit-based civilisation (its official “science” including), but these are not only objectively substantiated but essential, life-changing and “special” conclusions, far from those general good wishes or “interdisciplinary” word plays.

   I am surprised by your idea that Hamiltonian description is suitable only for special kind of systems. It’s a well-known fact, mathematically derived in a variety of approaches, that one can have a Hamiltonian kind of description for various, including dissipative and nonlinear systems. I only provide a universal derivation and true meaning of that well-known fact by showing how Hamiltonian description follows self-consistently from the unreduced interaction development results (so you have read my paper inattentively, take your time now). That generalised Hamiltonian formalism emerges now as a universal “non-trajectorial” description of an arbitrary system (a localised trajectory is its very special limiting case), which is just necessary for complex (any) system description. And I do clearly specify the fundamental mathematical novelties behind the new results I obtain showing, in particular, why none of it can be obtained within the official (complexity) science framework reduced to zero value of unreduced dynamic complexity (it explains all those “paradoxes” with conventional “computational complexity”, etc.).

   You see, Barkley, this is how genuine, useful “interdisciplinarity” should look: I still start with an extended, MORE rigorous (actually, truly “exact” now!) mathematical analysis of an arbitrary REAL system (unreduced interaction process), and only AFTER having obtained those rigorous and provably new results, I provide their various interpretations and applications to higher-complexity objects and behaviour kinds. I do not substitute mere “fashionable” words, desires or qualitative “intuitions” for rigorously derived novelties (with a clearly specified origin of novelty) as the whole official complexology does while working within exactly the same mathematical “paradigm” corresponding at best to only imitative, zero-value “complexity” (usually represented by mechanical “intricacy” of an entangled line as compared with the straight, untangled state of the same, one-dimensional line).

   And finally, the subject you seem to avoid is that even irrespective of details, it’s evident that those different complexity concepts are provided with “infinitely” different attention of the official science and attached media sources. As a matter of fact, my complexity definition providing a much larger (actually unlimited!) scope of quite elaborated, problem-solving applications is never cited in any official “list”, not even as “one more” definition (it is well represented in web-accessible papers for more than a decade). And there is no objection to it (I have shown above why yours here is incorrect), no discussion, no contact, invitation, nothing, just silence. [John Horgan, this convinced atheist, would say at least that he simply “does not believe” in a possibility of such truly universal science (i.e. his atheistic superstition is to believe inexplicably in its absence), but a true atheist, John, would be very much interested in details...] Irrespective of our subjective preferences, it’s a strange situation indeed where over-excited crowds of top-level scientists from super-prestigious institutions try but evidently cannot provide clearly specified problem solutions (for decades for complexity and for a century for fundamental physics), but when a clearly specified, universal solution to those problems is proposed elsewhere (in a well-specified form, with properly diverse applications, etc.), it is just absolutely and totally ignored, as if nobody has ever been really interested in obtaining any (and there is no many candidates of this kind, only one, as far as I know, even for higher-level complexity issues: others are evidently non-universal and inconsistent definitions from the beginning). Although knowing the true origin of a quite special kind of knowledge they officially call “science” ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4562 ), it may be not so surprising, after all…

   Ah, all those “good intentions”, how to make humans better or render them a precious service of their devoted scientific priests… Did you try to be simply honest, professionally? Liberté, égalité, fraternité, you know… I would not pretend for as much as fraternity, but equality from that old list of quite “common” values seems to be the simplest demand. Why not to start with it in an overfed top-level community of elitist sages at a moment when your dear humanity needs them most, your best qualities? Or should all of it always remain at the level of your “deeply insightful observation” that “the happy man is he who makes more money than his wife’s sister’s husband”. I can swear to never even try to earn more money than you do, if it can help (now I actually earn so little of it that it could make absolutely happy thousands of American colleagues – one more reason to maintain contact!). But of course, while remaining within elementary professional requirements, I wouldn’t swear I won’t solve a problem you couldn’t solve. And I’m afraid in modern science that’s quite enough to stop all good intentions, one doesn’t even need to evoke a relative’s income…

6. Andrei Kirilyuk says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 3:01 pm

   I cannot avoid temptation of a separate comment on “Easterlin Paradox” mentioned in the above Barkley Rosser’s comment ( http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=150#comment-25890 ), i.e. an essential decrease of subjective “feeling of happiness” in today’s Western societies, despite the equally pronounced growth of material well-being, during the last fifty years. The (undeniable) problem itself just demonstrates close, inseparable involvement of economical aspects of life with its other “dimensions”, so that economy as such is an ill-defined universe as I stated above (in correlation with John’s estimates). It follows that one should speak about and study general “human” (or “social”, or “civilisation”) complexity, rather than only “economical” applications of the latter. Explanations for the paradox evoked by Barkley do not seem consistent and even less “scientific” (they are either too general, “eternal” factors or need further explanation themselves). By contrast, according to my mathematically rigorous, objective definition of just that “happiness feeling” (really, have a look!), the “paradox” in question is but a natural manifestation of the approaching “bifurcation” of development, with the ensuing strong conclusions about the emerging destiny and important choices of human civilisation (I further specify them for various fields of activity, see http://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00008993 for details). If you’re not too lazy, we could discuss it further, or if you are … then your civilisation will perish, inevitably! What else could you expect for such a lazy civilisation that doesn’t care about anything, practice ultimate injustice and novelty oppression in science and is even unable to have a nontrivial dream any more?!

7. Barkley Rosser says:
   May 22nd, 2008 at 4:17 pm

   Andrei,

   First of all, there is a bit more to my dynamic complexity definition. In particular the source of the specifically listed “erratic” behavior must be from an endogenous and deterministic source. Lots of economic dynamics are “erratic” in the way I described, but in fact are simply oscillating stochastically around some unique and stable equilibrium due to exogenous random noisy shocks. This sort of thing is most definitely not “complex” by anybody’s measure or definition, even if it can be very difficult to distinguish it econometrically from true mathematical chaos.

   Second, I have no problem with your definition, indeed it tends to be in the same ballpark as my dynamic one, given that Hamiltonians (not an “Art,” ), describe dynamical systems. The problem is that there are other definitions such as the computational ones that simply are not covered by it at all. Hamiltonians have nothing to do with halting problems or bit lengths of computer programs, and so forth, for better or worse. So, your definition is not fully general, even if it is perfectly fine and useful in its context.

   A correction to one of my earlier remarks is that Donald G. Saari, the mathematician who agreed with John Horgan that social sciences (especially economics) are more complex than physical sciences was editor of the Journal of the American Mathematical Society (JAMS). Where he made his remarks about economics was in a paper he wrote, “Mathematical Complexity of Simple Economics,” Notices of the American Mathematical Society, 1995, vol. 42, pp. 222-230.

8. Andrei Kirilyuk says:
   May 23rd, 2008 at 8:23 am

   Barkley Rosser said: “The problem is that there are other definitions such as the computational ones that simply are not covered by it at all. Hamiltonians have nothing to do with halting problems or bit lengths of computer programs, and so forth, for better or worse. So, your definition is not fully general, even if it is perfectly fine and useful in its context.”

   That “criterion of truth” seems strange to me and revealing one of the dominating “human” problems of official science. I (or would it be anyone else!) propose a concept/definition of dynamic complexity that I rigorously derive from unreduced system dynamics (rather than any its simplified “model”) and verify/confirm by application to an ultimately large variety of real systems, from elementary particles (where century-old problems are now successfully solved) to cosmology, biology, ecology/development, consciousness and intelligent information systems (with “unsolvable” problem solutions and clear development perspectives). I find no contradictions and the details can be found in respective papers. So both internal theory consistency and the one involving real-system applications reveal only problem solutions but no difficulties of this particular complexity definition. Verification process should continue and everybody is invited to participate, but it’s difficult to assume that the already obtained agreement for so diverse cases could result from a particularly lucky series of coincidence or adjustment. Now, there are various other complexity definitions that do NOT possess any of the above qualities and show pronounced, evident, persisting deficiencies, even for any limited application (those for “computational complexity” are too well known). In that situation you’re saying that my major problem is to “explain” one of those evidently inconsistent complexity definitions in terms of my, provably consistent, definition, in order to obtain an essential confirmation of its consistency. Great, both logical and promising. According to such attitude, “science” is not at all about explaining reality but about establishing relations between different, subjectively supported scientific concepts (i.e. actually their authors!) that tend to be increasingly detached from reality, for “officially accepted” science content. Yes, unfortunately you are completely right, as far as official science practice and attitudes are concerned. And that’s precisely why that kind of “science of relations” absolutely dominating in all official institutions has nothing to do with the genuine quest for truth about reality and has now ended indeed, according to a very exact description of details by John Horgan. But the real, truly objective and consistent knowledge progress is yet to be started, if this civilisation changing now real-system complexity at its full depth by purely empirical manipulations (without the slightest idea about its real content and dynamics) wants at least to survive (let alone to have further progress).

   Contrary to your statement, the origin of “computational complexity” and its (well-known) deficiency is very easily seen within my analysis (details can be found in my papers). In summary, the whole official science approach (its ideas about “complexity” and “nonlinearity” including) considers uniquely “dynamically single-valued”, effectively zero-dimensional (point-like) projection of real interaction processes, after which they artificially combine those “points” into various “necessary” structures, etc. (there is no limit to unitary imitations, but they always remain basically deficient). The unreduced analysis of arbitrary interaction process (avoiding any usual “perturbative”/“exact-solution” scheme) shows that ALL real interactions (and resulting systems and behaviours) are “dynamically multivalued” entities “at any moment” of their evolution (not to confuse with dynamically single-valued “multistability” – another imitation!), which implies permanent and genuine (“truly random”) chaoticity/unpredictability of their behaviour. It is this GENUINE DYNAMIC RANDOMNESS of real objects and their behaviour that produces all “difficulties” and “paradoxes” of computational complexity based on reduced, dynamically linear approach and therefore missing any intrinsic origin of true randomness (any regular computation “complexity” would obviously diverge for any “truly unpredictable” evolution, i.e. any moment of any real system existence would correspond to its “infinitely large” complexity, within that reduced, dynamically single-valued approach – and what else should one expect for such huge simplification of reality?!). It is this “infinitely great”, but finally trivial reduction of reality that gives rise to the whole huge branches of official mathematics and “science of complexity”! [The same is true for the dominating imitation of chaos by “exponentially diverging trajectories” – it's absolutely wrong and misleading!] This is where they really are in all their super-prestigious and “advanced” institutes, drowning in luxury, in the USA and elsewhere, while the real, unified problem solution (of many real, burning problems!) is always here, always ignored and always left without support. Egalité, fraternité … méchanceté.

9. Barkley Rosser says:
   May 23rd, 2008 at 4:54 pm

   Andrei,

   Well, the problem underlying the most complex of computational problems, those that do not halt, are sometimes related to Godelian incompleteness. This simply has nothing to do with the sorts of dynamics or Hamiltonians in your definition.

   For the record, I view your approach as being more in the dynamics category of the plethora of definitions that John Horgan reported from Seth Lloyd (plus various additions). So, I am broadly in sympathy.

   Regarding the happiness stuff, it may well be that the increasing complexity of current existence, marked by impending and experienced bifurcations, may well be contributing to the decline of happiness. In the US 1956 appears in hindsight to be a simpler time, “the good old days,” when the US rode high in the world, although there were many festering problems (such as racism) that would explode later, and were already burbling over at that time. But, it was a time well after the depression of the Great Depression and after the horrors of World War II and the Korean War, with a reasonable degree of peace and prosperity and stability, and even friendlier than usual relations between the US and the USSR, although by the end of the year with the problems in Hungary, those relations began to deteriorate again after a several years post-Stalin thaw, climaxed by the 1955 Geneva summit and the Austrian State Treaty.

   However, I think the real key to the US happiness peak of 1956 lies elsewhere, namely “intimate relations.” In a paper recently in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Kahnemann and Krueger reported results of careful studies of Ohio housewives and what activities and interactions made them happy or unhappy. The least happy activity was commuting. The most happy was “intimate relations,” big surprise. So, 1957 was the year of all-time maximum births in the US, which means that there was a lot of intimate relations directed at reproduction going on in 1956, although that may in turn reflect these other factors such as relative peace and prosperity.

10. mike cook says:
    May 26th, 2008 at 5:33 pm

    Thanks to all for putting out two terms for me to play with. The “Easterlin Paradox” is a honey. “Godelian Incompleteness” has always seemed to me to be the mother of all explanations when scientific contretemps arise. For goodness sake, not only can no formal mathematical statement be made without introducing an essentially “supernatural” term from outside the formal domain, no scientifically ambitious statement about anything can be made without a nod to Kurt Godel.

    If I say, for instance, the agricultural health of Zimbabwe is equal to arable land available times a skilled-farmer quotient times the price of imported fertilizers, all divided by the incentive system to good farmers minus the inverse of the intelligence of Zimbabwe’s president or that of a dead rat, whichever is greater, then some terms of that equation might be a little fuzzy. In fact, they might have been thrown in over the transom.

11. Barkley Rosser says:
    May 26th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

    Rationalite limite,

    Merci beaucoup pour votre interet. I shall reply in English for the benefit of other readers.

    So, I would agree that Hayek and Veblen were both forerunners in their respective ways of complexity ideas, Hayek specifically using the term in an essay in 1978 after communicating with the research groups of both Prigogine in Brussels, about which John Horgan has written, and also the one at the Stuttgart Institute of Theoretical Physics, led by Hermann Haken, founder of synergetics, and his associate Wolfgang Weidlich, who has written on economics. These are among the people who have engaged with at least three, if not all four, of the “four C’s,” that John likes to mock.

    Veblen, a much earlier figure from a century ago, is not so obviously associated with complexity, although one of the conference participants, Geoff Hodgson, would probably disagree with me on that. Veblen was the first to attempt to consciously formulate an evolutionary economics and in that regard can be seen as an important figure in any sort of “econobiology.” Certainly, Hodgson has argued this.

    You seem to suggest that the ideas should formulated in a manner that is “rigoreuse,” in connection with those two gentlemen. I am not against rigorous formulation, but neither of them was particularly mathematical, and, of course the French mathematical tradition has tended to be plus formaliste a la Bourbaki.

12. Andrei Kirilyuk says:
    May 27th, 2008 at 8:14 am

    As I already noted in the above comments (see http://www.stevens.edu/csw/cgi-bin/blogs/csw/?p=150#comment-25882 , the last paragraph), economics as a “scientific discipline” (its last “chaoplexity version” including) suffers from the evident, common-sense – rather than formal-arithmetic “Gödelian” – incompleteness. It just doesn’t take into account the essential “input” into its intrinsically open “system” from “human” and other “natural” (e.g. “ecological”) dimensions. It’s enough to compare the economical life of e.g. today’s Russia or Ukraine with that of USA or France. They are all different in detail, but the difference between those two couples, representing respectively the “post-communist-totally-criminal” and “developed-classical-capitalist” case, is qualitatively big and doesn’t seem to decrease with time (rather the opposite), which directly disproves any “scientific economics”, where all legally “market” economies should at least “go in the same direction” and actually approach to one another and their common current “attractor” (especially for the same, “European” country tradition). Even within Ukraine alone, where basic freedoms are maintained (contrary to Russia) we have a huge and growing difference between Western, pro-Europe and Eastern, pro-Russia regions. It even shows that much deeper Western ideological myths (postulating heavenly “equality” on earth, etc.) are totally wrong and should be thrown off in favour of much more realistic vision, if we want real progress in a real world…

    It also demonstrates the natural, real-life extension of tricky “Gödelian” manipulations of the top-level official pseudo-science (imposed everywhere by force): nothing can be strictly complete simply because nothing can be strictly closed and those inevitable external influences (that cannot really be taken into account because they are related to yet other environment, etc.) will introduce “unexpected” features in our however “exact” understanding of a system. However, in reality both real systems and our understanding of their behaviour CAN be sufficiently complete within a suitably realistic, intrinsically complete analysis (as opposed to “Gödelian” conclusions used as universal justification for subjective deficiency of particular theories!) because ANY real (complex) behaviour has a “quantised” (dynamically discrete) structure (e.g. http://arxiv.org/abs/0706.3219 ) and small enough influences cannot provide the necessary “change quanta”, quite similar to usual quantum-mechanical excitation effects. But for “purely economical” science case “external” influences of those other “dimensions” are not small, they are dominating ones. As a result, only a reasonably formulated “development science” taking into account all essentially contributing factors (and based on the unreduced, consistent complexity concept!!!) can provide that practical, objectively stable completeness and corresponding useful, reliable conclusions (cf. http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0509234 ). The same is actually true already at the level of quantum mechanics, http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0401164 , this favourite “application” of the official “Gödelian incompleteness” trick.

    It is also important to note the difference of the described origin of official economics incompleteness from its understanding in John Horgan’s criticism (as far as I can see it). John seems to imply that undeniable “human subjectivity” as such (which undeniably and strongly contributes to economic matters) can NEVER be properly taken into account by ANY theory, just because … it’s subjective and thus cannot become objective (scientifically described) by definition. It’s the famous Horgan’s common sense, which I generally like very much (especially in its opposition to official abstractions!), but as nothing can be really complete (in the common-sense rather than Gödelian meaning!), those common-sense considerations can also sometimes be properly extended (and thus actually amplified!). In particular, the main result of my approach is that I show how ALL system interactions can be consistently taken into account (including their “human” and “subjective” elements with those characteristic loops “if I know that you know that I know…”) leading to an objective, properly specified result. It does have an essentially probabilistic structure, even for hypothetical totally deterministic system components (only probabilities of emerging novelties are real), but it’s quite enough for the necessary objective conclusions about development tendencies, etc. Real time itself, measuring real system change, has essentially probabilistic origin (contrary to all unitary science ideas about it) just naturally explaining practical irreversibility of its flow…

    Returning to official economical science (including now chaoplexity imitations and “Gödelian” trickery), it still dominates everywhere in the world suffering so desperately from the absence of any guiding “paradigm” or development idea and changing absolutely unpredictably and the more and more catastrophically (nothing to do with Gödel’s arithmetical theorems!)… And they give a recent Nobel Prize in economy to a formal game theory… A strange coincidence, the more so that deceptive games of official science are definitely over now (and lost). It’s time to recognise the evidence and move on to something more promising than the dominating evident trickery driven by selfish interests within a decadent totalitarian structure.

    P.S. I like different languages, but if they continue in that way, I should pass to Russian!

13. Rationalite limitee says:
    May 27th, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Barkley Rosser,
    Thanks for your answer. I’m sorry for the french language, my “comment” was a trackback from my own blog where I speak of your meeting “Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Economic Complexity” and of the article of David Warsh on this subject.

14. Progressive says:
    July 18th, 2008 at 3:16 am

    You gained a new reader today, nice post!

15. Jessica says:
    December 24th, 2008 at 7:51 am

    Nice post. Thank you for the info. Keep it up.

16. mike says:
    January 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am

    1PVIHZ hi! how you doin?

17. Jordan says:
    March 29th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Keep working on your blog and i will come back – good job though. pay my blog a visit when you get the chance

18. stock market recommendations says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 11:54 pm

    great site update more often and continue to add more quality content – pay my blog a visit when you can and give me some feedback. thanks!

19. investwork.ru says:
    May 24th, 2009 at 5:37 pm

    Рынок ценных бумаг обусловливается как совокупность экономических отношений, связанных с выпуском и обращением ценных бумаг среди его участников. Объектом рынка ценных бумаг является ценная бумага. Ценная бумага может продаваться и покупаться неограниченное число раз, поэтому, чтобы товар дошел до своего потребителя, необходима собственная организация товародвижения. Узнать детально про рынок ценных бумаг, методы оценки риска, структуру рынка ценных бумаг, рынок корпоративных ценных бумаг Вы сможете на нашем сайте.
    Рынок корпоративных ценных бумаг

20. inwesticiis.ru says:
    May 25th, 2009 at 5:43 pm

    Инвестиционная деятельность какой-то части характерна любому
    предприятию. При немалом выборе видов инвестиций предприятие часто сталкивается с проблемой выбора инвестиционного решения. Вероятность достижения цели зависит от правильности оценивания риска, полноты и точности его расчета. Так как же не ошибиться в правильности выбора инвестиционного решения? Об этом и многом другом вы узнаете на нашем сайте.
    Экспертный метод оценивания риска

21. Bилям says:
    June 12th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

    Наверное, это один из самых интересных блогов, которые я когда-либо видел . Актуальные статьи, Занимательные комментарии. Так держать!

22. Esdclyzz says:
    September 8th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    comment2 Uncensored Nude Vanessa Hudgens Photo llqn Chubby Gay Laino Free Pic 87296 Free Young Girl Porn Pics >:-] Nn Teen %DDD Cindy Milley Nude violc Bomb Ass Pussy 2501 Forum Sexualite %(( Live Sex Cams >:-))) Nude Pamela Anderson %PP Preteen Black Girls :-[[

23. sandrar says:
    September 10th, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Hi! I was surfing and found your blog post… nice! I love your blog. Cheers! Sandra. R.

24. angelina jolie says:
    September 10th, 2009 at 12:13 pm

    I love your site. Love design!!! I just came across your blog and wanted to say that I�ve really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. Sign: ndsam

25. Boschetta says:
    September 24th, 2009 at 3:46 am

    Вот те на! Первый раз слышу!

Leave a Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks:

1. Pingback from Economic Principals » Blog Archive » A Brave Army of Heretics
   May 25th, 2008 at 8:58 pm

   [...] John Horgan came to the JMU conference, teaching science writing now at the Stevens Institute of Technology, long retired from the strenuous reconnaissance he performed for Scientific American. He pronounced a genial benediction on the meeting, noting that “for all its sense of intellectual fizziness and ferment, [it] merely reinforced my skepticism that chaoplexity or physics or biology or all of the above can make economics and other ‘soft’ social sciences more rigorous.” Complexity was still perplexity in Horgan’s book. But then forty years ago, philosopher Margaret Masterman demonstrated that Thomas Kuhn had attached 21 different meanings to the word paradigm in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.  That didn’t make paradigms seem less real, and probably complexity is here to stay as well.   [...]

2. Pingback from Economie de la complexité « Rationalité Limitée
   May 26th, 2008 at 8:21 am

   [...] Je laisse le soin aux curieux de lire la suite du papier de Rosser, où est notamment présenté “l’éconophysique” et certaines de ses applications. Idem ensuite pour “l’éconobiologie”, dont les développements sont multiples depuis l’import de la théorie des jeux évolutionnaires en économie au début des années 1980 (voir notamment le papier d’Axelrod et Hamilton en 1981). La question que l’on peut légitimement se poser est celle de l’utilité pratique de ce “nouveau” champ. L’économie John Horgan exprime son scepticisme ici sur ce qu’il nomme la “chaoplexity” mais pas forcément pour de bonnes raisons (il n’y a pas de vérité unique et inamovible en économie, donc pas la peine de singer les sciences de la nature). Selon les partisans de ces approches, les théories de la complexité peuvent nous permettent d’avoir une meilleure compréhension des phénomènes systémiques tels que l’on peut les observer sur les marchés financiers. Pour ma part (c’est l’avis d’un observateur intéressé, pas d’un pratiquant), je vois les approches de la complexité comme un moyen de formaliser de manière plus rigoureuses les intuitions géniales d’auteurs comme Friedrich Hayek sur la formation d”‘ordre spontané” comme effet émergent d’interactions micro, ou Thorstein Veblen sur la dynamique des règles et des institutions, et les processus de sélection qui gouvernent leur évolution. Ces approches sont aussi un moyen d’éclairer sous un nouveau jour des phénomènes sociaux comme la discrimination. On a là probablement à faire à l’émergence d’un programme de recherche, mêlant orthodoxie et hétérodoxie ainsi que les apports de diverses sciences. Comme pour l’économie comportementale, je ne pense pas que ce programme puisse se substituer à l’approche plus “standard”. Mais il a indéniablement sa place.  [...]

3. Pingback from O caos na economia, ou não «
   May 27th, 2008 at 7:17 am

   [...] Maio 27, 2008 in dismal science John Horgan sobre a “Caoplexidade” e seu valor para a ciência econômica: [...]

4. Pingback from David Warsh on Econoplexity
   May 28th, 2008 at 8:29 am

   [...] [5.20.2008]Can Chaoplexity Save Economics? [...]

5. Pingback from EconTech » links for 2008-06-01
   May 31st, 2008 at 10:31 pm

   [...] Can Chaoplexity Save Economics? [...]