The Ideal

The ideal in socialism is that everyone gets enough to eat.

The ideal in capitalism is that everyone gets what they want to eat.

Suggested by: Where You Cannot Generalize from Knowledge of Parts.

An excerpt:

Much of the local research in experimental biology, in spite of its seemingly “scientific” and evidentiary attributes fail a simple test of mathematical rigor.

This means we need to be careful of what conclusions we can and cannot make about what we see, no matter how locally robust it seems. It is impossible, because of the curse of dimensionality, to produce information about a complex system from the reduction of conventional experimental methods in science. Impossible.

My colleague Bar Yam has applied the failure of mean-field to evolutionary theory of the selfish-gene narrative trumpeted by such aggressive journalists as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker and other naive celebrities with more mastery of English than probability theory. He shows that local properties fail, for simple geographical reasons, hence if there is such a thing as a selfish gene, it may not be the one they are talking about. We have addressed the flaws of “selfishness” of a gene as shown mathematically by Nowak and his colleagues.

Hayek, who had a deep understanding of the properties of complex systems, promoted the idea of “scientism” to debunk statements that are nonsense dressed up as science, used by its practitioners to get power, money, friends, decorations, invitations to dinner with the Norwegian minister of culture, use of the VIP transit lounge at Kazan Airport, and similar perks.

In other words the whole is not the sum of its parts or an average of the sum of its parts.

If a person is allergic to peanuts he will not be happy to get an average amount of peanuts. Likewise, most of us will not be happy with the peanut ration an allergic person can tolerate.

And that is exactly where quite a lot of economics breaks down. Aggregates are only of marginal value. What we want to know are distributions. And that is harder to think about and may still not convey enough information. Why? Because distributions are always changing. Buggy whip demand in 1870 gives us near zero information about buggy whip demand in 1970.

Update: 23 December 2016 1945z

Added the last three sentences.


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8 responses to “The Ideal”

  1. James Avatar
    James

    Careful–you’re going to run afoul of the defenders of St. Dawkins! I’ve offered similar criticisms (his arguments have precisely zero support in the fossil record, as evidenced by his long debate with Gould), and was accused of everything from incompetence to being a “closet theist” for having the audacity to criticize Dawkins in a field I’m qualified to speak as an expert in.

    I also love that others are recognizing that Dawkins isn’t a scientist. He’s in the business of promoting Dawkins, not doing science. Neal D. Tyson is falling into the same trap.

  2. Simon Avatar

    Tyson and Gould both believe in the Global Warming scam.

    I defer to your knowledge – but I find them both suspect.

  3. Simon Avatar

    A look at Hamilton:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_selection

    I have discussed that around here in the past.

  4. Kathy Kinsley Avatar
    Kathy Kinsley

    “The ideal in socialism is that everyone gets enough to eat.

    The ideal in capitalism is that everyone gets what they want to eat.”

    Thanks – I think I’ll steal that for insertion in other blog comments…

    I hope they won’t mind.

  5. James Avatar
    James

    Simon, you missed the point of my post. The issue isn’t whether someone accepts anthropogenic causes for global warming; the issue is whether they are in fact scientists or not. Scientists can be wrong; in fact, there’s a joke in science that if you’re never wrong you’re not doing science, because science by definition extends beyond the limits of current knowledge.

    Agree or disagree with Gould’s conclusions, he remains a scientist–exploring data, coming to conclusions, and adjusting his conclusions to fit the data. Dawkins and Tyson, on the other hand, are not–they are more interested in press coverage than actually doing science. They are the Paris Hilton/Kim Kardashian of science.