Comments on: A Catch-Up Post: New Models http://madisonian.net/2008/10/07/a-catch-up-post-new-models/ a blog about law, tech, culture, and related things Thu, 10 May 2012 20:32:56 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Frank Pasquale http://madisonian.net/2008/10/07/a-catch-up-post-new-models/comment-page-1/#comment-262330 Frank Pasquale Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:28:30 +0000 http://madisonian.net/?p=1524#comment-262330 PS--Given the new Dow plunge today, perhaps we should watch out for self-reinforcing buy technologies. . . . or methodologies. To what extent might a downturn become a panic because lots of computers are programmed to sell once a stock hits a certain level? PS–Given the new Dow plunge today, perhaps we should watch out for self-reinforcing buy technologies. . . . or methodologies. To what extent might a downturn become a panic because lots of computers are programmed to sell once a stock hits a certain level?

]]> By: Frank http://madisonian.net/2008/10/07/a-catch-up-post-new-models/comment-page-1/#comment-262248 Frank Thu, 09 Oct 2008 02:36:46 +0000 http://madisonian.net/?p=1524#comment-262248 I think there's something very interesting going on culturally when people feel a need to defend the computers...to suggest that these wonderful machines didn't mislead us, but rather duplicitous humans misled the machines. I also think that this essay by Taleb (author of The Black Swan) provides helpful perspective on the situation: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html As for the MyKey: I don't think we should be looking for technical solutions. The bailouts reveal the primacy of politics--something that could be hidden when the SEC was making momentous deregulatory decisions in basement meetings, but which become obvious once the government has to become the lender of last resort. A credit freeze like what we're seeing today proves definitively the need for collective action--that individual rationality (money-hoarding) can result in collectively disastrous outcomes. It's amazing how many people dismissed this basic insight for so long...and how seriously they're still taken today. The article on modeling sounds like what Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata and Steve Grand's book Creation. But what if we simply find that the patterns revealed are random....as happened with at least one of Wolfam's automata: http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/84-universality/9/text.html Then perhaps we give up on the idea of modeling the human sciences on the natural sciences--something Charles Taylor pleaded for decades ago in Philosophy and the Human Sciences. The arrogance of that project has a Tower of Babel quality today: after piling up a mountain of CDO's nominally worth trillions of dollars, traders around the world are now wondering whether the money they guard can be translated into real control over real resources. The answer is probably no: that the power of the state is the ultimate guarantor of not merely a stable trading order, but any reliable expectation of control over subsistence. I think there’s something very interesting going on culturally when people feel a need to defend the computers…to suggest that these wonderful machines didn’t mislead us, but rather duplicitous humans misled the machines.

I also think that this essay by Taleb (author of The Black Swan) provides helpful perspective on the situation:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html

As for the MyKey: I don’t think we should be looking for technical solutions. The bailouts reveal the primacy of politics–something that could be hidden when the SEC was making momentous deregulatory decisions in basement meetings, but which become obvious once the government has to become the lender of last resort. A credit freeze like what we’re seeing today proves definitively the need for collective action–that individual rationality (money-hoarding) can result in collectively disastrous outcomes. It’s amazing how many people dismissed this basic insight for so long…and how seriously they’re still taken today.

The article on modeling sounds like what Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata and Steve Grand’s book Creation. But what if we simply find that the patterns revealed are random….as happened with at least one of Wolfam’s automata:

http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/articles/ca/84-universality/9/text.html

Then perhaps we give up on the idea of modeling the human sciences on the natural sciences–something Charles Taylor pleaded for decades ago in Philosophy and the Human Sciences. The arrogance of that project has a Tower of Babel quality today: after piling up a mountain of CDO’s nominally worth trillions of dollars, traders around the world are now wondering whether the money they guard can be translated into real control over real resources. The answer is probably no: that the power of the state is the ultimate guarantor of not merely a stable trading order, but any reliable expectation of control over subsistence.

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