On Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 5:40 PM, John Williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> But I'd rather have a few > thousand small, uncorrelated bad decisions than a small number of gigantic > bad decisions. Since you mentioned emergence, I was thinking that perhaps you are familiar with the mathematics of complexity. Perhaps not. Even simple Boolean networks produce behaviors that I wouldn't want to trust with my health care! Thousands of small decisions don't just average out. They can produce wild behavior that is inherently unpredictable. They can cycle among attractor states, but those are also unpredictable. Further, there's a whole field of game theory that deals with a gamut of problems like this. One of the more efficient problem-solving solutions, generally speaking, is to divide the players into groups and let the groups compete with each other... something like states' rights, where each can imitate the ones who come up with a successful strategy. The more we can describe and rely on self-regulation and self-organization, the better, but I think only a fool rejects regulation and governance on principle. That's like refusing to adjust the time on a clock because the salesman said it is self-regulating. Or the guy who creates a derivative that tells him what time it is when the clock is wrong. ;-) Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
