Thread by @sfiscience

SFI President David Krakauer introduces our annual board of trustees symposium on New #Complexity #Economics - follow this thread for live coverage of talks by @EricBeinhocker @AKStanger @ole_b_peters @JacksonmMatt @cmoncap & W. Brian Arthur today...

"I think we have to be aware that we're not just discussing financial systems. We are discussing the future of the stability of the planet."

- David Krakauer
on #Complexity #Economics

"What is the #economy? I would argue that it doesn't exist in the physical world. It is a product of our #imagination. It is made out of #ideas. It does have an effect on the physical world. But the imagined order that we have is not succeeding."

- @EricBeinhocker

"We have been fighting the system...we need to be fighting at the level of thinking that created the #system."

"Homo economicus is #pseudoscience. It isn't scientifically valid. They had no #evidence, no empirical work."

- @EricBeinhocker on fixing #economics

Reality vs. economic pseudoscience in two slides c/o @EricBeinhocker

#greed vs #reciprocity & #sociality
#individualism vs #multiscale selection
#price as #value vs #endogenous ground truths and limited models
etc.

"#Economics has never had a good theory of #progress...because economics is fundamentally an evolutionary process."

"How does the #economy coevolve with the biophysical system in which it exists? In traditional economics, the #environment is an externality..."

- @EricBeinhocker

Mentioned in @EricBeinhocker's talk today at our annual symposium on New #Complexity #Economics:

@patrickc of @stripe at @TheAtlantic
on the importance of a #science of #progress (how humankind doesn't really have one, and needs to).
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

"Societies based on fair social contracts are more innovative & inclusive, and create positive feedback loops of collaboration that allow the solving of more & more complex problems."

- @EricBeinhocker on how radically different a science-based moral economics looks - and works

"We've had this hedonic conception of the moral #good. There are a couple of problems with that view. It doesn't actually fit with the empirical view on moral #psychology. We are much more multidimensional than that. We have a broader sense of purposes in life."
- @EricBeinhocker

"Liberal #democracy is a complex adaptive #system under global siege."

@AKStanger on the increasingly porous line between #business and #government (because of both #privatization & #globalization) in the early 21st Century...

"#Justice is a function of regime space...in illiberal regimes, the distinction between #public & #private space is not drawn in the same way."

@AKStanger speaking on #complexity #economics

"Bell Curves don't matter for human rights. Individuals do."

@AKStanger on New #Complexity #Economics

"What you're seeing now is real friction between what we want as consumers and what we need as citizens. The idea that free markets are a solution to the problems of public life is no longer viable."

- @AKStanger on tech's disruption of governance & New #Complexity #Economics

"What has happened to liberal democracy when foreign-purchased ads can swing an American election?"

"When platforms appear to undermine human values, brands are tarnished, sometimes irreparably."

@AKStanger on how @facebook's doing a subpar job of aligning with its own survival

"I get really worried when #memes are driving our politics."

@AKStanger on the eruption of #okboomer & the importance of careful study & cogent arguments to politics, not just the parroting distorted & ideological histories.

i.e., the USA *should not* look like this, @jim_rutt

"What I see is a global struggle between rule of law and liberal democracy and illiberal regimes run by oligarchs and crony capitalism. (Maybe not pursuing growth at the expense of all other values will slow this down...)"

@AKStanger on #bigbusiness vs #government & #justice

On #Ergodicity #Economics: @ole_b_peters of @LdnMathLab on making economic decisions by averaging an ensemble of possible trajectories (expected utility theory) vs. time-averaging growth - and where these two approaches meet:

How do people actually make economic decisions? Expected Utility Theory breaks under the empirical evidence from large #gambling studies, in which it is obvious that people adapt expectations over time.

Slides from @ole_b_peters' talk at New #Complexity #Economics today

#risk

More detail on the Copenhagen behavioral experiment that SFI External Prof @ole_b_peters of @LdnMathLab mentioned in his talk today as providing empirical support for #Ergodicity #Economics:

ergodicityeconomics.com/2018/05/29/the…
#decisionmaking #economy #time

"Systems are often built for one purpose, but they serve several purposes. They interact in ways that can't be expected. In labor markets, we get our jobs from referrals, but don't make those relationships for referrals."

SFI'S @JacksonmMatt (@Stanford) on #Complexity #Economics

Why don't some #microloans programs work? @JacksonmMatt reveals hidden segregation in diffusion #networks missed by looking at degree #centrality measures. #Popularity is not the best way to measure possible #virality. Bigger context matters!

#complexsystems #ecomomics

How to seed #goodideas so they will spread: #diffusion #centrality allows economists & marketers (etc.) to form realistic models of how news & #innovation spreads through #socialnetworks (and decays over time).

SFI's @JacksonmMatt speaking at New #Complexity #Economics:

#Microfinance is a good thing, right? Yes. But exposure to institutional loans also erodes informal social support #networks and increases network #inequality.

SFI External Prof @jacksonmmatt (@Stanford) on the #unforeseen/#externalities in even well-designed initiatives:

While we wait for the next talk by @cmoncap, this is an ACtion #Network event and all slides and video recordings are available to our Applied Complexity Network members.

Learn more & join:
santafe.edu/applied-complex

"Not all #communication leads to effective #coordination...it has to lead to common knowledge."

@cmoncap on what it takes to organize #protests (or more generally agree on a #consensus reality in which to act).

Turns out "@replyall" is a crucial play:

How does #network structure & messaging conditions change the way we act? @cmoncap on how #bilateral #communication minimizes over-participation errors (eg, solo protests) across different kinds of #networks (among other findings) in a clever experiment using #MechanicalTurk:

And this is why we work so hard to keep discussion threads on track in our FB group: #socialnetworks are necessary but not sufficient for successful #communication strategies for establishing common #knowledge & coordinating action.

@cmoncap at our ACtioN Network meeting today:

Tonight's program concludes with a keynote by W. Brian Arthur on why #economics need #complexity #science - and not just as a luxury bolt-on modification. (And how recursive loops have actually been part of economic thought for over 200 years...)

"If you can understand this slide it's worth five years of #economics grad school, because this is what they teach you."

- W. Brian Arthur

Why doesn't #equilibrium #economics work as a model of our complex reality? It may be a gorgeous elegant machine, but it does not accurately reflect the adaptive dynamism we observe.

W. Brian Arthur extolls the aesthetic virtues and empirical failings of standard economics:

"I tried to shut Stuart [Kauffman] up. This kind of thinking was a kind of third rail."

- W. Brian Arthur on the origins of #nonequilibrium thinking in the theory of #economics as a #complexsystem at SFI in 1988.

"If the problem is not well-defined, rationality is not well-defined. Therefore an economic model of rationality is not well-defined."

W. Brian Arthur on accepting the fundamental #uncertainty required of honest and effective #economics models:

"If John Holland is the solution, then what is the problem?”

"Well, it turns out that people DO act under conditions of #uncertainty all the time. They get married, they become Buddhists..."

W. Brian Arthur on the origins of #complexsystems #economics

"They asked me, 'What is #complexity?' And I said, 'Have you ever had teenage children?' You're constantly testing, adjusting..."

"#Complexity #Economics is seeing the world not as a machine, but as an #ecology...you find perpetually novel behavior."

W. Brian Arthur:

"Economists aren't stupid. They're smart as all get-out. So why don't they anticipate these #crashes? ... If you assume #equilibrium, at equilibrium there is no incentive to agents to diverge from present #behavior. Therefore exploitative behavior can't happen."

W. Brian Arthur:

"Standard #economics is Apollonian. #Complexity economics is Dionysian."

W. Brian Arthur wraps his keynote at our annual ACtioN #Network meeting.

More info about joining is for future events: santafe.edu/action

"#Complexity allows us to think not just in terms of nouns, but in terms of #verbs as well. It is a deep #change, happening to all of the sciences. I think it's because...#algorithms have become available, allowing us to think in terms of verbs & #processes."

- W. Brian Arthur

"You can make an argument from space that the ocean is at #equilibrium around a sphere...but that 100 feet of #nonequilibrium is where the ships are."

- W. Brian Arthur on the disproportionate importance of the ~2% standard #economics fails to model

santafe.edu/action