Broken Symmetry

George Soros Explains His Worldview

And it is surprisingly fascinating:

While I was reading Popper I was also studying economic theory and I was struck by the contradiction between Popper’s emphasis on imperfect understanding and the theory of perfect competition in economics which postulated perfect knowledge. This led me to start questioning the assumptions of economic theory. These were the two major theoretical inspirations of my philosophy. It is also deeply rooted in my personal history.

The FT has a whole website up with transcripts from each of his lectures, which are ongoing this week. It's little things like this that make my day.

Transcripts of first three lectures are here, here, and here.

For an earlier post on epistemlogical and ontological questions that offers one version of reflexivity, see here.

In reponse to Soros's proposal that we dichotomize the natural and social sciences, I have this to say: His misinterpretation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle kills his proposal. In fact it is true of both natural and social scientific theories that our theories influence how reality evolves. It is true too that bad natural science may not have as catastrophic or immediate consequences for us as bad social science. But what we perceive depends in part on our theory of what exists, and those theories are not social. Soros's dichotomy is in fact a continuum.

To wit, from whence did Soros derive his understanding of positive and negative feedback loops? By analogy to the natural sciences. Our exploration of nature is the ultimate origin of all of our theories, bot natural and social.

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

From the Guardian via nicolelv

We are most free when we are most bound to others

Robert Jensen makes the case:

When bonds are created under conditions of mutual respect and shared power, our freedom is deepened by such interdependence. Our strength is not sapped by these bonds but is enhanced by the emergent properties of collective human action. The individual efforts of numerous people cannot simply be added together and plugged into an equation to predict the outcome, but rather their simple actions come together in a collective result that is novel and irreducible. The most creative force does not come from a power, centralized either in one person or one institution and its bureaucracy, which imposes its will on others and treats people as inputs whose energy can be plugged into a formula for production. The most creative force comes from distributed power that channels the contributions of many into ends that people define collectively.

Via the Omnivore at Bookforum -- the same that I have failed to cite on numerous occasions in the past because of the way I open and close tabs going through the links to those posts. Get yourself on the Omnivore feed!

Joseph Stiglitz on Sustainable Capitalism

From Adbusters:

A healthy economy involves using our time efficiently and getting enjoyment out of our time. Spending two hours commuting is not a good use of anybody’s time. There are many ways in which we are very inefficient. We have not thought through efficient land management. I was in a meeting recently in France where in the central city they were talking about how to redesign the whole city to make it environmentally more efficient, to make sure there is less waste, that the energy that is put out is captured and used and reused. So there are lots of things we can do to increase our overall efficiency.

I couldn't have said it better myself:

Creative capitalism can stand for the idea of a capitalism that respects and promotes profit that is sustainable in view of the rhythms of life. Both profit and time can be measured quantitatively. By building institutions that measure and are accountable for how they handle both, we can build better institutions.

As resource constraints become more important per capita, the measuring and managing of the frequency spectrum of human activities over time and space must become more important.

Donald Knuth on the connection between Inventors and Artists

For the non-computer scientist, Donald Knuth is the author of The Art of Computer Programming and the TeX typesetting language.  He is a living legend among computer scientists.  Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with cancer in 2006.  Here's what he has to say about the connection between inventing (computer programs) and artistry:

My feeling is that when we prepare a program, the experience can be just like composing poetry or music.

I once met Mr. Knuth on the 59th Street (University of Chicago) platform for the Metra in Chicago.  As usual, he was looking for an algorithm: "Can you tell me whether this will get me to O'Hare within 45 minutes?"  I told him he had the wrong algorithm, and suggested he call for a cab immediately.  How cool is that?

Here are a few other great quotes from Mr. Knuth

In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.

Let us change our traditional attitude to the construction of programs. Instead of imagining that our main task is to instruct a computer what to do, let us concentrate rather on explaining to human beings what we want a computer to do.

Elves or Trolls? According to Robert Frost, it's Neither

I had the privilege of hearing Prof. Geradin speak at a recent conference.  On my view, he is one of the best academic experts on patent law.  But I have to question the premise of his recent paper, Elves or Trolls? The Role of Non-practicing Patent Owners in the Innovation Economy.

I question it not because I disagree with the basic argument, which is that some patent trolls perform an important role in clearing markets by speculating on the prospective value of patent claims in litigation.  Rather, I question it because I believe it falls short of a full theory of how inventions foster growth within an economy.

But today I'm feeling a little lazy.  So instead of making the argument explicitly, I'm going to quote Robert Frost's excellent poem, "Mending Wall," which takes as its subject the question of why people spend time and money on defining and maintaining property rights.  Note that Frost explicitly addresses the role of Elves in the allocation of property.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

What does it mean to be free? Both rationality and periodicity should be considered.

This is an important problem in jurisprudence.  As Richard Epstein says in Skepticism and Freedom, "Classical liberalism requires us to maintain the distinction between liberty and coercion, to advance the former while constraining the latter."

The paradox of liberty and coercion was posed in its most salient form by Robert Lee Hale.  Hale's key philosophical move was to assume radical skepticism about the merits of competing claims to scarce resources.  Hale thereby demonstrates how any distinction between liberty and coercion must be one of degree.  For Hale, in a world of scarcity, we are "free" only to choose among different forms of coercion, if that.

Epstein suggests that the weakness in Hale's argument originates in the lack of distinction made between individuals and groups under Hale's definition of "coercion."  "When a manufacturer is unable to sell his wares," asks Epstein, "which of the millions of its potential customers is guilty of coercion and why?"  On my view, Epstein is correct in his judgment that any coherent theory of liberty and coercion must stay consistent as it moves from the scale of individuals to the scale of large groups.

But Epstein appears to side-step the problem of defining liberty or coercion by taking the pragmatic route of merely observing that most refusals to deal will not, in fact, be the result of coercion.  In effect, Epstein's answer is that Hale has a good philosophical point, but we shouldn't get too cute with our philosophy when we're talking about ordinary, everyday commerce.  Our natural moral intuitions are often correct, regardless of whether they can be analyzed through any coherent framework of moral philosophy.

I like the pragmatic, instrumentalist strategy that Epstein follows.  I can't see how we'd make it through life without it.  But I want here to try to push out the edge of the philosophical theory of liberty a bit further.

The best jurisprudential definition of liberty that I know is found in Judge Richard Posner's Problems of Jurisprudence.  In this book, Posner offers the theory (which he attributes to Quine) that a person's choice is "free" so long as her preferences are a link in the chain of causation that leads to an act.  According to Posner then, coercion arises when a person is forced to act either before their preference can be formed or without their preference being part of causal chain that leads to the act.

Posner's definition is very useful because it suggests a judge-invariant method whereby coercion may be identified.  Judges need not hesitate in condemning coercion when defendants can show that their act did not or could not reflect their rational preferences.  Perhaps most importantly, there is no need to peer into the hearts or minds of plaintiff or defendant in making this judgment.

But as Posner points out this definition leads to several paradoxes, such as that of the well-supplied drug addict, the overgrown child, or animals.  In each case, the preferences of these actors would seem to be a link in the causal chain that leads to their action.  Yet in each case, at least some people will suspect that these are not truly free actors.

My humble suggestion is that some of these paradoxes may be resolved by considering, in addition to rationality, the periodicity of the preferences of these actors.  Rationality and periodicity are orthogonal in this analysis.  An act can be rational, but ill-timed; conversely, an act can be well-timed, but irrational.  An actor becomes more "free" when she optimizes the fit of an act to both her self-interest and her rhythms.

For example, the drug addict indeed prefers to use drugs, and with an increasing frequency as the addiction becomes stronger.  But so long as we know that the rational preference of the drug user to use more drugs is not sustainable at increasing frequencies of consumption, then we may question -- again without peering into the mind or heart of the drug user -- whether, in fact, their decision is "free."  Similarly, we may ask whether an overgrown child is free who does not begin to engage in work and social activities with an increasing frequency beyond some point in time.

On the other hand, after adding considerations of periodicity to the definition of liberty, animals remain "free," because like humans, their preferences display patterns of periodicity.  This observation has applicability to infants and the mentally ill as well.

Judge Posner implicitly acknowledged the importance of periodicity in his discussion of coerced confessions and the defense of duress.  In each case, the rational preference of the actor is part of the causal chain that leads to the act; but the act is "forced" because it occurs before the actor would act independent of coercion.  The temporal dependence of the argument hints at the role of periodicity.