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Yaneer Bar-Yam, Revolution in physics: Theory-experiment contradiction and multiscale insight, NECSI (March 10, 2016).
This surprising discrepancy between observations and theory compelled a dramatic change in our understanding. Our usual methods of calculus and statistics fail at this point because their assumptions no longer hold true. Calculus assumes that matter is smooth and statistics assumes that averages over large numbers of objects are well defined. Away from the critical point these assumptions are justified, since the microscopic behavior of atoms is well separated from the macroscopic behavior of the material as a whole. Different parts of the material appear essentially the same, making it smooth, and any (local) average over atomic properties has a single well defined number. However, at the critical point, the density fluctuates—between water-like and vapor-like conditions—so that the material is not smooth and the average taken of the material as a whole is not representative of the density at any particular location or time. Near the critical point, the matter is composed of patches of lower and higher density, and this patchiness occurs on all scales, even at the macroscopic scale.
In order to mathematically solve this problem, the renormalization group was developed. In the renormalization group method, we consider the system at multiple scales (levels of resolution). The spatially varying macroscopic density or magnetization at one level of resolution is related to that at a larger scale by performing local averages rather than a global average. This averaging relates the free energy at one scale of observation to the free energy at a larger scale. The properties of the system can be found from how the behavior varies with scale. The mathematics is not easy, but it yields exponents that agree with the phenomenology. Since its development, renormalization methods have enabled many advances in addressing questions about the structure and dynamics of materials.
The reason that different results were obtained is that the free energy in this case is not just a function of the average density. Still, it is not necessary to consider interactions among individual atoms. For a liquid undergoing transition to a vapor, the free energy depends on the spatial variation of the density, i.e. how the local densities at different locations interact with each other. There are many possible interactions between local densities that could contribute to the free energy. However, only some of them are important. The renormalization group is a method for determining which parameters describing the interaction are important and which are not. "Relevant" parameters are those parameters of the free energy that increase with scale; "irrelevant" parameters are those that decrease with scale. Because there are so many atoms in matter, the irrelevant parameters cannot affect our observation. We can consider only the relevant parameters. We might measure irrelevant parameters microscopically, but they won't affect macroscopic changes in the material or our interactions with it near the critical point.
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보조금이나 세금 혜택, 인큐베이터 프로그램 등 정부에 의해 혁신을 주도하는 모든 노력은 헛수고이다. 정부는 누구를 뽑아야 할지, 어떤 인센티브를 주어야 할지 모른다. 더구나 혁신은 비선형적이고, 바텀업bottom-up 과정이다.
Universities and Innovation
Peter G. Klein
I've written before on government attempts to stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation through subsidies, prizes, tax incentives, state-funded science parks and incubators, and similar policies. Both theory and evidence suggest that these programs are unlikely to be successful, for a variety of reasons. Government actors lack the information to pick winners and the incentives to try. (Instead, they tend to fund their political supporters, their pet projects and causes, their friends in the banking industry, and so on.) More generally, successful innovation is a non-linear, bottom-up process that involves complex interactions between scientists, technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, and a host of other actors. Absent private property and market prices, economic calculation is impossible, so top-down attempts to "plan" the innovation process will inevitably fail.
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경제 문제를 다루지 않는 트럼프
우파들은 트럼프에 많은 기대를 하고 있는데, 그는 정박 중요한 경제현안은 맞서지 않고 있다. 약간은 불안한 출발이다. 그가 반대자들이 우려했던 대로 폭군으로 끝나지 않기를 바란다.
Stockman to Trump: It's the Economy, Stupid
•Ryan McMaken
In a recent appearance on CNN, David Stockman suggested that Trump might best spend some time actually addressing economic issues instead of the administration's travel ban for immigrants from Middle Eastern countries, which Stockman called "a giant misfire."
Pointing out that Americans are far, far more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist, Stockman asserted that it was really Trump's opposition to Obamacare and other government regulation that got him elected. Employing the 1992 Clinton Campaign motto of "it's the economy, stupid," Stockman noted "Trump was elected because flyover America is hurting economically. The voters of Racine, Wisconsin and Johnstown, Pennsylvania are imperiled not because of some refugees, they're imperiled because their jobs have all been disappearing for decades. The problem is far more the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, the bubbles they're creating on Wall Street..."
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인간의 행동은 돌의 움직임과는 달리 동기에 의해 작동한다. 따라서 수학적 방법으로 인간의 행동을 예측할 수는 없다.
Human Action Beats Stats in the Super Bowl
02/06/2017•Jeff Deist
We study probability and statistics for the same reason we study economics: we want to make sense of the world, and perceive what appears to be a random universe through a filter of cognition and experience. Probability is the study of chance. It uses mathematical language to help us make predictions about future events. It asks: what are the odds? Probability theory is what makes sport betting possible, and helps build huge palaces in Las Vegas. But like all mathematical disciplines, its overt application to economics causes a host of thorny problems. Economics is not math, a truism that apparently has to be repeated indefinitely.
Most gamblers and oddsmakers claim to have a "system," some approach they consider rational and effective in reducing randomness. But Ludwig von Mises's brother Richard, a well-known professor of mathematics at Harvard, argued against the possibility of a gambling system. In Mises's view, any sub-sequence of events—say a particular Super Bowl game—takes place within a much larger set of random sequences. At some point the gambler's blindness to the larger context of random events leads him to suckerdom, when the money or the "sure bet" runs out.
"Human action, unlike the movement of stones, is motivated."
Rothbard's quote reminds us of the danger inherent in applying mathematics to human action. What the odds could not account for in yesterday's game, and what could not be expressed mathematically, was the enormous variable of human volition. If Richard von Mises was correct, the randomness in coin tosses and roulette wheels ought to be enough to scare any gambler. But when you include human actors in sporting events (or, say, horses), the variables take on another dimension. How do oddsmakers account for the physical and mental health of the players in a given football game? How do they account for the relative youth or experience of coaching staffs? How about the emotions of Patriot players during halftime, knowing the desperation of their situation? How do oddsmakers assess the tremendous self-confidence of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, with (then) 4 Super Bowl rings, vs. the nervousness of the upstart Falcons? Or crowd noise? Weather? The list goes on and on. And in many instances the probable outcome in a sporting event, or even the overwhelmingly probable outcome, doesn't happen.
It would be absurd to argue that probability doesn't work in the world of sports betting. Probability theory clearly has an enormous amount of predictive value to sports books, that's why they make money (along with payout fees). But sometimes no amount of number crunching can account for all the variables in just a 22-man football game. So when we take a global economy of 7 billion people, and attempt to apply predictive mathematical models to their behavior, the results aren't always pretty.
Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as a longtime advisor and chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul.
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가격은 비용의 결과가 아니다. 가격은 궁극적으로는 그들에게 제시된 상품과 서비스를 소비자들이 어떻게 평가하느냐에 따라 결정된다. 비용은 생산자의 판단에 따른 선택일 뿐이다. 가격은 기업가에 의해 발견되는 것이다.
코스트-플러스 방식을 가격 책정 방법으로 쓴다는 것은, 실제적인 자유시장이 작동하지 않는다는 뜻이다.
How Governments Destroy Consumer Sovereignty
02/07/2017•
Per Bylund
It is easy to fall into the trap of the “cost-plus” method. That is, to consider prices for consumer goods to be a function of the costs of production. Unfortunately, the cost-plus method of pricing is commonly taught to MBA students worldwide, thereby cementing a bureaucratic view of business and the economy.
Producer Costs Don't Determine Prices
The fact is that prices are not a result of costs; it is the other way around. Actually, prices and costs are not even “set” by the same types of economic actors. Prices are ultimately set by consumers through their valuations of goods and services offered to them. Costs are, for each production undertaking, a choice based on the judgment of the producer. In other words, prices aren’t set by entrepreneurs and their businesses — they are discovered by them. Costs, on the other hand, are assumed by producers — chosen because they are estimated to be less than the anticipated price that the final good warrants on the open market.
The important choice whether to produce or not, therefore, is based, first, on the entrepreneur’s anticipation of what price can be charged for the final good (consumers’ price), and, second, on whether he can produce that good at sufficiently low cost to make it worth his while (his choice of cost).
Businesses that apply the cost-plus method therefore attempt to avoid being entrepreneurial. What they do is take costs as given and “choose” (using simple arithmetic, like costs plus 15% profit) what to put on the price tag. While the method is arguably faster, it sets the business up for failure in the open market. It is easy to see how the cost-based price can end up too high, thereby not catering to enough customers, or too low, thereby missing out on possible profits. The chance of getting it just right by adding markup to one’s costs is very small.
The Problem of Government-Granted Monopoly Power
There are two exceptions to this rule, however. One is interventionism, that is, when businesses operate in a regulated market. Regulated markets are different from open, free markets in that they have artificial barriers to entry: they redistribute costs of business to protect some incumbent firms by forcing the cost on (some) entrants. In other words, there are fewer new businesses and thus less competition.
Under interventionism, businesses do not always need to discover accurate consumer prices because the threat from new entrepreneurs entering the market is smaller than it otherwise would have been. So cost-plus might just work, especially if all or most protected incumbent firms are run by managers with the same type of management training. Competition won’t undermine their pricing decision as it would in a free market.
The other exception, which is of lesser force, relates to diversification or economies of scope, where an existing firm with existing and sufficiently profitable cost structure adds an additional production line of a similar (or even substitute) good. To the degree that the previous and similar good was sold close to consumer valuation of the good, the firm’s cost structure should already be sufficiently aligned with consumer valuation to allow for using the cost-plus shorthand (that is, using the same markup as discovered for the previous good).
Even so, the firm would likely lose out on possible profits by not adopting the proper entrepreneurial approach of “prices first, costs second.” In fact, what to a manager might appear to be an obvious and low-risk addition to the firm’s existing goods offering can, from an entrepreneurial perspective, be a potentially disastrous move.
When Managers and Bureaucrats Replace Entrepreneurs
Large corporations in interventionist “mixed economies” are commonly run by managers without much entrepreneurial oversight. Entrepreneurship in the sense discussed above is limited to the startup and growth stages of the firm, and is then relegated to the passive ownership of shareholders whose primary interest is in continued nominal profitability of the legal entity (the corporation). In highly innovative markets like technology, managers must take on the role of the entrepreneur by coming up with new products that require new production processes. For instance, Apple Computers’ decision to produce the iPhone was necessarily entrepreneurial — not because Steve Jobs wanted to stay away from cost-plus arithmetic, but because there was no available information relevant to this new type of good.
Cost-plus, in other words, only “works” when there is little innovation (dynamism) in the market, that is, in an interventionist market with high barriers to entry. And even then, it is bounded by (limited) entrepreneurial judgment — the cost-plus method is actually only used by firms when the calculated price isn’t obviously outrageous.
A recent example of the cost-plus method, and therefore the lack of entrepreneurship, is how prices of imported goods shift with fluctuating exchange rates. In a market without barriers to entry (but keeping fluctuating exchange rates), the price of consumer goods in stores in the United States would not go up as the dollar gets weaker, or vice versa.
Had the producers of, for example, Irish grass-fed butter been run as entrepreneurial businesses, they would have estimated consumer valuations of their products first and then chosen the appropriate cost structure for the preferred quantity. As domestic consumer valuation of butter doesn’t change with a stronger dollar (at least not in the short term), the appropriate price for the anticipated sales quantity remains the same.
In other words, in a free market we would not see exchange rate fluctuations reflected in the price charged in stores. But we do, at least in response to significant and sustained differences in exchange rate, even though it is often with a lag (which hints at how producers don’t fully rely on the cost-plus method). An entrepreneurial business in a competitive setting, in contrast, would adjust the only thing that is truly variable: their cost structure. They wouldn’t be able to up the price.
Using cost-plus as a pricing method, even if only as a rule of thumb, is symptomatic of a lack of real market forces — or poor judgment on the part of management. Had it been used in a free market, those actors would quickly be forced to exit. The only reason it at all seems reasonable is that the market is not free and people in business thereby can get away with not understanding the market. In fact, the cost-plus method relies on the very reverse of true market pricing, and places the power over the production apparatus in the hands of corporate bureaucrats. The satisfaction of consumer wants is secondary.
Per Bylund is assistant professor of entrepreneurship & Records-Johnston Professor of Free Enterprise, Oklahoma State University.
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백악관 수석 전략가 스티브 배넌이 추천하는 책
그중에는 탈레브의 <앤티프래질(반취약)>도 포함
What Steve Bannon Wants You to Read
President Trump’s strategic adviser is elevating a once-obscure network of political thinkers.
By Eliana Johnson and Eli Stokols
| February 07, 2017
The first weeks of the Trump presidency have brought as much focus on the White House’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as on the new president himself. But if Bannon has been the driving force behind the frenzy of activity in the White House, less attention has been paid to the network of political philosophers who have shaped his thinking and who now enjoy a direct line to the White House.
They are not mainstream thinkers, but their writings help to explain the commotion that has defined the Trump administration’s early days. They include a Lebanese-American author known for his theories about hard-to-predict events; an obscure Silicon Valley computer scientist whose online political tracts herald a “Dark Enlightenment”; and a former Wall Street executive who urged Donald Trump’s election in anonymous manifestos by likening the trajectory of the country to that of a hijacked airplane—and who now works for the National Security Council.
Bannon, described by one associate as “the most well-read person in Washington,” is known for recommending books to colleagues and friends, according to multiple people who have worked alongside him. He is a voracious reader who devours works of history and political theory “in like an hour,” said a former associate whom Bannon urged to read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. “He’s like the Rain Man of nationalism.”
But, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Bannon, “There are some things he’s only going to share with people who he’s tight with and who he trusts.”
Bannon’s readings tend to have one thing in common: the view that technocrats have put Western civilization on a downward trajectory and that only a shock to the system can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apocalyptic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own public remarks over the years—a sense that humanity is at a hinge point in history. His ascendant presence in the West Wing is giving once-obscure intellectuals unexpected influence over the highest echelons of government.
Bannon’s 2015 documentary, “Generation Zero,” drew heavily on one of his favorite books, “The Fourth Turning” by William Strauss and Neil Howe. The book explains a theory of history unfolding in 80- to 100-year cycles, or “turnings,” the fourth and final stage of which is marked by periods of cataclysmic change in which the old order is destroyed and replaced—a current period that, in Bannon’s view, was sparked by the 2008 financial crisis and has now been manifested in part by the rise of Trump.
“The West is in trouble. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that, and Trump’s election was a sign of health,” said a White House aide who was not authorized to speak publicly. “It was a revolt against managerialism, a revolt against expert rule, a revolt against the administrative state. It opens the door to possibilities.”......
It’s a broadside against big government, which Taleb faults for suppressing the randomness, volatility and stress that keep institutions and people healthy. “As with neurotically overprotective parents, those who are trying to help us are hurting us the most,” he writes. Taleb also offers a withering critique of global elites, whom he describes as a corrupt class of risk-averse insiders immune to the consequences of their actions: “We are witnessing the rise of a new class of inverse heroes, that is, bureaucrats, bankers, Davos-attending members of the I.A.N.D (International Association of Name Droppers), and academics with too much power and no real downside and/or accountability. They game the system while citizens pay the price.”
아사드 대통령에 항거하는 시위가 일어났다는 것은 완전한 날조이다.
시리아에 종교 분쟁을 유발하기 위해 외국의 테러리스트들이 일으킨 전쟁이다. 전쟁 전에는 다 함께 조화롭게 살던 나라였다.
시리아에 대한 언론의 보도는 우리 시대 최고의 거짓말이다.
사우디와 카타르는 시리아에 종교 자유가 없는 수니파 신정국가를 세우고 싶어 한다. 알카에다와 아이에스와 같은 과격 이슬람세력이 우리를 학살하려 한다. 힐러리는 시태를 악화시킨 악마이다.
The Media Coverage On Syria Is The Biggest Media Lie Of Our Time"
Feb 8, 2017 9:25 PM
by The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,
Flemish Father Daniël Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Father Daniel has been a witness to the “civil war” and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: “the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country.”
Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?
Father Daniel: “The idea that a popular uprising took place against President Assad is completely false. I’ve been in Qara since 2010 and I have seen with my own eyes how agitators from outside Syria organized protests against the government and recruited young people. That was filmed and aired by Al Jazeera to give the impression that a rebellion was taking place. Murders were committed by foreign terrorists, against the Sunni and Christian communities, in an effort to sow religious and ethnic discord among the Syrian people. While in my experience, the Syrian people were actually very united.
Before the war, this was a harmonious country: a secular state in which different religious communities lived side by side peacefully. There was hardly any poverty, education was free, and health care was good. It was only not possible to freely express your political views. But most people did not care about that.”
Interviewer: Mother Agnès-Mariam, of your Mar Yakub (“Saint Jacob”) monastery, is accused of siding with the regime. She has friends at the highest level.
Father Daniel: “Mother Agnès-Mariam helps the population: she has recently opened a soup kitchen in Aleppo, where 25,000 meals are prepared five times a week. Look, it is miraculous that we are still alive. We owe that to the army of Assad’s government and to Vladimir Putin, because he decided to intervene when the rebels threatened to take power.
When thousands of terrorists settled in Qara, we became afraid for our lives. They came from the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Europe, Turkey, Libya, there were many Chechens. They formed a foreign occupation force, all allied to al-Qaeda and other terrorists. Armed to the teeth by the West and their allies with the intention to act against us, they literally said: “This country belongs to us now.” Often, they were drugged, they fought each other, in the evening they fired randomly. We had to hide in the crypts of the monastery for a long time. When the Syrian army chased them away, everybody was happy: the Syrian citizens because they hate the foreign rebels, and we because peace had returned.”
Interviewer: You say that the Syrian Army protects civilians, yet there are all sorts of reports about war crimes committed by Assad’s forces, such as the bombardments with barrel bombs.
Father Daniel: “Do you not know that the media coverage on Syria is the biggest media lie of our time? They have sold pure nonsense about Assad. It was actually the rebels who plundered and killed. Do you think that the Syrian people are stupid? Do you think those people were forced to cheer for Assad and Putin? It is the Americans who have a hand in all of this, for pipelines and natural resources in this region and to thwart Putin.”
Saudi Arabia and Qatar want to establish a Sunni state in Syria, without religious freedom. Therefore, Assad must go. You know, when the Syrian army was preparing for the battle in Aleppo, Muslim soldiers came to me to be blessed. Between ordinary Muslims and Christians, there is no problem. It is those radical Islamic, Western-backed rebels who want to massacre us. They are all al Qaeda and IS. There are not any moderate fighters anymore.”
Interviewer: You once mentioned Hillary Clinton to be a "devil in holy water," because as Secretary of State she deliberately worsened the conflict.
Father Daniel: “I am happy with Trump. He sees what every normal person understands: That the United States should stop undermining countries which possess natural resources. The Americans’ attempt to impose a unipolar world is the biggest problem. Trump understands that radical Islam is a bigger threat than Russia.
What do I care whether he occasionally takes off his pants? If Trump practices geopolitics the way he has promised to do so, then the future looks bright. Then it will become similar to Putin’s approach. And hopefully then, there will be a solution for Syria, and peace will return.”
Interviewer: You understand that your analysis is controversial and will encounter much criticism?
Father Daniel: “I speak from personal observation. And no one has to believe me, right? But I know one thing: The media can either contribute to the massacre of the Syrian people or help the Syrian people, with their media coverage. Unfortunately, there are too many followers and cowards among journalists.”
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