February 2008

Sun	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

-Thomas Hobbes

Intelligent Market Design

Allow me to draw your attention to a great point made at Coyote Blog:

...economics and evolution are very similar. Both are sciences that are trying to describe the operation of very complex, bottom-up, self-organizing systems. And, in both cases, there exist many people who refuse to believe such complex and beautiful systems can really operate without top-down control.

I love reading Coyote Blog. The only reason it is not on our blogroll is that I am incompetent and disorganized. (hint, Rammage) In the meantime, you should read the rest of that excellent article. Warren Meyer's comparison between Intelligent Design and the Market Manipulation conspiracies is classic. Brad Warbiany at Unrepentant Individual has shared some good comments on this as well.

The analogy really is a wonderful follow-up to my oft-verbalized but rarely written view that conspiracy theories must provide a remarkable amount of emotional comfort to believers. Even if you hate Karl Rove, people must find it comforting to think that some person has the ability to control every GOP politician, their staffers, plus businessmen and foreign dictators. It can be very frightening to think that this (I'm waving my hands at evolution) and this (waving at politics) are just a confused mess with repeated mistakes and failures and dead-ends.

But I don't suppose I will ever known that comfort, nor disabuse the believers of their theories of magic and wizardry.

Posted by Wulf on October 4, 2006 at 08:51 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.atlasblogged.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/403

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Intelligent Market Design:

» The Politics of Oil from A Second Hand Conjecture
***Update*** For a look at the real power of “Big Oil” see this piece from the economist. 90% of the worlds reserves are controlled by Governments, not private oil companies. Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek notes the same phenomena as does Coyo... [Read More]

Tracked on October 6, 2006 9:18 AM

Comments

Did you see the comments on my post? The guy "Jim" who commented is one of my college buddies, who holds an engineering degree from Purdue, and who is a pretty well level-headed libertarian-leaning Republican. Yet he apparently believes gas prices are being lowered by people who want to help Republicans.

I think it's one of those "I don't understand it, so it must be malfeasance" type of attitudes.

Posted by: Brad Warbiany at October 4, 2006 10:33 PM

The errors of definitions multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities, which at last they see but cannot avoid, without reckoning anew from the beginning.

-Thomas Hobbes

Intelligent Market Design

Trackback Pings

Comments

Post a comment