Outstanding writing. I don't know how many orders of magnitude my ability to write is below yours. I suspect that I am not even qualified to give proper praise.
The problem of game theory, and AI in that regard, is that both technologies try to analyze the problems assuming the involved parties are logical, reasonable, will consider long-term consequences, etc., and at least try to maximize the welfare of at least one party. That is not what I have learned from human society. I found that most people are not quite logical, are concerned about "faces" more than long-term benefits, and sometimes have a self-destruction tendency. And if you add religious fanatics into the possibilities, quite often the problems cannot be resolved properly. Instead, the only viable solution is to make the problem "go away". Or to remove oneself from the scene, and let other people handle it. Or, to smash "the problem" such that people unrelated to "the problem" can manage to survive, somehow.
For a comment on your observation let’s go back to Goya. An iconic plate from Caprichos bears the caption “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.” You can read that two ways. If you take “sueño” to mean “sleep,” you might think Goya meant that without the vigilant wakefulness of reason to restrain superstition and irrationality, lurking atavistic motives, emotions, and beliefs hold sway. Enlightenment modernity rectifies that. Yet human beings, like the figure in the plate, must sleep, which implies that the repressed periodically returns. Reason is neither omnipresent nor omnipotent. That matches up with your argument that models can fail when they assume that it is. But the caption hints as something else. Since “sueño” can also mean “dream,” the caption implicates reason itself as a dream that can call forth monsters. I think of RAND’s Herman Kahn, who game-theorized nuclear war winnability, which incentivized institutional investment in industries, research, and careers that made war more likely. That is a shadow side of the perfectly rational. What I hear in your comment echoes the tension in Goya’s illustration and caption, though less the optimism about Enlightenment progress, which isn't entirely unwarranted, than skepticism about its limits and hubris.
Thanks for the link. I think I now understand your post somewhat better. Many of the people labeled as neocons and neoliberals indeed can be characterized as people who can imagine but their imaginations do not line up with physics or reality.
You could say he did indirectly by drawing attention to the elephant in the room.
As it happens Nelson's bit o' physical comedy with the spyglass on his 74-gun pachyderm HMS Elephant is origin to the phrase "turn a blind eye." Words to live by for the Danish ambassador, so doubly apt. Thank you for the rhyme, hk.
Outstanding writing. I don't know how many orders of magnitude my ability to write is below yours. I suspect that I am not even qualified to give proper praise.
The problem of game theory, and AI in that regard, is that both technologies try to analyze the problems assuming the involved parties are logical, reasonable, will consider long-term consequences, etc., and at least try to maximize the welfare of at least one party. That is not what I have learned from human society. I found that most people are not quite logical, are concerned about "faces" more than long-term benefits, and sometimes have a self-destruction tendency. And if you add religious fanatics into the possibilities, quite often the problems cannot be resolved properly. Instead, the only viable solution is to make the problem "go away". Or to remove oneself from the scene, and let other people handle it. Or, to smash "the problem" such that people unrelated to "the problem" can manage to survive, somehow.
Thank you for the compliment, Nakayama.
For a comment on your observation let’s go back to Goya. An iconic plate from Caprichos bears the caption “El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.” You can read that two ways. If you take “sueño” to mean “sleep,” you might think Goya meant that without the vigilant wakefulness of reason to restrain superstition and irrationality, lurking atavistic motives, emotions, and beliefs hold sway. Enlightenment modernity rectifies that. Yet human beings, like the figure in the plate, must sleep, which implies that the repressed periodically returns. Reason is neither omnipresent nor omnipotent. That matches up with your argument that models can fail when they assume that it is. But the caption hints as something else. Since “sueño” can also mean “dream,” the caption implicates reason itself as a dream that can call forth monsters. I think of RAND’s Herman Kahn, who game-theorized nuclear war winnability, which incentivized institutional investment in industries, research, and careers that made war more likely. That is a shadow side of the perfectly rational. What I hear in your comment echoes the tension in Goya’s illustration and caption, though less the optimism about Enlightenment progress, which isn't entirely unwarranted, than skepticism about its limits and hubris.
That, at any rate, is what comes to mind upon reading your remark. Here is a link to the Goya plate I'm thinking of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sleep_of_Reason_Produces_Monsters
Thanks for the link. I think I now understand your post somewhat better. Many of the people labeled as neocons and neoliberals indeed can be characterized as people who can imagine but their imaginations do not line up with physics or reality.
Jeff Sachs should have praised how wonderfully bold and righteous Nelson was to have Copenhagened the Danes...
You could say he did indirectly by drawing attention to the elephant in the room.
As it happens Nelson's bit o' physical comedy with the spyglass on his 74-gun pachyderm HMS Elephant is origin to the phrase "turn a blind eye." Words to live by for the Danish ambassador, so doubly apt. Thank you for the rhyme, hk.