porFavor

In the name of all that is holy. No.

Run this pass a trader on Wall Street and they will either laugh you out the door or play to your naiveté while trying to sell you some ocean front property in Arizona.

The "economy" is an abstract concept that people refer to. It is not an actual thing. It is not a computer that has been programmed to do anything, like process events within the framework of information theory.

These "events" are simply the confluence of a bunch of smaller events that happen to be bad across the board. Every day there are just as many events occurring, but because they are not generally bad but are instead a mixed bag, well, we don't call it an "event". Yet, using your terms, "information" is continuously being processed.

God is not a watchmaker and the economy is not a information processing computer. From the article:

"The economy is made of people, networks of people and the things that people make. People and networks of people accumulate knowledge and knowhow, both individually and collectively, and they use that knowledge and knowhow to produce a variety of products that, in turn, augments people’s capacity to produce new products."

The economy is made up of people... Dangerous. So Dangerous. What about the animals. What about weather. What about solar flares. These things all impact the GDP, the macro economic landscape, and market cycles. Hurricanes have been called a shot in the arm for our economy, because they trigger so much rebuilding. What then is something that does not impact the GDP? Is it not information? Is it part of a different information processing computational process?

If you want to go whole hog on the reductionist angle, well,look to quantum physics and chaos theory. Or, just watch the weather channel. Look, there is always info between the data points. And sometimes it ends up influencing the big picture. This is a fact. So, would you say then that the economy is an imprecise machine? I would say that it is simply a shared concept we humans all agree on when discussing these things amongst ourselves. I would say what is really driving it is, well, reality, the arrow of time, entropy (well ish, now we're back to information; but at least this time it's the physicists fault, not the economists).

The reason this sorta framework is dangerous is that it relinquishes responsibility. Any responsibility that we hand off to some abstraction (be it "god", "the gods", "luck", or "the economy") is responsibility we are shirking.

How about studying the most 'human' checkout setup?

Used to be that you could make small talk and feel the hole in your pocket growing bigger while you handed over that old crinkly dollar bill. Now I can hardly get out a perfunctory "Hello, how are you doing?", because I'm too busy trying to figure out whether I need to explicitly choose credit or whether I'm going to need to sign or not given the dollar amount... I'm not suggesting that we go back to the "good old days". I would, however, suggest that we progress in the direction of pathos and our shared humanity rather than toward whatever it is that tickles the fancy of Homo Economicus.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

I mean, yes. But, also no.

Prof. Stein, You do not know me, but you have been an inpiration to me. I came across several of your books during a year of post-bac study. They spoke to me, especially "Algebraic Number Theory, a Computational Approach". They also steered me toward your home page, and your work on Sage Math. I thought to myself, "yes. yes!"

Though I'm not punk as fuck, I'm definitely a 'walk to your own drum beat' believer, and a skateboarding professor that heads an open source project taking on Mathematica would make an awesome lodestar. I was 32 when I quit a great job at a very well know Wall Street investment firm (back-office, not master-of-the-universe stuff, but definitely a good place to be) so that I could study nothing but math for a year. I should point out, my math grades up to this point were:

- D in my senior year in high school

- C in the only undergrad math course I had to take

So, everyone was like, "You're effin crazy, what the eff are you doing, you're making an effin bad decision..." Etc. Well, it was the best decision I ever made. Two weeks after leaving my job I was in a dorm room with an 18 year old football player (very, very awkward), but a year later I was a class or two away from a degree in math. My wife and I decided to add moving (again), wedding planning, and another thing to our life, so I didn't quite finish a degree. I received a bunch of As and a few Bs. It was a miracle. (No, it was a lot of hard work, and having seen the light which is the beauty of mathematics).

I've thought many, many, many long hours about the issues of open source development and how it might be made sustainable. I've had to, as it relates intimately to the reason I left my job and went off on this new path. I've got a couple ideas that I believe are very realistically workable. In short, the first go I'll be making at one of these ideas is, software is developed by a community which then makes the source code open source but not compiled into programs, and with no beautify logos or easy to use UIs. They then copy right that code for a month and charge non-members a small (think Spotify) amount to have access to the compiled, bundled, UI'ified versions that are encrypted with a monthly key. Then, at the end of the month, that software is all marked as "old", put in the public domain, and the keys are "unlocked". If the software is useful, the price is right, and the user is not a programmer, then they'll hopefully pay $10 or $15 a month even though they could use last months software for free. Also like Spotify, paying this fee would gain a user access to all the communities software. The subscription fees will be allocated to programmers who will be paid to work on software per rata according to some weighted combo of votes from users and votes by community members. Community members are, of course, free to work on whatever they'd like to in addition to that. Community members receive a payout from the subscription, basically whatever subscription revenue there is minus that paid out for paid development (per previous mentioned mechanism) minus operating expenses. You can only have your software in that "repository" if you are a member, and you must buy in to be a member, sorta like a co-op.

So, that was a very sloppy explanation, but hopefully you get the general points. My main point however, is, please don't go corporate. Even companies like Patagonia, though it is a "B-Corportation" for the public benefit, are clearly driven by the bottom line. How else could one explain why they charge $35 for 40 different types of hats. We don't need 40 different types of hats. But, it drives their bottom line, so that's what we get (albeit, in addition to the great things they also do).

"You know what I hate about f*cking banking? It reduces people to numbers..." You know, the line from "The Big Short". It's not just banking. It's any venture that is driven by the profit motive. Pure and simple.

Profit motive => Reduce everything to numbers

Not right away. Not in a loud and crash fashion. Not one person. But systematically, insidiously, creeping, all together, a step at a time, with the flash of amazing marketing departments and the financial soundness of a well disciplined finance department. Whatever it is you think you're doing, will be metamorphosed into the fungible unit of exchange, like something out of a Kafka book, both absurd and meaningless, while at the same time horrifying.

This 'comment' is very sloppily written because it is being written with some urgency because, (god bless HN, where else will I get to randomly interact with Prof. Stein?) I sincerely believe that you have changed the center of gravity in the world and this is an impassioned plea to keep on keeping on when it comes to helping us that are building a future where (given that intellectual property will clearly make up the bulk of our wealth) the wealth is a well tended commons and not a well guarded garden.

(Speaking briefly to the "academic" angle of things. I understand a bit what the atmosphere is like. I'm going through a divorce at the moment, and my wife just successfully passed her major comps exam and is on her way to a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in their political theory department. I am very happy for her and wish her the best, but my point is that, I get the pressures in academia to prioritize certain things while other things, which should really be valued and promoted, are totally overlooked or even punished. But, the business world is not the answer.)

your line of reasoning is becoming very tangled.

not all porn actors or drug dealers are bad people. you can change a place without forcing out the people.

"it seemed to put all the burden on the individual, when in reality discovery and fostering of talent is as much a job of the society"

Word.

Not sure how I feel about this sentiment applied to the original comment. But, 100% agree with the sentiment generally speaking.

The current public school system is based on the British Colonial model. At the time the British empire spanned the globe there was no robust method of immediate mass communication. So, how was the Empire going to ensure that marching orders were carried out as they were handed down?

Create cogs. Everyone learned the same thing everywhere. And you learned in an environment that stressed the immediacy of execution. The Empire didn't want its citizens thinking about whether or not to follow an order in the middle of a battle. The citizen was needed to simply do as told, now.

As a result there was standardization of curriculum and an expectation of rote learning, not critical analysis and the exercise of judgment.

Contrast that with our current environment.

Products have long lead times. Skype. A massive percent of our GDP is spent on things that we didn't even know we needed or wanted. Many of the things that we rely on everyday are the product of discovery rather than directives.

So, when the person said everyone has a talent, I take that to mean, we can each bring something to the table. Diversity of thought. Diversity of experience. And that, is definitely true.

What is not true, what is arbitrary, is that there is some defined set of talents that have value and a person either masters one or more of these talents or, if they don't, they have no talent. That point of view is ignorant and counterproductive for both individuals and communities.

Word.

Ever as I gain more experience with 1s and 0s, I find a greater appreciate for and a greater draw to my front porch.

Without going into neuroscience, physics, chaos theory, and what not, by acknowledging and embracing that I am human and not some abstract distributed, computing network, and by accepting the consequences of that, my life grows richer.

Have a walk down Times Square. It's gross. Sure, if you're a tourist, it's one of the first things you'll do upon arriving in NYC. If, on the other hand, you live in NYC, you'll avoid Times Square at all costs.

Times Square is what you get when you try to clean something up and it becomes commercialized. A lot of it has to do with the incentives put in place to clean it up. Tax brakes are generally provided for companies to utilize the space, and "clean it up". Even Lincoln Center is an example of this sort. The money provided to develop Lincoln Center was supposed to be utilized to improve that area, but instead it pushed out all the residents. It did not improve their lives. They can't afford events at Lincoln Center. They were relocated.

In both cases, Times Square and Lincoln Center, the communities that were utilizing the space prior to redevelopment / improvement were simply displaced. The redevelopment did not benefit these constituents. These constituents did not have the influence needed to either send help their way or steer changes that would affect them.

So really, the incentives are directed by the political mechanism, which is directed by the interest groups with the requisite influence.

Companies and affluent individuals.

This should look very familiar.

Many of the most visible parts of the Internet today (I guess the press recently decided that the "Internet" should no longer be capitalized, but they are wrong) might fairly be viewed as our shared digital Times Square. It looks like a public space, but in actuality it is a heavily regulated private space.

If, on the other hand, you are a New Yorker, you don't go there. You go to the many other amazing pockets of humanity and creativity that the city has to offer. And they're constantly changing. One week a space smells like urine and you wouldn't go down their after dark even if it was 4:30 am and had the only street meat in sight; the next week your buddy gives you the heads up that it's now an awesome bar, just make sure and use the door in the connected building because there are no signs or working doors at the front yet. And then, in a year, that bar turns into a Gristedes.

My point, long winded though it might be, is that sure parts of the Internet are being co-opted and grossly commercialized, but a true local explores beyond these parts and makes a home amongst these parts. Going native means knowing where the alleyways and speakeasies are. It means having your ear to the ground and finding out about the newest restaurants by word of mouth instead of paid advertisements. In a word, taste. Acquiring and exercising good taste in the places your frequent, you patronize, you invest in, you wander in, will both benefit you and the community you are a part of.

One last point. One advantage that the Internet has over our share physical spaces is that distance is, practically speaking, a non-issue. In our shared physical space it takes a good while to walk from Times Square to Lincoln Center. But, to go from the web presence of Times Square to Lincoln Center takes no time at all. Heck, you can have both tabs up on your screen at the same time. So, sure, parts of the Internet can be co-opted and ruined. But there is space enough for us to recreate. And if others want to come along, we'll always be a click away.

If every article on HN had a TL:DR, I'd be a happy camper.