[1st-mile-nm] Economic Disequilibrium or How Complexity Science nearly killed America

[peter]

http://www.make-digital.com/make/vol15/?pg=173

Here is a beautiful article by George Dyson that is truly one of the 
clearest examples of the current problems with complexity theory 
especially its relationship to economics , what it is trying to do and 
what it actually did with the mess created on wall street it should make 
every every CTO and CEO sit up and shudder.

Basically the credit models created by complexity science geniuses, that 
are the foundation of most high flying arbitrage financial houses, 
created there own version of  reality that had very little relevance to 
the real world.  These same geniuses made enormous amounts of money by 
designing this fake world and convincing there neophyte non tech masters 
they should be paid millions for its discovery conveniently forgetting 
that its roots were firmly built in fiction  Someone shouts the Emperor 
has no clothes and presto the whole house comes tumbling down

The FBI is also apparently digging into this cesspool so expect to see a 
large number of these bright software phds entering federal prison in 
the not to distant future

It also has relevance to the scary statement by Janet Wing at the 
institute when she said that future computer models need not be grounded 
in reality but could create there own.

Think also on the connection that not only are these complex models non 
verifiable but so are most databases and agent modeling systems. Without 
easy verifiability I would submit they are worse than
 useless

As Dyson points out the tally sticks " stocks" that where used in the 
13th century are far superior to the billions of dollars of hardware and 
software used today. A stick " Stock " lived in the real world and was 
verifiable at the lowest level of inspection. Sadly today our complex 
system have proved to be totally non verifiable with the associated 
collapse of trust.

Its also a stark example to our 1st mile friends about the higher 
relevance of what goes into the pipe rather than the pipe itself and why 
hi speed verification of what is happening in the real world is so much 
more important

The quicker we realize that the raison d'etre of the digital world is to 
improve the quality of life and include some moral directives in our 
work based in reality the more we will be able to sleep at night

( : ( : pete
-- 

Peter Baston

*IDEAS*

/www.ideapete.com/ <http://www.ideapete.com/>


 

 

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