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Is anyone surprised by the notion that ratcheting is critical for consolidating gains made from chance events? I thought that was a trivial observation (maybe m

• iso1337 8y ago
  Yeah it’s like - OK what systems are not like that? Pre written technology eras where one could lose knowledge if a tribe member died? Maybe The Great Leap Forward when Mao killed a bunch of intellectuals?
• repsilat 8y ago
  It might be obvious but worth saying anyway. Giving something a name can help you use it as a unit of work, or reason more effectively/accurately/mechanically. A lot of arguments are built on abstractions like "competition" and "chance", and having a short list of common exceptions to those heuristics on hand is pretty useful. Now when discussing federalism in the U.S., I'll not only wonder whether there are free-rider problems or economies of scale missed out on, I'll also think about whether local decisions are effectively "locked in" forever.
• buboard 8y ago
  yeah the message here is pretty basic. Would be more intersting if he would expand on the process of scientific research which is an open problem.
• api 8y ago
  Biology, game theory, informatics, and complexity are full of ideas that one can pluck out in isolation and look like a hero for injecting into other areas. I think its because those fields are insufficiently studied by those outside them.