> What is linear, one-dimensional thinking? Doesn't say, and it's not a common term, either. I think this is poorly worded, but it reminds me of the sentiments

> What is linear, one-dimensional thinking? Doesn't say, and it's not a common term, either. I think this is poorly worded, but it reminds me of the sentiments expressed in the widely acclaimed "Seeing Like a State" by Scott and "Predictably Irrational" by Arielly that talk about how human cognition is wired on rather straightforward reward systems that tend to lead to local optimization and are bad at recognizing confounding. > What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up? Or rather, what is top and bottom? These terms have much better history in political philosophy and economics, referring to the direction in which authority flows. In the economics context, this is often presented as the polarizing views of Marx (a strictly work-generates-the-value-bottom-up approach) vs Burke (who implied the desire of the wealth is the sole determining factor of value). In a political context this is a conflict between authoritarian strategies (e.g., statism, monarchism, etc) and anarchistic ones (see 1920's Spain or the Free Territories of the Ukraine on a similar time for well-documented and more modern examples). These are a different axis than a lot of modern political discourse follows, but were quite important at the beginnings of the 1900s. > Nature and markets are almost the same thing when you look closely. An interesting theory, but I suspect a lot of economists and a lot of biologists would require clarification. > Evolution is a kind of algorithm that operates in many ways. You need just imperfect memory and selection to generate all sorts of patterns, in biological life, as in the economy. This isn't a particularly useful or predictive insight. You're saying, "Algorithms exist to express both these systems."