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> All you need is someone to police them [...] If I'm right, this does bust the paradox. You completely misunderstand the nature of the paradox. Yes, if you ha

by fh 18y ago

> All you need is someone to police them [...] If I'm right, this does bust the paradox. You completely misunderstand the nature of the paradox. Yes, if you have an authority (the "police") compute and enforce the social optimum, then more roads can only ever decrease the average travel time. That's obvious, and pointing that out didn't "bust" anything. The nature of the paradox is that optimization at the individual level leads to a suboptimal result at the social level. That's in contrast to certain results from economics, where free markets can be proved to guarantee optimal resource allocation (in idealized circumstances). Your complaint about the T/constant formula is downright silly; I'm convinced that an equivalent paradox can be created for every reasonable formula you agree to. (Actually, I think I can prove that.) The only thing that would change is that the "lines" on the equilibrium diagram would become "curves".

ars 18y ago
>You completely misunderstand the nature of the paradox. You are right - I did, but then it was not said anywhere, and this is the first I'm hearing of this. I understand that it's a mathematical/game theory paradox, but it's listed as a real world paradox - and it's not. > Your complaint about the T/constant formula is downright silly; I'm convinced that an equivalent paradox can be created for every reasonable formula you agree to. (Actually, I think I can prove that.) The only thing that would change is that the "lines" on the equilibrium diagram would become "curves". I think you can't. If you modeled real traffic congestion for this the paradox would not exist. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. The "real world" examples listed on the page were not because of this type of paradox, but rather because in the real world it takes time to merge, so removing a merge point makes things faster. But a road paradox structured like this one? I don't think you can. The whole paradox is because the T/x does nutty things as T changes (nutty as compared to the real world). At the minimum I want to see f()+c. And f() should be an s curve.

by fh 18y ago

ars 18y ago

>You completely misunderstand the nature of the paradox. You are right - I did, but then it was not said anywhere, and this is the first I'm hearing of this. I understand that it's a mathematical/game theory paradox, but it's listed as a real world paradox - and it's not. > Your complaint about the T/constant formula is downright silly; I'm convinced that an equivalent paradox can be created for every reasonable formula you agree to. (Actually, I think I can prove that.) The only thing that would change is that the "lines" on the equilibrium diagram would become "curves". I think you can't. If you modeled real traffic congestion for this the paradox would not exist. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so. The "real world" examples listed on the page were not because of this type of paradox, but rather because in the real world it takes time to merge, so removing a merge point makes things faster. But a road paradox structured like this one? I don't think you can. The whole paradox is because the T/x does nutty things as T changes (nutty as compared to the real world). At the minimum I want to see f()+c. And f() should be an s curve.