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I think of "the economy" as a set of emergent principles that come from many people trading goods and services. For example, the USSR had a black market, which

I think of "the economy" as a set of emergent principles that come from many people trading goods and services. For example, the USSR had a black market, which was an economy. No matter how much regulation was put into place, an economy (though hobbled) still emerged. Economists study this emergent behavior and use economic principles to accomplish their goals (whether that's to improve the well-being of people, or to increase a company's size, they're both applying these studied principles).

robocat 1y ago
Our human systems are too complex for us to comprehend. So everybody's internal models of the world are often radically/tragically incorrect. And our words are necessarily poor at defining an abstract conceptual system that defies our comprehension. The definition of emergent as apples to an economy is hard to grok. And hard to communicate, even when the two communicators have a common mental model (sometimes education, sometimes acquired via social media or propoganda). You can see politicians on the receiving end of systemic forces - where it seems like the politician doesn't comprehend what is happening because their model is wrong. We then create stories about their incentives - layering unintended misdirection on top of our collective ignorance.
- smj-edison 1y ago
  > We then create stories about their incentives Reminds me of Heinlein's razor, lol: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." On the topic of communicating complex systems, Dynamic Land[1] is explicitly working on explaining systems through interactive visualizations (among other things), you might find it interesting! It's still in the research phase, but I love that it engages as many senses as possible to help build intuition. [1] https://dynamicland.org https://dynamicland.org
  - robocat 1y ago
    dynamicland is interesting. The website looks great - definitely some motivated graphic designers (although I had a few usability issues using mobile Safari). That said, I would definitely love to visit the labs to have a play with some of the stuff they have been developing demonstrated in https://dynamicland.org/publications/ https://dynamicland.org/publications/ (Note: can't click/tap pretty tabs on right - the headings on the page are the links to click/tap)
    - smj-edison 1y ago
      Yeah. Unfortunately they haven't published any of the code or instructions (sometimes it seems like Bret Victor is a perfectionist), but folk computer[1] has been a lot more open (I've set up my own system). It still is missing a lot of features though. [1] https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/

robocat 1y ago

Our human systems are too complex for us to comprehend. So everybody's internal models of the world are often radically/tragically incorrect. And our words are necessarily poor at defining an abstract conceptual system that defies our comprehension. The definition of emergent as apples to an economy is hard to grok. And hard to communicate, even when the two communicators have a common mental model (sometimes education, sometimes acquired via social media or propoganda). You can see politicians on the receiving end of systemic forces - where it seems like the politician doesn't comprehend what is happening because their model is wrong. We then create stories about their incentives - layering unintended misdirection on top of our collective ignorance.

smj-edison 1y ago
> We then create stories about their incentives Reminds me of Heinlein's razor, lol: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." On the topic of communicating complex systems, Dynamic Land[1] is explicitly working on explaining systems through interactive visualizations (among other things), you might find it interesting! It's still in the research phase, but I love that it engages as many senses as possible to help build intuition. [1] https://dynamicland.org https://dynamicland.org
- robocat 1y ago
  dynamicland is interesting. The website looks great - definitely some motivated graphic designers (although I had a few usability issues using mobile Safari). That said, I would definitely love to visit the labs to have a play with some of the stuff they have been developing demonstrated in https://dynamicland.org/publications/ https://dynamicland.org/publications/ (Note: can't click/tap pretty tabs on right - the headings on the page are the links to click/tap)
  - smj-edison 1y ago
    Yeah. Unfortunately they haven't published any of the code or instructions (sometimes it seems like Bret Victor is a perfectionist), but folk computer[1] has been a lot more open (I've set up my own system). It still is missing a lot of features though. [1] https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/