Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonnieCache | Hacker News Reader

It staggers me that so much prevailing thought still leans towards the idea of complex, highly connected systems as inherently stable, with their natural state as equilibrium. It dates back to the victorians, with their "All things Bright and Beautiful" view of god's creation, which was shattered by darwin. How long it takes us to learn the important lessons.

This view was prevalent in the world of ecology for decades, and led to all that guff about "nature's balance" and "spaceship earth" that we had to put up with for so long. It turned out that these ideas were based on falsified studies.

Adam Curtis addressed these ideas and more in his recent series of films, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. Specifically, the second episode: "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts." The other episodes cover Ayn Rand and her effect on US economic policy, and the Selfish Gene theory and its murky origins in the wartorn Congo. And a whole lot of other stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...

I highly recommend it, along with his other works, although you should be careful not to suspend your critical faculties in the headlights of his psychedelic filmmaking techniques.

I agree with your first 2 sentences but I think that Adam Curtis's 'films' should not be watched by anyone. Especially someone trying to think about something like stability and connected systems.

His train of thought narration and brilliant music is just opium for people who aren't concentrating.

I think people here are grown-up enough to cope, especially now that we've both warned them.

At the very least people should watch them simply for the treasure trove of historical accounts and strange characters contained within, even if they don't believe a word of the conclusions he draws from them.

I agree. I have watched almost all of his documentaries. In retrospect, everything looks like a con. He narrates history as if it was a big plan by the people in power but he forgets how utterly chaotic the world is. And yes, it is opium and I enjoyed watching his work.

You may enjoy this exquisitely observed parody, "The Loving Trap"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1bX3F7uTrg

Curtis basically falls for the animistic fallacy: that all events are caused by conscious agents. This is the same pathway that leads to both religion and conspiracy theorists.

I have always thought Curtis' overall theme (or one of them) was of powerful people drawing their grand plans, but always ultimately having them thwarted by external circumstances out of their control.

I personally felt that he

1. Identifies baddies and eeeevil plaaaans

2. Said plans go wrong because evil is dumb

3. Smugness.

Or something like that. Essentially his problem is mixing history with histrionics. He's not a documentarist, he's an entertainer. A music video director.

> It staggers me that so much prevailing thought still leans towards the idea of complex, highly connected systems as inherently stable, with their natural state as equilibrium.

I think it's more that

1. Systems that spin irreversibly out of equilibrium usually fall apart and so are not observed; and

2. For a long time, there was a dearth of mathematical tools for dealing with complex or chaotic systems.

Most attacks on economists about believing in this or that $obviously_ridiculous_belief are strawmen, giving credit neither for the subtleties of the actual concepts nor the self-awareness of economists themselves.

I think maybe a key mistake economists make regularly is equating an equilibrium with a lack of change.

In nature stability - on average - is often achieved by matching peaks and troughs, not by a lack of change (nature abhors a lack of change)

(see vacuum fluctuations)

>In nature stability

or at least in somewhat understandable models beyond simple linear ones:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StrangeAttractor.html

Negative feedback in markets often brings stability to a dynamical system and there is reason that there are negative feedback loops in markets.

A popular model of a negative feedback relationship in markets is called the 'Demand curve'.

Can this still be said when we're considering the economy of a whole country, or the whole world?

Both. Trade exists across invisible lines, even when the owners of the invisible lines forcibly try to prevent them.

There is also positive feedback in markets due to irrational exuberance and herd behaviour.

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