Sh*t, the cops! Run! (an econ abstract)

"The phenomenon of group-escape cannot be explained by an argument of risk dilution, applied to gregarious behaviour of passive prey whose risk of predation is equally shared by all group members [17]. Instead, individuals at the tail of an escaping group suffer the bulk of the group’s predation risk, and thus have the highest incentive to desert it. Just because of this, desertion, in this case, may serve as a signal of vulnerability for the pursuing predator. Under wide conditions it is therefore shown that the predator is always expected to prefer the chasing of a deserter, whenever it is observed. Consequently, an individual who finds himself at the tail of the herd must compare the risk of remaining there, with that of deserting the herd and thereby becoming a likely target for predation. If the first risk is higher than the latter, the herd disperses; if the latter is higher, the herd cohesively follows the fastest individuals in its lead (we deal also with cases in which only part of the herd disperses). We see, however, that the question which risk is higher, depends on the terrain, but also on the route of escape that is decided by the fastest members at the lead of the herd, those that are least likely to be caught. Concentrating on herds without family structure, we assume that the route of escape is selfishly chosen by these ad hoc leaders to minimize their own predation risk, regardless of the others’ welfare. However, the predation risk of the leader depends very much on the willingness of other herd members to follow him, thus providing a buffer between him and the pursuing predator. Consequently, when choosing an escape route, the leader has also to consider the cohesion of the herd, i.e. the reaction of slower individuals to his choice. Under some plausible conditions, this choice may force the herd to follow, while other conditions may lead to its dispersal. In some cases the leader may choose a route that serves the needs of the entire group, and sometime only its more vulnerable members. In other cases the leader may choose a route that sacrifices the weakest members, thereby improving the survival probability of the others.
We employ a model of a k + 1 players game, a single predator and k heterogeneous prey individuals. The predator aims to maximize the probability of a successful catch, and each individual aims to minimize his probability of being caught."

From Eshel, Ilan, Emilia Sansone, and Avner Shaked. 2011. "On the Evolution of Group-Escape Strategies of Selfish Prey." Theoretical Population Biology. Vol. 80 (2), 150-157 (Elsevier).

Note: To be fair, this is as much a biology or applied mathematics paper as an economics paper, but that doesn't make it any less awesome.

Inflect the banal

Inflect the banal.
Inflect it with tinges of color, corruption, doubt, impossibility, magic, mystery.
Capture the conservatives and the dreamers,
Seduce them with the almost-imperceptible,
Tangent to the known and knowable,
The distorted prosaic.

Inflect the banal,
But don't over-do it,
Don't spew florid particulars,
Don't bask in wonderment,
Don't succumb to bombast,
Don't asphyxiate with love.

Inflect the banal,
Tickle the imagination,
Kiss it lightly,
Slither a razor blade over it,
Reserve the cat o’ nine tails,
For special occasions.

Re-posted here.

The fallacy of the unbounded

Allow me to take a stroll down memory lane.

Originally, "The Unbounded One" was a radio show and personality: my show, my personality on WERW 1570 AM and Internet Radio and later WAER 88.3 FM, Syracuse, and WHPK 88.5, Chicago.

I invented the moniker and intended it from the first to have a double significance, to refer to me, given my dedication to world music, and also to the immanent one, the totality of the world itself.

Immanence is a concept referring to presence manifested within, contained within, and intermingling with. In philosophy a mental act is immanent if it stays within the mind; if it passes through the mental barrier to make an external effect, it is transeunt. In religion, the deity is immanent, as opposed to transcendent, if it is indwelling in the universe, time, life, etc.

So the show featured two Unbounded Ones fused into one: me and a global omnium gatherum, each inherent to the limitless and immanent world.

A most perfect and mysterious thing to which I assign considerable credence seems to be the entire universe. A most unperfect and not-too mysterious thing is the human being. How to make the human being more like the universe without spreading its substance thin across the void?

As far as we know - which may not be very far - everything is constrained. Except for figments: infinity, utopia, the deity, the ideal, perhaps the imagination. If perfection is somewhere manifested, its form and substance are beyond human apprehension.

So neither I nor the world are limitless, unboundedness is a fallacy and a trap, and the term is subject to criticism. At least in principle, it's wrong, deceptive, disingenuous, dangerous. How might the fallacy of the unbounded cause trouble?

Dr. Johnson put it nicely: "A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything." One may eternally dabble, be a career itinerant, a multi-pronged and many-purposed dilettante, an impotent jack of a trades, an under-realized, half-cocked, lost lemming loser (to be polemical about it).

More specifically, if it is the case that constraints are unconstrained, if they are everywhere, there's an acute danger of over-exertion. The results can be imagined: strain, cognitive dissonance, and failure, and then--this is where things really sour--in response to failure, instead of focus and dedication and obliteration of obstacles, a dodge or re-orientation.

An objection to this uncorroborated trail of thought might be as follows: Who's really to tell the difference between over-extension and well-rounded Renaissance?

Zuckerman et al. call these two sides of the same coin "robust identity" and "non-entity" in their study of type casting in the feature film labor market" (2003). They hold that professional lives should be shaped like trees: straight and narrow and streamlined at the bottom or sapling stage, with abundant, dappled foliage appearing at the top or maturation stage.

Narrowness, focus, and simplicity helps then hinders; breadth, complexity, multivalence of identity hinders then helps. In short, bind and then unbind. It is striking that one of their main claims is that in many labor markets "boundarylessenss" may be a significant liability.

This post is as biographical and conceptual footnote in the fabrication of a fictional world: The Unbounded Microverse. But the implications run and strike deeply. Insofar as all striving (ambitious) individuals strategize, they do so by answering the following questions: what constraints, how constrained, and what to do about it?

Quotations: action, production

Note: Many of these are from the website of Elisabeth Fosslien. Look for a justification of this move later.

Kingsley Amis: For once in his life, Dixon resolved to bet on his luck. What luck had come his way in the past he'd distrusted, stingily held on to until the chance of losing his initial gain was safely past. It was time to stop doing that *.

Mawi Asgedom: Like any dream, you have to start believing that you can do it. You don't quite know how it will turn out but you start anyway. Discipline is your best friend. If you have the discipline to write two pages every day, after 150 days, you have 300 pages. I actually use this in my speeches to show students how important discipline is. Something small, writing two pages, if done repeatedly can become something big, a 300-page book. That's my motto for success: dream big, do small, every day.

Saul Bellow: what he preached at me...the thing to do: not to dissolve in bewilderment of choices but to make myself hard, like himself, and learn how to stay with the necessary, undistracted by the trimmings *... A description: wild internal disorder, or even with the fact that he was quivering. And why? Because he let the entire world press upon him. For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible... At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you enjoyed delicious old-fashioned values? You - you yourself are a child of the mass and a brother to all the rest. Or else an ingrate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, thought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs. On top of that, an injured heart, and raw gasoline poured on the nerves... The busy bee has no time for sorrow *.

Samuel Clemens: Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you did do... so throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails... explore, dream, discover.

Benjamin Disraeli: Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

Seth Godin: Comments and Twitter are like a Fresnel lens. You can use them to focus attention if you’re very disciplined and very good, or, if you’re like me, you’ll end up finding your energy and attention diffused into a maelstrom, lost to the winds of inanity, anger or trivia. * The first thing you do when you sit down at the computer: Let me guess: check the incoming. Check email or traffic stats or messages from your boss. Check the tweets you follow or the FB status of friends. You've just surrendered not only a block of time but your freshest, best chance to start something new...the first thing you do should be to lay tracks to accomplish your goals, not to hear how others have reacted/responded/insisted to what happened yesterday * .

Samuel Huntington: Some people may say that people in glass houses should not throw stones... I do not mind performing a useful function by throwing stones and thus encouraging others to move out of their glass houses, once I have moved out of mine (jstor p. 304).

Rudyard Kipling: [Lurgan Sahib] 'By doing it many times over till it is done perfectly--for it is worth doing' *.

Somerset Maugham: In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change -- change and the excitement of the unforeseen (*).

Haruki Murakami: [Colonel Sanders] "We're talking about a revelation here...a revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That's what's critical" (255)...

[Kafka] "But I've always tried to get stronger."
"That's very important," the brawny one says, "Very important--to do your best to get stronger" (386).

Janwillem van de Wetering: Good luck comes to those who keep trying.

Ad astra.

Marcel Weber's inference to the best explanation

Source: Weber, Marcel. "The Crux of Crucial Experiments: Duhem's Problems and Inference to the Best Explanation." Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 60, 19-49

Pierre Duhem is famous for his severe philosophical criticism of severe testing, or crucial experimentation, in science. A crucial experiment would follow a form of eliminative induction as follows.

Starting with alternate hypotheses of an evidenced phenomena, an experiment could negate one or all but one by showing contradiction with the evidence. This constitutes modus tollens or denying the consequent of the form “If h1, then e. Not e. Therefore, not h1.” If e follows from h2, then by disjunctive syllogism we can conclude the veracity of h2, or the last hypothesis standing.

Such a train of inference from experimentation is admissible according to logic, but it faces two difficulties in practice.

First, hypotheses are not singular postulates but conjunctive bundles. They rely on auxiliary hypotheses which rely on auxiliary hypotheses which rely on auxiliary hypotheses and so on... This is called the problem of untested auxiliaries.

Eliminative induction fails because humans cannot pinpoint error; they cannot grab the tip of the devil’s tail.

Second, while we can purport to parse the full field of contenders in logic or mathematics, we cannot do so in physics or economics. According to Duhem, “Shall we ever dare to assert that no other hypothesis is imaginable?”

The answer, of course, is no. But Duhem’s dire turn of phrase should not deter us from saying, "Big deal," and forging on with science uncowed. We might accept a pragmatic constraint on science as necessitating or justifying a means of distinguishing between theories, because the alternative, anarchy, is unacceptable.

Said differently, Duhem’s epistemic standards are too high: imaginability is not a useful criterion with which to judge science.

The conventional answer as I have phrased it is pick the best hypothesis, call it theory, and move on. This is called inference to the best explanation and it is the line taken by Marcel Weber.

The conventional rejoinder comes as a finer distillation of the Duhem critique. This is Bas van Fraassen’s “bad lot”-argument: if all the choices are crappy, even the least crappy is still crappy. Well, crap.

Muscles and entrails

If practice makes perfect,
And practiced practices are habits,
Then perfected habits are practiced.

If mastication speeds assimilation,
And indigestion is somatic sedition,
Then unseed sedition with ration.

If excessive excess is infinite infinity,
And excessive moderation is infinite finity,
Then moderate excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

If the early bird catches the worm,
And the late bird captures the moth,
The booby goes to the sloth.

If phraseology is phenotypic,
And the corporeal forms assimilate infinity,
Then the emperor's clothes are immaterial.