Title: Charity, population dynamics and the limits of rationality.
1Charity, population dynamics and the limits of
rationality.
- Lunch talk, IAS HUJI
- December 2006
2Charity vs. Game theory agents character and
social order
- Rational agents
- Drive Egocentricity.
- Tools Training, stick and carrot policy. (tit
for tat) - Utopia Capital growth.
- Excellence
- Individuals.
- Moto everybody has a share (Milo Minderbinder,
catch 22). - Well at least is doing better.
- Good people
- Drive Good will.
- Tools Moral education
- Utopia no need for police and law enforcement.
- Equality.
- Community.
- Moto From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs (Marx, Critique of the
Gotha Program) - Never worked.
3- R. Jehudah, R. Jose, and R. Simeon were sitting
and Jehudah, the son of proselytes, - sat before them. R. Jehudah opened the
conversation, saying "How beautiful are the - works of this nation (the Romans). They have
established markets, they have built bridges,
they have opened bathing-houses. - R. Jose said nothing,
- but R. Simeon b. Johai said "All these things
they have instituted for their own sake. - Their markets are gathering-places for harlots
they have built baths for the purpose - of indulging themselves in their comforts they
have built bridges to collect tolls from - those who cross them."
- Jehudah, the son of proselytes, went and reported
this conversation, - and it came to the ears of the government
- (Babylonian Talmud, Shabat 33b).
- Are we looking for prosperity, or for piety?
- Also an intera-religion dilemma, where the
mystical thought tend to give priority to the
intentions and devotion, the establishment
tends to prefer action, not devotion.
Spiritually authenticity oriented Thought Spe
ech Did (action)
normal religious establishment
Thought Speech Did (action)
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296 (????? 06)
4To what extent capitalism works?
- Thomas Malthus 1798
- An essay on the Principles
- of population
-
- Population growth is exponential (geometric
series). - Resources (food and other needs) grow only
linearly. - The ultimate result should be a catastrophe
famine, war or disease.
5Malthus against the Poor laws
- The poor laws of England tend to depress the
general condition of the poor in two ways. Their
first obvious tendency is to increase population
without increasing the food for its support. A
poor man may marry with little or no prospect of
being able to support a family in independence.
They may be said in some measure to create the
poor which they maintain, and as the provisions
of the country must in consequence of the
increased population, be distributed to every man
in smaller proportions, it is evident that the
labor of those who are not supported by parish
assistance will purchase a smaller quantity of
provisions than before and consequently more of
them must be driven to ask for support.
6Was Malthus right? (1)
- In fact, the population actually grow
exponentially
Not enough for the poor in UK
7Was Malthus right (2)
- But the GDP grows even faster
8Was Malthus right (3)
- And the per-capita GDP
- Are we catalyze the growth ? (Das human
capital)
9(No Transcript)
10So, is rational planning for the future possible?
Is social engineering, based on rational
predictions, desirable? Are there cases where
it is better to be ignorant ?
11Buridans Ass
- Jean Buridan (1300-1358) an entirely rational
donkey, placed exactly in the middle between two
stacks of hay of equal size and quality, will
starve to death since it cannot make any rational
decision to start eating one rather than the
other - Mathematically speaking, for any space-time
continuous algorithm that should map a
continuum (like all point 0,1) to binary
decision (say, 0 OR 1) and for any finite time
T, there should still a finite region of nonzero
measure that has not yet mapped into either 0 or
1. (think about stretching a rubber band between
2 points) Thus, if the decision making algorithm
of the donkey is deterministic, it MUST allow for
few starting point that leads to its starvation
to death. - Being rational may be dangerous to your health !!
- Relevant to ATD converters, desynchronized
peripheral devices - One may argue that this type of failure is not
common in nature. However, there are other
situations where the stacks of hay are hidden.
E.g., when the wolf pops out from his cave at the
evening to look for a prey, it may has no clue
about where it should go.
12The E-Coli case small creature, no memory.
- Two types of movement swimming in straight
lines and tumbling, determined by
the flagellar rotation. - In the absence of external stimulus, swimming
is followed by tumbling, and the new
swimming direction is
determined at RANDOM.
The bacteria acts as a random walker. - Along the swimming, the bacteria measures the
concentrations of attractants (usually food) and
repellents (usually poisons). Thus it knows what
is the GRADIENT does life becomes better along
this direction, or worse? - In the presence of a chemical gradient bacteria
will chemotax, or direct their overall motion
based on the gradient. If the bacterium senses
that it is moving in the correct direction
(toward attractant/away from repellent), it will
keep swimming in a straight line for longer
before tumbling. If it is moving in the wrong
direction, it will tumble sooner and try a new
direction at random. - There is still a random component, even in the
presence of gradient !!!! -
13Noise vs. deterministic action
- Noise may help to avoid deadlocks (Buridan), to
avoid being stuck in local maxima, to confuse
predators (game theory). - Of course, too much noise is harmful as it leads
to waste of time and energy without any purpose.
-
Optimal noise level
Benefit
Noise
14Conjecture
- ANY PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MOVEMENT ACTIVITY IS
CHARACTERIZED BY SOME LEVEL OF NOISE, CLOSE TO
THE OPTIMAL NOISE FOR THAT ACTIVITY. -
- Rational
- Life the ability to extract the benefits
from spatio-temporal fluctuations. If evolution
works, this ability has to improve with time,
including not only the deterministic parts
(detaction, memory) but also noise optimization
(?). - Some support from HRV data, but
15Bon Appetite !