Charity, population dynamics and the limits of rationality. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 15
About This Presentation
Title:

Charity, population dynamics and the limits of rationality.

Description:

... markets, they have built bridges, they have opened bathing-houses. ... Their markets are gathering-places for harlots; they have built baths for the purpose ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:43
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 16
Provided by: wolandP
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Charity, population dynamics and the limits of rationality.


1
Charity, population dynamics and the limits of
rationality.
  • Lunch talk, IAS HUJI
  • December 2006

2
Charity 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)
"?????? ???? ???? ?????? ???????", ?.?., ?????
296 (????? 06)
4
To 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.

5
Malthus 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.

6
Was Malthus right? (1)
  • In fact, the population actually grow
    exponentially

Not enough for the poor in UK
7
Was Malthus right (2)
  • But the GDP grows even faster

8
Was Malthus right (3)
  • And the per-capita GDP
  • Are we catalyze the growth ? (Das human
    capital)

9
(No Transcript)
10
So, 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 ?
11
Buridans 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.

12
The 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 !!!!

13
Noise 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
14
Conjecture
  • 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

15
Bon Appetite !
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com