Societal Path Integral by Douglas Alexander Singleton

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for the interesting essay.

I think you might find some connection with my essay on computationally intelligent personal dialogic agents. This system (I have a prototype developed as part of a NSF CAREER award) can "steer" individual interactions by providing guidance in the moment of action. I envision many kinds of evaluation incorporating a multitude of factors as the system "tests" different interventions in human dialogue. It will be able to take your idea of evaluating many small projects and moving them to the level of conversations.

I'd appreciate a rating, if you can do that, since I am a bit short on ratings, and also appreciate it if you know of any potential collaborators in the further development of the dialogic system.

Thanks,

Ray Luechtefeld, PhD

Hi Janko,

Thanks for reading my essay and now that we have more time I will be able to read yours.I still have a list of other essays I promised to read, but the points you make are interesting and appear to have some connection to some of the themes in my essay. In regard to capitalism vs. socialism I would say one needs a socialistic form of capitalism :-) or probably more plainly capitalism with socialistic constraints in order to make the system a fair competition. For example, after the fall of the Soviet Union there was probably no more purely capitalistic place on Earth than Russia -- everything was for sale. But very quickly the wealth of Russia was concentrated into the hands of a few oligarchs. What seems to happen in unfettered capitalism (at least this appeared the case in Russia) was that after a brief period of competition the "winners" would use their position to unfairly crush the competition at which point one no longer had real capitalism -- a fair and open market place. Thus my conclusion was that one needed some outside constraints in place to prevent this from happening. However if some country becomes too regulated this is also not good.

On a different topic I agree with Phil Gibbs' critic of peer review. A lot of nonsense gets published that is just minor piddling with equations, and some stuff gets rejected that is really worthwhile. In this regard Phil is correct that not having an academic affiliation will put you already at a disadvantage. However, even if you have an academic affiliation and even if you have won a Nobel prize there can be resistance if you propose a really new idea. Look at the discussion above with Peter Jackson. He mentions a Nobel laureate in chemistry (Dan Shecktman) who proposed some novel idea in chemistry but had his work rejected for a long time. In a recent Cosmos episode it is discussed how Faraday's later ideas of E&M fields were ignored despite his many earlier successes. Finally there is the case of Julian Schwinger, one of the giants of 20th century physics, being rejected when he started to work on a theoretical basis for cold fusion. Cold fusion of course in regard to the original claims appears wrong, but there nevertheless seems to be some interesting but not understood reaction going on and at the time it was not clear immediately this was wrong so Schwinger was looking to see if there was some theoretical basis for this. I think Schwinger was so upset/disgusted with the reaction of his peers that he quit the National Academy of Science.

Anyway I will get to your essay before next Friday. Best,

Doug

Hi Doug

If you will read my essay, you will see that I think similarly as you. My arugment is that gaussian curve go from -infinity to plus infinity. I wish to say that university people have better chances for good idea, but, people outside the university has smaller chances, but this chance is not zero. Thus, for them we need better stronger filter. But the politics of arXiv, for instance is that almost absolutely reject our papers. (endorser, almost zero possibility).

About capitalsm I agree with you, it should be regulated.

But I only wish to say, that ideas (arXiv) or products (capitalism) come also from less state planed projects or from people with less capacity, although with less probability for sucess. If we cut gaussian curve that all that remain is very close to average, we loss, let us say 99% of all possible good products, or good ideas.

Best regards

Janko Kokosar

Hi Doug,

Your essay is extremely interesting, and I realize that it is of direct relevance to my work. Thank you very much for conceiving of it and crafting it so beautifully. I have downloaded it and I will be studying it further.

I started to expound upon such relevance, but I realize that any such discussion should be conducted after you have had a chance to read my work (if you haven't done so already).

In any case, I've rated your essay highly. I feel that it has some extremely important information for the optimization of our future course. All the best!

Warmly,

Aaron

P.S., You've probably read it, but if you haven't, I think you'll love Feynman's lecture on the principle of least action, Vol. 2, Ch. 19 of his [link:selfdefinition.org/science/25-greatest-science-books-of-all-time/20.%20Feynman%20et%20al.%20-%20The%20Feynman%20Lectures%20on%20Physics%20Volumes%201%20-%203%20%281963%29.pdf]Lectures on Physics[/link].

Doug,

I found your essay very readable well-thought-out and relevant. Far be it for me to judge how humanity should steer the future (I have made Einstein say as much in my essay) and particularly the very reasonable and logical multiple path search optimisation method you have suggested.

My instincts however are that in social and political action people just go ahead and do what they know best, the tried and true, the easiest, or in a society like Japan, what is least likely to be criticised by friends and neighbors. In other words searching out different possible paths may go against the grain of human nature.

Or indeed of physics, Feynman notwithstanding. In my Streamline Diffraction Theory the streamline is the path integral along which energy flows as light diffracts. And according to my Beautiful Universe theory, nature follows these streamlines to propagate energy, form atoms and all sorts of fields. In all these cases, Nature finds a unique path from A to B. Perhaps humans have evolved to act that way too. Picasso said "I do not seek, I find". Perhaps for humanity to get out of its present difficulty, such confidence, even arrogance and sense of venturing linearly along a a single path (and I do not mean that Bali bridge!) is needed.

Yours is certainly the safer way, though!!

Best wishes

Vladimir

Hi Vladimir,

Thanks for having a look at my essay and your comments.

Yes, whether my proposal or any proposal would be implemented is a big question. The people entrusted to enact laws for society and provide direction are often driven by the desire to stay in office which is a very poor motivator for (or at least is uncorrelated to) building a well functioning and logical society. This was the point of my ending story in the essay. In any case I agree that coming up with some plan and actually implementing it are very different beasts.

Also since you use Einstein in your essay (which I will try to read soon) let me say that he is an example, in the scientific realm, of going straight toward a goal rather than trying out different paths. Einstein had a fixed set of concepts in mind of how Nature should work and he was vindicated in his choice of concepts with special relativity and general relativity. However, later in his scientific life this dogged adherence to these fixed concepts lead him only to dead ends (apparently, since it could still be that when we really understand QM Einstein's adherence to his idea of how Nature should work may be proven correct). So if I take your meaning correctly you would suggest that having a social/political version of Einstein would be better than the slow trial and error method suggested by my path integral metaphor. I agree with this but (i) Einstein's in any field are extremely rare (ii) even Einstein was (apparently) wrong after some point in his life by his strict adherence to certain fundamental concepts. The path integral suggested approach is a way to have built in flexibility and openness to new directions once old directions have taken one as far as one can go. It has the disadvantage of being much slower than an inspired move in the right direction, but it also would avoid "inspired" moves in the wrong direction (e.g. Pol Pot's turning Cambodia into an agrarian communist "paradise").

I will get to your essay soon. Best regards,

Doug

Hi Doug,

Thanks for bringing some basic physics into tbe essay mix. Calculating the best probabilities for the future is the method to steer to desired goals.

I advocate a technique to use when the goals are fuzzy... universal education. Take a look, I think you will find it interesting.

Thanks,

Don Limuti

Hi Doug,

Thank you for your thoughtful comment on my thread. And I have a reply you may want to see. And I'll love to know you did see it.

Bests,

Chidi

Doug,

A Da Vinci quote that I like is "the greatest misfortune is when theory outstrips performance" - so whether the theory is your many-paths exploration or my single-streamline to the goal, the devil is in the details and in the actual working out of these generalised ideas. The 'genius' leader leading his country to glory or to infamy is an extreme case of this singular path concept and it is not what I have in mind - what I am saying is that things are so complex and intertwined (society with economics with the environment with media etc etc.) that one does not have the luxury of cool testing this or that path, but is - in a way - forced by circumstances to adjust the aims and methods in real-time, keeping the goal in sight.

Best wishes,

Vladimir

Doug,

Your reply to my comments above:

"My suggestion for how to choose a path for some particular societal question would be to run as many small scale "experiments" as possible and see which ones work best and then scale up to see if they still work at a larger scale, etc. For example if one wants a health care system try various health care systems at a small scale and see which works best according to criteria such as mortality rate, cost effectiveness, timeliness, patient satisfaction, etc. and then expand those health care experiments to a larger scale which work best according to the criteria that are picked. Of course unlike physics the choosing of criteria will be a bit subjective and different groups may weight things differently and thus choose different systems/paths."

Such small scale experiments are a great idea. In fact, Vermont has taken this ACA ("Obamacare") opportunity to try a one payer system in Vermont with the state as the one-payer. This will offer a contrast to the for-profit ACA.

Having had browser problems with ratings, I am rechecking those I've read and found that I rated yours on May 12th.

I would like to see your thoughts on my essay: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2008

Jim

Doug,

I appreciate the time you took to read my essay and your constructive remarks. Such an honest effort with insightful suggestions is very helpful to the author.

Regards,

Jim