Dear Edwin,

Thank you for your essay. The thermodynamic approach to society and its economics is one which does not get enough attention.

I believe the maximization of freedom to be a proper goal. Given a society's rate of consumption of resources(energy), I would consider it to be that which minimized the energy required maintain the system itself. This is indeed a (temperature dependent) thermodynamic distribution. This implies a minimal government, but one large enough to handle any reasonable coalition of opposing forces. The system would otherwise be unstable.

I wish to take issue with the idea that money is interchangeable (equal to?) energy. First, the flow of money is opposite to the flow of resources (forms of energy. I exclude financial churning, etc.) But more importantly, that which contains the most energy is valued, in money, least. If say, gasoline were valued, in money, at its energy content, it would be 5 to 10 times as expensive as it is. It would then be essentially useless as a fuel. It is only because it is 'undervalued' that it is valuable. Similarly, if copper were as expensive as gold, it would be useless as plumbing. It is this undervaluing that drives the economy. The whole approach requires the idea of a 'use value' for things, as opposed to a 'market value,' which is all that modern economics teaches.

This in no way detracts from your using money as a thermodynamic variable, which I believe to be correct, or at least an adequate proxy.

The idea of being paid to learn, as a substitute for welfare, is also excellent. I would expand it to workfare, and guarantee employment. Everyone should have the opportunity to work, to give more than they receive. Though matters of freedom immediately complicate the issue.

Charles Gregory St Pierre

    Dear Charles Gregory St Pierre,

    I very much appreciate your comments. I agree with some of your comments on the specifics of money being interchanged with energy. I tend to think of them as the exceptions that prove the rule. Obviously a realistic appreciation of money is not as simple as I treat it for purposes of thermodynamic analysis. I'm also happy that you like the idea of being paid to learn as a substitute for welfare. The idea of course goes far beyond that, but that alone should make a significant difference.

    I've now read your fine essay and I will respond on your page. You've obviously put an awful lot of thought into these issues, and while your recommendations are, on the whole, rather drastic, you qualify the problem by insisting on "impartial evaluation". I'm not sure impartial evaluation exists or is possible. The Club of Rome in the 70s scared me for a while, but the first computer simulations of the world were obviously not up to the task. Not sure that's changed.

    My hope and belief is that the problem is not bad enough to require the strong medicine that you recommend, because my fear is that your solution is far more ideal than is possible. You expect a level of selfless rationality that is hard to envision for one of my years.

    Key is that, as you note, while you argue for urgency, there may be grounds for complacency. If there is not, your approach seems ideal (probably too ideal for reality). If you had merely stated that the problem IS urgent and we MUST follow your plan, I would oppose you on principle. But you say IF the problem is urgent, here is a good plan, and for that I commend you.

    I repeat that my belief is that the actual determination of the current state and projected future state is effectively impossible. And were it to be possible, I suspect the actual implementation of your plan would be far harsher than your well thought out vision. Yours is a top-down solution requiring more of our institutions of higher learning and of our leaders than they may be capable of. My approach tends to be more bottom-up.

    Here's hoping it's not as urgent as it may seem,

    Edwin Eugene Klingman

    Dear Edwin,

    You have certainly applied physics to this topic very imaginatively. I think the idea of the interchangeability of money and energy has much productive value. Apart from the bimodal distributions discussed in your post above, do you think there are consequences to refining the model to account for the fact that there can be large differences between the incomes and therefore the energies associated with individuals?

    I found you insights about the essence of the conservative and progressive stance interesting. I wonder, though, whether the concept of equality as presented in your essay is not a little bit of a straw man. Isn't what most people understand by that concept equality of opportunity, rather than equality of status/money/energy? If you reformulate equality in this way, does it still come out as negatively? Also, how do you account for the fact that over time the population size changes?

    Overall I think this is a very original contribution and it does put the emphasis appropriately on freedom as one of the most valuable aspects of the system.

    Best Wishes,

    Armin

      Dear Armin,

      Thanks for reading and for commenting and questioning. If you're asking whether I think the model could be pushed further, my answer would be a provisional yes. As I noted in the abstract in the paper I made pretty extreme simplifications to be able to define things clearly and derive clean results. Generally the world is not that clearly defined and the results not that cleanly derived. But then approximate equations take us a pretty long way in physics don't they?

      I expected more negative feedback than I have received since any political topic pushes hot buttons and I have seen a few rabidly political comments on others essays. You ask whether the concept of equality as presented is not a little bit of a strawman. I don't think so. When you say most people understand equality as meaning equality of opportunity, that is the classical interpretation since the founding of this country (with the obvious failures in practice that all countries have in their history.) I try to listen closely and read closely and the understanding I have is that much current thought is aimed at equality of outcomes, which I show to be unrealistic and that's putting it mildly.

      Equality of opportunity does not, cannot, and will not produce equality of outcomes. It produces a dynamic society in which one can rise or fall based on one's efforts and accomplishments. This economic mobility is two-way, with citizens rising and citizens falling, and sometimes an individual may rise and fall several times in his life. As long as they do not fall below subsistance level, that seems to be the best system. Without going into details, I started near the bottom in many ways, and have achieved my goals through hard work (and of course with luck.) I have always felt that much of the attraction to immigrants in some more traditional societies was that one could come to America and, through hard work, succeed, whereas some societies were much more based on what social or economic class one was born into.

      Obviously a country with 300 million citizens and a 250 year old government cannot be characterized in such simple terms, but, on the whole, we've had equality of opportunity, at least for 2nd generation immigrants who willingly entered the "melting pot" to become Americans. Unfortunately, there are votes to be had from "divide and conquer" and it appears that the psychopaths are determined to divide us by race, religion, gender, politics, and every other avenue thay can find. I somewhat doubt that today's corruption is inherently worse than other times in history, but communications control tools and the 'crony capitalism' certainly make it seem that way. And structural issues exacerbate the problems. For example two California senators may have represented 5 million people a centruy ago. Today they represent almost 40 million of us. Who can believe any but the most powerful have any influence with such representatives?

      If one accomplishes big things, it almost invariably generates wealth, and this allows one to accomplish even bigger goals, using one's own money, as opposed to taking other's money and then trying to accomplish things that they may be opposed to. So I am not automatically opposed to productively generated wealth disparities, only to those generated by corrupt collusion between government and corporations, as tends to be the case in the systems you write about in your essay.

      So to repeat, I don't think 'equality of outcome' is a strawman. I think it is a misleading slogan, meant to play off of ignorance and envy, to establish a two-class system where the beta class can be equal in misery, and the alpha class is above the law. We don't have that, but we've seen numerous examples this last century.

      Thanks again for writing your essay and reading and commenting on mine,

      Best regards,

      Edwin Eugene Klingman

      Thermodynamics and Mechanical Stress Models are combined in the same software using finite element analysis. Extending this to a large arbitrary number of characteristics that need to be modeled suggests a dimensional form of thermodynamics types of modeling; due to interactive relationships.

      This would be a processing hog even beyond the capability of supercomputers for any small system of constraints.

      But this parallel processing can feasibly be handled by quantum computers. I saw at least 3 other essays that similarly deals with broadly considered complex systems of interrelationships.

      Perhaps we can group all of the concepts of these similar essays into a common Mind Map.

      Thanks Edwin for your generous remark. I rated your essay a ten (10) because it is unique and in my view there is no other rates are possible. Thanks for participating and sharing your wonderful idea for mankind whatever corny of my statement is the facts are that we are all busy but we take our times to share and participate in life to advance all sentient beings. Thus, the partisans of this contest are well meanings corny individuals, wonderful human beings. We are trying our best, may be the idea is not good enough by itself but collectively will be powerful enough idea, like collecting crumbs of a cheese cake, if enough of them it becomes a delicious cake for all beings. We are what we are. Corny, let it be.

      Wishing you the best, Leo KoGuan.

      Dear Dr. Klingman,

      Your abstractions filled essay was quite well written and I do hope that it does well in the competition. I do have a minor quibble about it that I hope you will not mind me mentioning.

      Reality is unique, once. Abstract statistics are not unique. Abstract information about thermo-dynamics is not unique.

      With my best regards,

      Joe Fisher

        Dear Edwin,

        You said:"Equality of opportunity does not, cannot, and will not produce equality of outcomes. It produces a dynamic society in which one can rise or fall based on one's efforts and accomplishments. This economic mobility is two-way, with citizens rising and citizens falling, and sometimes an individual may rise and fall several times in his life. As long as they do not fall below subsistance level, that seems to be the best system."

        Well, I completely agree, so we are on the same page as for the undesirability of equality of outcomes. That is precisely why I used the term "straw man": it seems to me that the notion of equality of outcomes has been so thoroughly discredited through past political experience (especially the Eastern Bloc) that it can be considered hardly more than a fringe view.

        Now I believe that one of the great successful contemporary examples of the inculcation of "paralogic" onto the masses (or at least a substantial fraction of the US population) by the Murdochs and Kochs of the world has been to get them to cry "socialism" whenever there is a suggestion of legal or political arrangements which don't solely benefit the top 1%, without any understanding of what the term actually means. At the center of the demagoguery could very well be the conflation of equality of opportunity with the equality of outcomes. I am therefore skeptical of your claim that " much current thought is aimed at equality of outcomes" but I am willing to be persuaded by evidence. Can you give me one or more examples in the US that illustrate that statement?

        Thank you,

        Armin

        Dear Joe Fisher,

        I'm glad you read my essay and found it worthwhile. I agree with you that the statistics are not unique. I've several times wondered how you play poker. Each card dealt is unique and each set of hands dealt is unique (the players, the time and place, deck, and dealt hand, etc.). But you are still much more likely to be dealt a pair of deuces than a full house or a royal straight flush. Do you figure the odds when betting, or do you just make unique bets without giving the odds any thought?

        Looking forward to your reply. (Depending on your reply I may invite you to my house to play poker.)

        Best regards,

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Armin,

        Thanks for your considered reply. I'm glad that we agree on the basic issues. As for the degree of seriousness of the current problem (or not), I do not wish to get involved in political arguments on this thread. As I indicated above, equality of opportunity (however imperfectly implemented) has historically been the basis of the American experiment. I don't see the recent push as based on opportunity. You are certainly correct that the history of the last century should have thoroughly discredited communism and other extreme forms of socialism. If you think that this is the case and that only propaganda indicates otherwise, then you should regard my essay as pro forma, a "post-diction" (rather than prediction) of an experiment already performed.

        I hope you are correct, but I'm not convinced.

        Edwin Eugene Klingman

        Dear Edwin Eugene Klingman,

        Alas, I do not play any card games. I have heard that while IBM designed a chess playing program that defeated Kasparov, the world champion, they have been unable to design a poker playing program.

        Ruefully,

        Joe Fisher

        Edwin,

        An educational fund to replace welfare has been tried in terms of training, but welfare is not always paying one to do nothing, especially when that welfare goes to children, single working parents, the disabled, etc. Education funds cannot replace unemployment benefits. Certainly an education fund is a great idea, considering it is human investment, something we tend to do little of in current society. Our concept of education is undergoing wrongheadedness as it is, believing you can teach to tests, considering competition with other countries, many times competing the poverty-ridden in our society against foreign elite and being disturbed at the results. Privatization is the focus of so-called education reforms, not investment in people.

        The stimulus bill you mentioned was 70% politics, therein lies the problem. Politics overrides everything. Consultation with any experts, especially economic experts is unheard of anymore.

        We all talk of solutions but wrestling control from those in control and with their own agenda is probably the biggest hurdle.

        Jim

          Dear Edwin,

          What a fantastic article is this! It held my opinion through out and pray it will do extremely well in this competition.

          Your model of thermodynamics (first law) and Newton concept were my foci point in establishing a balance between technology and ecosystem. I will also want you to read the article STRIKING A BALANCE BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND ECOSYSTEM. For easy access considering the enormous entries you can find it on this link http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2020

          I will also anticipate your criticism and rating.

          Wishing you the best in this competition.

          Gbenga

            Dear James Lee Hoover,

            Thanks for your comments. You are correct that there are some problems with switching to a system driven by "pay to learn". I acknowledge these in the essay and link them under mental illness, but as you point out the issue is broader than that. However due to lack of space I did not have a chance to develop the scope my idea, which may be more radical than you perceive. It's not comparable to what you mention in terms of "training that has been tried".

            We seem to agree that, as you say in your essay, political leaders act as corporate agents." However you seem to place the problem at the feet of corporations. I don't see it that way. Corporate officers are responsible to their stockholders and don't take an oath to uphold the law and defend our rights. Neither do they have the power to put me in a cage, or execute me, or even take taxes from me at the point of a gun, all of which is pretty absolute power. So I see corporations as simply taking advantage of the corruption of those with the real power. Of course those with the real power are happy to place blame elsewhere. Along these lines you say there is no world force with authority to "assure a vibrant future" and say it should be in the hands of "people with integrity". There, of course, lies the problem. Where do you find them and how discern them?

            We agree that the universe in our own minds is not (yet?) under control of bureaucracy--the individual mind. You discuss "green technology" as "A Noble Plan" and seemed to conclude that the massive undertakings of ethanol and wind power represent cautionary tales. I very much agree.

            I would not bet on quantum computing as the answer either.

            If your suggestion is that the answer lies in the freedom of the individual's mind, I think we are in firm agreement.

            Finally, it's difficult to know how much our environment affects our thoughts. I believe you live in the LA area, while I live on a ranch. We see very different things every day.

            Thanks again for reading and commenting, best regards,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Dear Gbenga Michael Ogungbuyi,

            You suggest that we must "establish a balance between physics and the physical law of existence." You also note that the cosmic earth "is in equilibrium", which seems to support the use of the thermodynamic model, as I do in my essay and as you do in discussing the relationship between ecosystems and thermodynamics. In this analysis we both agree that "any form of dystopia leading to dehumanization, totalitarian government and environmental disaster will be injurious to the (eco-) system."

            I also note that you observe "the world literatures and films are saturated with horrific scenes and our minds are being programmed to view the future with gloom and doom." It has apparently taken hold in many minds, even in this essay contest. You note that much of this is "false experience appearing real" (fear).

            In summary, I find your message positive and believe that you have a very good perspective on the problems.

            I very best regards,

            Edwin Eugene Klingman

            Edwin,

            Technically you are right about corporations, but they are not people though given that status by the Supreme Court. There is a lot of blame to go around. We the people are to blame for blithely sitting back and assuming that our so-called representatives will look out for our interests w/o informing ourselves about what they are doing. We should know that any system such as democracy needs our vigilance and our maintenance through responsible and informed voting. Furthermore, we have allowed a conservative movement to distort the checks and balances of government and society by watching the so-called Fourth Estate disintegrate under poor executive and legislative leadership, labor unions dogged into subservience, corporations get huge, demagogic legislators exhibit vitriol but no diligence in representing us, and a Supreme Court get appointed that represents a corporatocracy not the people.

            On the corporate side, perhaps we can assume that self-interest and greed will dictate corporate decisions because we as consumers, workers and stockholders allow all of the abuse that corporations have heaped on us - in terms of employee control, pollution, poor consumer services, etc.

            The power structure is now so entrenched that it will take a dogged effort to turn things around, and it is somewhat of a global specter.

            Jim

              Jim,

              Our emphasis is different, but we surely see the same problems. You summarize it in your final sentence.

              Edwin Eugene Klingman

              In a rational 2-player game like chess, the players are playing against the configuration of the board at any particular moment (Godfrey Hardy called chess problems "the hymn tunes of mathematics"), so a mathematical algorithm is suited to the game, and it is unlikely that a rational human player can defeat an expert program like Deep Blue. However, a clever human player may manage to confuse the program with irrational moves, and gain the advantage before the algorithm has time to recover, if the game is time-limited.

              Poker is different. Play is always time-limited; the expert player at every betting round has the advantage against unskilled players, and it has nothing to do with the probabilities for certain hands. The expert player against amateurs need not even look at her cards -- she plays the players. Experts against experts, however, revert to rational play and the only luck involved is the random distribution of hands in a particular deal; over the long run, expert players will break even, just as the only solution to a perfect chess match is stalemate. The object of the professional poker player is to minimize the number of times the game reaches equilibrium for him personally -- i.e., knowing "when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em" as Kenny Rogers put it.

              So Edwin -- even though we usually always agree in principle, particularly about the continuous wave foundation of reality, we get to an impasse at the point where waves become particles. For example, while we have solid agreement that freedom of the individual (analogous to a particle) -- as the least element of a social system (analogous to the wave function) -- is the most important element in the evolution of the system, we disagree that an irrational belief system leads to rational evolution.

              That's the problem I find with your conflation of what you perceive as belief in the liberal secular state, with belief in God. The former expresses the freedom of the system to evolve rationally; the latter respects the freedom of the individual to act irrationally. One need neither believe in a statist system as we know it (a hierarchical system of governance), nor in God (a supreme hierarchy), to allow that maximal freedom of individual self-determination is paramount to assuring a continuous trajectory toward equilibrium so that we all end up being expert players in the game of life.

              Nevertheless, in spite of that disagreement, I think this essay is your deepest and most thoughtful yet -- and well written, very readable too. Wishing you much success.

              All best,

              Tom

              Dear Edwin,

              As Humanity is finite whereas the universe is infinite, Humanity may be considered as N-body whereas Universe is a many-body system with infinite integrals. Thus we may assume Humanity as a finite holarchical system, whereas Universe is an infinite holarchical system.

              As time is the core for any control system, the nature of time and its emergence to be redefined, in that the emergence of time depends on the dynamics of matter. Thus an optimal control strategy for Humanity on environmental regulations needs Virtual real-time data of the universe to minimise the freedom on asymptote for the change of entropy of Earth by Humanity, that is causal for the accelerating climate change.

              With best wishes,

              Jayakar

              P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate essays:

              10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

              9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

              8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

              7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

              6 - slightly favorable indifference

              5 - unfavorable indifference

              4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

              3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

              2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

              1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

              After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

              The following is a general observation:

              Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)