Gregor Mendel and the Reason I Love Science
Today is the birthday of the Father of Modern Genetics. Check out Ice Dynamo (icedynamo.blogspot.com), and let Gregor Mendel show you why science is so awesome.
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Excellent!
see that we need more power and clean water??? -- j
The reason I ask is that I see an analogy between evolution and economics. If economics is defined as the study of how humans obtain those things needed for their survival. Then if humans were not rational animals and therefor did not invent, then the study of economics would be the same thing as the study of human evolution.
I like the analogy that changing basic parameters is adaptation (more research or cutting overhead is like eating or exercising), but changing fundamental business features is like evolution (like products to services, outsourcing manufacture, etc). Businesses are born and die everyday; however, infrequently they do change their DNA and rise from the ashes, for example IBM of 1940s vs today.
Suspect the same could be thought of in a macroeconomic analysis. Capitalist, socialist and communist economies competing, being "born", revolutions, etc.
In both cases the basic structure (e.g. as defined in lifeforms by DNA) can be changed. I like the analogy.
I know this is not the conventional way of looking at economics.
Only man can study. That knowledge can be passed on through teaching.
THIS is what naked mankind a unique and advanced creature.
Perhaps a way of thinking about this question is to examine the survival, evolution and adaptation of animals that do not reason (significantly). Bees and ants became economic socialists. Bears and many other species simply compete, or are capitalists. Wolves would be something in the middle?
That is an interesting thought. I think the word "evolution" makes the concept harder, since it implies a structural change to the organism itself, but perhaps that is the eventual result.
An example might be incorporating additives to provide thixotropic behavior in paint, by considering the desirable behavior of thixotropic fluids in brushing on thinly and easily, but once not moving, adopt a think behavior to avoid drips. Thixotropic materials become less viscous when moving (sheer forces), but are think when stationary. Invented in the late 60's, virtually all paints have this behavior now, which is why they feel so slippery. Quicksand is another simple example.
You bring up a good example WRT the history of a technology. A long time ago, we were seeking high power density power systems, and higher frequency (e.g. 400 Hz) was a solution, but circuit breakers were a problem. However, vacuum breakers, common in medium voltage, began their application in RF communications, and are perfectly suitable. We were looking at other lower power technologies. Vacuum bottles worked fine. There are great examples of this too, particularly when a previous barrier to a technology application is overcome somewhere else, and what didn't work, is now fantastic.
Physiological adaptation is an adjustment to the environment that occurs within an individuals lifetime. An example of physiological change is weight training: you stress your muscles and they respond by cells getting bigger, increasing the number of mitochondria, etc. This isn't a genetic change - bodybuilders don't have kids that hulk out of the womb.
Evolutionary change is on the genetic level. You're born with the genes you have, and for the moment there's not a lot you can do about this. By luck of the draw, some organisms have a mutation that makes them better able to reproduce - they're more attractive to potential mates, better able to survive the winter and make it to mating season, etc. Those lucky winners get to have more kids, and their kids get to have more kids, so that mutation increases in frequency in the population. Such a mutation might involve more physiological adaptability - someone who can build muscles easily may attract more mates than someone who can't, but ultimately evolution acts on the genetic level.
With that in mind, I view economics as more like physiological adaptation - how people adjust their production to changing intellectual and physical resources. You might be able to correlate economic data to genetic data to make a case for evolution - IQ (which is pretty much entirely genetic) increases generation after generation, people with productivity orientations (along with associated genetic markers) are increasing in frequency within the population, etc. However, it would take a lot of data to make such a case.
Interesting supposition that an economic system chosen by man may have an effect on evolutionary change on man. Would that mean a poorly chosen economic system would have a detrimental effect? For instance, the great welfare state may very well circumvent the natural culling of the heard, so to speak, and foster increased populations of lesser IQ and lesser productivity orientations.
However, to even discuss such a proposition is to tread on thin ice or dangerous ground. I guess it would be far better to approach the subject as you did. That is, presuppose IQ and productivity orientations are always increasing. Like you said, it would take a lot of data to make such a case. Some of this ground was covered back in the 90's after a book called "The Bell Curve" was published.
I'm aware of the circumstances and studies you cite that encourage the "wrong thing" in people. I can't seem to recall any similar deliberate behavioral studies that encourage people to do the "right thing".
Yes we are working hard on the next book. We hope to have it out before the end of the year. Yell at Kaila, she is the hold up right now.
opposite of my personal conviction that our free nation
tends to sponsor both in-lifetime and after-lifetime
advances is shown in this movie. perhaps our
killing of the golden goose will result in negatively-
descendant mutants? -- j
If we're so much smarter now... how come we're so much dumber?
I found your point about the Flynn Effect very interesting. Is it true across all countries? If not then it could just be the result of better nutrition. If so then there might be some interesting genetic questions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBvIweCI...
-- j
p.s. I just wrote this, and my points have already
declined to zero. new rule in the software?
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/b2...
Also, if you haven't, you might read:
The Marching Morons
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluth...
and:
The Little Black Bag:
http://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/kornbluth...
I think the thing to consider in evaluating your proposal is something you yourself have already pointed out: that in one case we have animals who are "changed" by their environment, and in the other you have the environment being changed by man - two wholly different methods and outcomes. As such, I would say that you have already answered your own question. ;)
I would agree with your conclusion: reason is fundamental and critical to the origin of economics. Nice line of reasoning there. A slightly different "adaptation" (pun intended) of the nature vs nurture argument, but applied to economics. Again, well said.
For instance, I do think that there will eventually be a mathematical relationship (a la "grand unified theory") that will ultimately describe the relationship between electromagnetism and gravity at some point as well. The question is how to resolve the seeming discrepancies in the various models.
“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth." — Atlas Shrugged
Without _reason_, without the evolution of our conceptual consciousness, we're back to a planet of the apes.
Cheers
So, with the myriad of economic theories in our current society, it would seem ripe for observation as to whether economics is evolutionary: apply environmental stress and see which theories survive. Hmmm. Probably one that stresses preparedness and individual competence and voluntary interrelations...?
Jan
And, obviously, I need to remedy my skills at basic arithmetic as well. Please be gentle; I was BC (Before Coffee).
Jan
However, your professor was wrong. The ethics of science requires telling the truth first and foremost, which means reporting the data accurately. This is why we know global warming prophets are not pushing science they are pushing a religion.
I also disagree with his definition of economics (there are several out there), because it has an inherent socialist premise - that someone is in charge of the allocation. It also includes the premise that resources are fix (zero sum game).
And you are assuming facts not in evidence. "The allocation of scarce resources" is simply a declarative. The only assumption I read into that is that property rights are inviolable and, regardless of the morality and agenda of the owner, the owner decides on the allocation. I also find no assumption that the resources are "fixed" in that statement. The leftist, democraps, socialists, collectivists, progressives are the ones that read spurious assumptions into it because then need (and depend on) a rationale for theft, what they call economic equality. They cannot accept that equality and liberty (property rights) are mutually exclusive and so read fiction into that declarative. They read into it: "But doesn't the owner of the resources have a moral duty to provide for those with fewer resources?" The answer is "no." He has a moral duty to live by his standards and that is all. If he is a nice guy, he allocates accordingly. If he is an SOB, he allocates accordingly with no exogenous force on his decisions.
Going to your point on scientists telling the truth, I'm in an ongoing and frighteningly polite intercourse with two AGW proponents, Google Eric Grimsrud, for one, and they simply will not answer "cut the crap" questions. The other is a professor at the U of Utah. They clearly have an agenda that does not stand up to truth and they obfuscate brilliantly. I have expressed my dismay at the AGW side for the lack of honesty but have made no inroads, yet, with their ideas. Oh, well, intellectual sparing keeps my feeble brain in low gear......... LOL
What do you mean by "economic growth theory?" My thought in using that concept is how economics works in different periods in history. A great (and entertaining) resource is Fernand Braudel's "The Structure of Everyday Life" about the daily economic decisions made in the the Middle Ages. Sub title is "civilization and capitalism in the 15th-18th centuries."
By the time John Stuart Mill comes around it is impossible to deny the changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution and he predicts the economy will grow for awhile and then reach a plateau, which he sees as positive.
Historically, economics states the inputs to the economy are Land, Labor, and Capital. Land is fixed so growth cannot come from there. Increasing the population does nothing to increase real per capita incomes. So most growth models focused on the increase in capital. However, because of diminishing returns, increases in capital will continually have lower returns. Updated version of this idea ignore this problem. However, just injecting capital into third world countries has never resulted in economic growth. This does not explain why the Industrial Revolution happened or why it happened where it did.
Robert Solow does a study in the 50s or 60s and shows that most (all) economic growth is not the result of increases in capital, but increases in technology.
Paul Romer is the best known New Growth Theorist. I do not agree with everything he says, but he demonstrates the point about technology fairly well in this article http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/Econ....
As I said I am writing a book on this, so I could go on forever.
Malthus, Mill, Ricardo, Hume, Smith... all of them, did not see what technology could bring about because, in a historical sense, they had seen only historical technological developments like the stirrup, ox yoke, improved plows, water powered mills and, eventually, steam power, allowing technology to explode.
Solow is right, IMHO, that it is not the increase in capital that creates more wealth (except in the sense of "rent" from land) but I see it as the allocation of individual minds in a free market. Very little capital was employed by Jobs and Gates, in the beginning.
As long as my mind is wandering, let me add my thoughts on "the business cycle" which, I believe, is an organic, unavoidable happenstance within free markets. That problem can be worked through, by individuals (companies), by allocating scarce resources efficiently. That increased efficiency is a component of increased wealth.
The problem, IMHO, is the all-knowing experts in government, rationalizing Keynes and Marx, is to "fix" the business cycle which is based on a morality involving theft, the initiation of force, cronyism, favoritism, fraud and predictable government incompetence.
Okay, I'm going to go take my nap.......(smile)
cause of the increase in those resources which we
call "scarce" -- the idea? creative thought covers
not only technology but also the interaction between
people (including economics) and the changes in
"culture" -- including methods of resource use,
and the selection of resources in the first place.
all of these change the size and nature of the pie
which grows and changes and is dynamically divided
by people.
it seems to me, an engineer, that it's like studying
the weather, where everything affects everything
else, and the only hope for a solution to the myriad
simultaneous "equations" is the exclusion of large
"impossible" or "damned unlikely" solution spaces.
an Israeli software designer did this with a factory
scheduling product which was called OPT, at first,
which we used where I worked. fantastic, but
very complex. it did not allow for changing capacity
and consumption rates, nor changing resource-
use alternatives, during repetitive scheduling.
the dynamism of the real world defies easy
simplification.
at least, right now, we have life proving that John
Maynard Keynes was wrong -- as his ideas
have been employed recently.
whatta challenge!!! -- j
The economics profession has tried to use the mathematics of Quantum Mechanics to explain how the economy works. So far it has resulted in very little useful information. I think (at least in part) this is because inventions are not a variable that can be put into your simultaneous equations.
I created an equation for my grandson to simplify where wealth comes from: Sun+Earth+Ideas = Wealth and I made sure he learned that wealth is not measured in money, it is measured in the quality of life.
Economics, the allocation of scarce resources to improve the quality of life, if you will, gets sticky when some have different ideas about how it should be distributed. AR stated "never initiate force" and that should be the primary tenet of any distribution system.
In my opinion no school of economics is consistent with Rand's ideas. For instance, they do not emphasize or build upon the idea that man is a rational animal, that he creates thinks to improve his life by inventing (of course reproduction of inventions is important and is known as manufacturing), which is the source of economic growth.
Anyway that is the thesis of my next non-fiction book. Although I will not be emphasizing Rand.
Some kinda monk, right? hmmm...
Speaking of fermentation scientists, that happens to be my background and hobby. If you want to learn how to homebrew hard cider in 15 minutes, check out my post: http://icedynamo.blogspot.com/2014/07/ho...