It is truly a lovely universe in which we live. As to your love of science and sf, you (and people like you) are the reason I created the blog. You'll see I've posted a few videos describing experiments and techniques you can do in your kitchen, and I have a lot more in development. I hope you can try some for yourself - there's no reason you have to stand outside the pre-Christmas store.

I suppose the selective pressures vary depending on the economic system. Under communism, people just die.

People always ask me about that movie. The data show the exact opposite trend the movie predicts. Over the last 80 years, there has been a linear increase in intelligence that is consistent spatially and temporally. It's called the Flynn effect.

Never saw "Idiocracy". When I get a chance I'll look for a trailer.

Enjoyed "Pendulum...", are there more adventures for Hank in the future?

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".

Jim, aren't you and Dale Halling ignoring the first
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

have you heard of the movie "Idiocracy"?? the exact
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

holy crap, Dr. ribbens, doesn't even a bureaucrat
see that we need more power and clean water??? -- j

I think of TRIZ as a mapping of a problem to a canonical space, and then viewing other problem solutions in that space, and mapping a potential solution from that canonical space, back to the specifics.
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.

I tend toward classical economic theory, the land, labor, capital concepts because, rationally, those three components are all needed to create wealth. Consider that those that have the land and the capital (scarce resources) have the right to allocate them but labor, unitary individuals, do not have as much weight in the equation. I pained me to realize a few years ago that, from an individual vs collective idea, that labor collectives, i.e., unions, were a "just" approach to selling value to those who controlled land and capital. Not to get into the "good union/bad union" BS, but as long as there are free minds and free markets and no force initiated, each component should (and will) be allocated depending on expected returns.

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)

I agree with invention coming from trade offs, but don't understand the 40 principles. I find most inventions have as more to do with understanding the history of the technology than pure science.

A little, but not formally. I played with a very good natural language and IP software tool that used TRIZ as the background engine, and studied it a bit. Also had a Russian scientist, now working in the US, show me his work and theories. I did not understand TRIZ then, but it was clearly the basis for all he was showing me. Someday I'll get into it formally, as another in a long list of technical distractions from doing my real job.

No, I am not familiar, but I did see what wikipedia had to say. Have you worked with this system?

I agree, but I think quantum mechanics is conceptually based on a house of cards. (clearly we have learned a lot on a pragmatic level) Most physicists ignore this as I did in grad school. I do not know how to resolve these problems, but there are some research physicists working on them.

The reason economics got the name the dismal science is that all the classical economists predicted that economic growth (real per capita) would be limited by diminishing returns and/or increases in population. As a result, they all predicted that the majority of humans would always live on the edge of starvation (Malthusian Trap - another link to evolution).

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.

Haha, I must need a cup myself. I didn't even catch that. I was more focused on the gist of the statement than the details.

Great site...I recall seeing it before in passing, but I never marked it and have not gone back to it as a custom. I need to remedy my error! Thank you for the link, Kittyhawk.

And, obviously, I need to remedy my skills at basic arithmetic as well. Please be gentle; I was BC (Before Coffee).

Jan

Have you looked at TRIZ?

Added as a corollary to my 56th Law.
Thanks!
Excellent!

I agree. Truth is truth and can sometimes be applied in multiple fields - if one is bright enough to identify the parallels and relationships.

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.

I think that economic or political systems definitely select for certain types of people (although I am not sure this anything to do with genetics). Specifically, unfree societies select for the cruelest most evil people and free societies select for creative, respectful, heroic people. (Rand said something like this) Part of the point of our novels is to show this. And there is some research to back this up. There have been studies of how ordinary people could be turned into such sadists as guards in concentration camps. Or the psychological study of giving people shocks - the Milgram Experiment.

The thing I love about economics is that it covers every aspect of human existence. Cavemen, allocating scarce resources to survive, CEOs allocating scarce resources, my dad, a machinist, allocating scarce resources, all the same process and the laws of economics applying equally to each decision they made regardless of the time in human history.

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."

Thanks for the link to John Hawks' fascinating blog. I spent about 30 minutes reading, and I'll definitely return. Have you come across this one: http://dienekes.blogspot.com/ ? It has similar content, and is one I keep revisiting.

Sounds like he was an excellent teacher. I am working on a book that challenge some of the underlying ideas of economics - I am particularly interested in economic growth theory. Strangely enough an area in which there has been very little research. I just completed a survey of the thinking of economists in this area.