On: Exponentials, Economics, and Ecology

Transmission Series Ep. 6

Episode: 32

Date: May 12, 2020

Evolutionary biologist.

Review of 5 Transmission Essays.

• Chris Kempes and Geoffrey West on understanding cities to respond to pandemics
• Eric Maskin on mechanism design for the market
• Pamela Yeh and Ian MacGregor-Fors on studying wildlife in empty cities
• Sidney Redner on exponential growth processes
• David Wolpert on SARS-CoV-2 and Landauer’s bound

Key Takeaways

• Complex systems.
  • Compress and accelerate what was already there.
  • Higher variation in outcomes (exponential differences).
  • Harder to predict outcomes.
  • Harder to intervene.
  • Increased uncertainty.

Key Concepts

David Wolpert on SARS-CoV-2 and Landauer’s bound

• There are energetic limits to computation.
  • Logical manipulation of information generates heat (Landauer Principle).
  • Heat is dissipated into the environment.
  • Puts a limit on how computation: “stuff” gets (too) hot.
• The corona virus circumvents limitation by “outsourcing” computation.
  • Hijacks the machinery of the host to do all the work of copying the virus.
• Extended phenotype: most of the virus is not the virus…
  • The host contributes most of the machinery needed for replication.
  • Other (outsourcing) examples:
    • A spider and its web.
    • Technological “hyper-objects”:
      • iPhone is small, server backbone supporting it is huge.
  • Many “costs” are out of sight.
    • Hidden costs, externalities.
• Unclear where to draw boundaries around individuals or individual objects.
  • Depends on observed scale in terms of time and space.
• Something to do with causality and control.
  • Where does the center of causality extend to, the point of no control.

Sidney Redner on exponential growth processes

• Exponential growth.
  • Extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.
    • Variation in initial conditions leads to substantial differences in outcomes.
  • Tiny measurement errors or differences are amplified massively.
    • Amplifies uncertainty.
• Exposure to more complex, exponential systems = more volatility = more variation in outcomes = more uncertainty = more difficult to deal with.
  • Difficult to control or influence.

Chris Kempes and Geoffrey West on understanding cities to respond to pandemics

• History of humanity has largely been rural.
  • Shaped our institutions and intuitions.
• Now, majority lives in cities.
  • Speeds everything up.
  • General theme: compression and acceleration.
• Cities are machines that drive scaling laws for many socioeconomic quantities.
  • Wages, wealth, disease transmission.
• Makes it difficult to predict or find points of intervention.
  • Difficult to integrate across the many dimensions of these networks.

Eric Maskin on mechanism design for the market

• What to do when market efficiency is compromised.
  • Game theory.
    • Agents consider strategic options associated with different pay-offs.
    • Solution is the strategy with the highest pay-off.
    • Investigate accessibility and stability of solutions.
  • Mechanism design.
    • Turns game theory on its head.
    • Appropriate strategy when certain information is missing.
    • Starts with the solution, then looks for strategies and pay-offs needed to get there.
    • Design a system (voting, auction) to achieve the desired solution.
    • Example – dividing a cake among 2 people:
      • How to avoid tragedy of the commons?
      • One person cuts, the other person chooses.
    • General principle: outsourcing the utility function to others.
      • Align the individual incentive with the global social welfare function.
      • Provide an incentive to both buyer and seller to do the right thing.
  • Over time, regulatory coordination may emerge.
    • Top-down control can emerge in self-organizing systems.
      • Aligning incentives for various agents within the system.
      • Constraining the landscape of possible outcomes.
      • See Complexity — David Krakauer, Part 3 on the role of internal regulatory constraints.

Pamela Yeh and Ian MacGregor-Fors on studying wildlife in empty cities

• How long does it take for species to adapt?
  • Corona virus changes the environment for many species.
  • How do species adapt when humans are no longer around.
  • See Complexity — David Krakauer, Part 3 on the role of external regulatory constraints.