progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
The reason for this state of affairs is the fact, to which I have already briefly referred,
that the social sciences, like much of biology but unlike most fields of the physical
sciences, have to deal with structures of essential complexity, i.e. with structures whose
characteristic properties can be exhibited only by models made up of relatively large
numbers of variables. Competition, for instance, is a process which will produce certain
results only if it proceeds among a fairly large number of acting persons."
The second thing that that was changing at the time of Hayek's talk was our ability to
model sophisticated and complex dynamic systems which were essentially random
processes 120 .
The third phenomenon which changed at that very time was the introduction of
minicomputers and the explosion of the ability to perform massive amounts of
computation in lower and lower cost environments.
Thus the three things: understanding biology via the paradigm of the gene, which is now
done through quantitative genomics, understanding how to think of systems as random
dynamic processes, and having the computer processing skills to execute the algorithms
has taken the unthinkable in Hayek's mind of biology as a descriptive science, into what
we now know as biology as akin to any engineering skill which we are all familiar with. I
can now engineer a flower color and engineer a cure to certain cancers. Unthinkable in
Hayek's talk.
However the unthinkable in macroeconomics is still there. There does not exist an
underlying paradigm of reality to work with such as a gene, a photon, an electron, a
molecule, a force field, or the like. There is just a massive set of folders with plants and
dry bones which we still measure and classify. There is no DNA to measure closeness of
species and how the genetic changes occurred to work backward and to work forward
with statistical precision.
Now let us jump to the current situation and to Larry Summers. As the Wall Street
Journal has said 121 :
"At a briefing last week, Mr. Summers provided Mr. Obama with a 30-page book
outlining options to beef up financial regulation. He asked former Fed Chairman Paul
Volcker -- an Obama adviser during the campaign who Friday unveiled his new
economic-recovery panel of advisers -- to lead the discussion. Other briefings have
included health care, particularly on changes that can be made in the economic-stimulus
and budget plans in anticipation of a health-care overhaul.
120 I published my first book in 1972, Stochastic System and State Estimation, stating in the Preface the thought,
"the world is filled with uncertainty" and then I went on. In that book I presented the methods to deal with
uncertainty and to predict with some form of certainty the future. I did so to the point of actually implementing it. It
was these very theories that were used in the guidance of the Apollo spacecraft in the late 60s.
121 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123396756857259093.html February 7, 2009.
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