Friday, September 26, 2008

Book

finished The Logic of Life by Tim Harford today.  The book on rational choice theory, economics, little bit on game theory.


The underlying and most important statement that the book builds on is that people are rational.  And "Rational people respond to incentives and trade-offs.  When the costs or benefits of something changes, people change their behaviour.  Rational people thinking - not always consciously - about the future as well as the present as they try to anticipate likely consequences of their actions in an uncertain world..." 

And goes on to give many examples of how rational peoples' choices not necessarily lead to a "good" outcomes.  One of it was the rational racist/sexist/ageist example.  This rational choice theory of people leads to the emergence of steroetypes, of treating people as members of a group than as individuals of their own right.

It kind of exemplifies the system dynamics methodology, where systems' structures are analysed based on the circle of causality, where every happening/event is a cause and an effect of another.  There you distill the structure and identify self-reinforcing or balancing loops.  Steroetype and discrimination, and many other phenomenons are the self-reinforcing loops.  The interesting thing is, whether or not it a self-reinforcing loops ends up being a virtuous or vicious cycle is caused the difference in initial conditions - which sometimes seem to be due to random events. 

I have many things to read up this weekend.  I cannot imagine coding again.

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