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Re: Fertile Utopian Fallacies WAS: Re: [ba-unrev-talk] Systems and goals


Peter Jones wrote:    (01)

> A whole bunch of interesting stuff, leading to two observations:    (02)

1. I just started reading the book Nexus. Highly interesing.
    Main theme appears to be that networks have some regularity
    that stem from individual choces. One of the interesting conclusions
    was that many of disparities we see (and often descry) are a
    natural consequence of networks. Have yet to see the reasoning,
    but the proposition is fascinating.    (03)

    (The theory of networks appears to be a subset of complexity
     theory, but I don't know enough about either to tell how they
     relate in any more detail than that.)    (04)

2. In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", Nash wins a nobel prize for
    his "Equilibrium" theory, which seems to prove that individual
    utility is maximized when people act to achieve the best result
    for themselves AND for the group. (The scene which leads to
    the brilliant insight is not to be missed.)    (05)

Those are two fairly radical conceptual structures that would
seem to have some relevance here...    (06)