RE: The Power of Power Laws

Dear John,

Maybe the play of words on 'power' and 'power laws' brings literary
interest to the topic but also we risk introducing some confusion. I
remember late Gordon Scarrott (in the prehistory of FIS--he helped to
organize the Madrid 1994 conference) on why such type of hyperbolic
distributions occur so often in human societies. Shared 'commitments' in
human groups was his tentative response... so it gets close to the angle
you want to contemplate the phenomenon. His posthumous article -quite
interesting one- is in Cybernetics and Human Knowledge (1998). Maybe Soeren
Brier can tell us the way to access it in the web.

Anyhow, the 'power' is not usually friendly regarding such type of
spontaneous emergent order -- the signature of the 'invisible hand'. My
hunch is that it promotes a type of social adaptation that treats
'uncertainty' along the time scale under a very different way than the
pretty restricted evaluation of politicians and bureaucrats (very
short-time risk minimization vs. a more or less 'scale free' optimization
outcome.) but it is difficult to put it in an adequate conceptual form.

My opinion --I would love hearing economic oriented people about that too--
is that we have barely conceptualized the 'infostructure' underlying
economics and politics.

regards

Pedro

At 02.40 30/10/02 +0100, you wrote:
>Pedro, Terry,
>
>I'm intrigued by the 'power laws' scenario. Worth exploring.
>
>Without being too Occammish how does your neurological notion of
>'power' map to cultural antecedents and meaning structures (Lord Acton,
>Nietzsche,Adler, Foucault etc) or to quotidian usage (empowerment,
>power walking, Power to the People etc)?
>
>I imagine 'branding' and 'badging' are power law signatures of firms.
>
>Re optimisation
>
>Have you noticed that the native state of a folded protein strongly
>resembles the Taoist symbol of harmony?
>http://www.faseb.org/opar/protfold/protein.html
>
>And even the fatalistic Greeks optimised Pandora's Box by leaving Hope
>inside...
>
>John H
Received on Thu Oct 31 10:57:58 2002