Simplexity

Load of "progressive" propaganda:
thinly disguised as a "popular science". What else could have come from an editor of NY Times. To my great shame, I've been fooled to pay 28 hard-earned bucks for this. If you want real things, buy Ian Steward's, Jack Cohen's books or Gell-Mann himself ("The Quark and The Jaguar" is a great one!). Buying this book is just a waste of money and sponsoring of the planet deforestation for no good reason.

nothing is as complexly simple as it seems . . .:
This book is similar to THE TIPPING POINT in that it explores the paradoxes of human problems and the sometimes disastrous results of their well-intentioned solutions. The questions that are each chapter's title are not answered by anything other than a discursive discussion of each subject. Which is entertaining on a surface level; but if you're looking for some concrete answers, this book does not provide them. The author proposes a new "science" patterned after complexity science; the hype for this theory of everything has zero compellability as it is talked up in these pages. Essentially, what is perceived as simple events and what is perceived as complex events are just too subjective a process to ever qualify as a science. As discussed in SIMPLEXITY, processes as diverse as traffic gridlock, software development, and energy consumption patterns in mammals are juxtaposed and intertwined in complexly simple ways. But to make the leap that this is science is just flatout foolish. I definitely agree with the reviewer from the Bronx that the so-called complexity curve does little to clarify the relationship between the simple and the complex; there is just too much that is objectively vague while also being perceptively subjective. Since there is no thematic bridge linking these loosely linked chapters, they tend to stand alone as separate essays. It seems to me that this in itself nullifies the notion of simplexity as a unifying phenomenon. There is just no persuasive criteria as to when something simple becomes something complex and vice versa. So, you may want to take a pass on this read; the dissatisfaction factor just ain't worth it. Parataxis The Cloud Reckoner Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

Zero-intelligence investors instead of perfectly rational presumption:
1. Blake Lebaron at Brandeis University has built a stock market virtual market allowing him to stimulate behaviors of bull, bear, static, active, and mixed and then release simulated investors into the environment. When someone tries a new strategy and do quite well, other will notice. Pretty son, a few more are trying it and it starts to become popular, a fad. Ultimately everyone starts converge on that strategy and it dominates the market, precisely the way real markets behave. 2. Economic models assume perfect rationality, of a universe of logical people all doing what they can to master their utility. 3. Investors react not so much to variables that are in their interest, but, oddly, to those that are in everyone else's interest. When the tide o the market shifts, most investors shift with it. Investors are often fooled by trends. John Miller of Carnegie Mellon call this mentality, "zero-intelligence investors"; physicist studying economics begin with the assumption that people can't think." Initially markets become to stable and robust then it collapses into instability. Researchers have turned to the behavior of fish to learn more how traders conduct themselves. 4. Simon Levi study fish management in a fluid, studying the speed, motion, and population size of schools of real fish. They found fish travel within a single body length of another fish to remain cohesive. If they get to close they collide and compete or drift to far apart and stand out too be seen by a predator. In an average school, it only takes 5 percent of the informed individual knowledge in the proper route to set the direction for the other 95 percent. As the school grows the leader size diminishes. It only takes a few individuals to set off a set of complex behavior. 5. Doyne Farmer wonder it would be possible to predict the volatility of markets by modifying an equation physicist used to determine the press sure of a gas in a box. Markets can blow up and it would be nice to predict before it happens. Farmer looked at price the stock sold for, limited orders, frequency of canceled orders. As markets order increases the volatility, the limit orders decrease the volatility, both behave like atoms bouncing around in a box. Canceled orders serve the same function as radioactive decay. Market volatility can be predicted. Farmer said, "We're not concerned with people's rationality or their reasons for placing the trades they do." Farmer observes that even stable markets drift from equilibrium toward some kind of periodic collapse like geology drifts toward earthquake or meteorologic systems drift towards hurricane. Energy is being pumped into the system. 5. Murray Gell-Mann accepted the challenge to solve what make something complex or simple. 6. Complexity, as both a scientific and social concept, is arguably more powerful than anything that comes out of a political institution. 7. How hard is it to describe the thing you're trying to understand? The shorter the description, the simpler the thing is likely to be. The clean line between long descriptions for complex things and short descriptions for simple things does not capture as much as somewhat messiers arc does. 8. The region between order and disorder gives you complexity. 9. Capitalism functions reasonably well but communism flops. 10. On the average the group does better than the individual in solving a problem. 11. Brooke Harrington observes that "the more complex the problem the more complex the environment, the more diverse points of view you need." 12. Lawrence Summer study of no financial events between 1946 to 1987 demonstrated only nine cases where international or political tensions accounted for market movement. 13. Markets are capable of moving towards greater and greater order, synthesizing new wealth out of the mere act of exchanging existing wealth, the same way that plants manufacture new matter - leaves, stems, and flowers - by stirring together existing elements that absorb water and carbon dioxide and activating them with the energy of the sun.. Yet, plants die and markets crash, leaves dry up and wealth vanishes - both examples of order collapsing into disorder and the complex withering down to the simple.

Too much of a good thing....but not a bad starting point for neophytes:
One is an ever-expanding universe of quasi-psychological, quasi-business books that doesn't seem to add very much. In the past year, I've read "The Tipping Point," "Blink," "Freakonomics," "The Social Atom," "The Black Swan," and "The Wisdom of Crowds." Now this. It feels a little bit like cashing in, actually. At one point, I felt as if I had entered some sort of vortex, as I read points and examples I had already encountered elsewhere, and was finally hit over the head with a direct quote from a fairly new book I had read several weeks earlier. If I were new to reading this type of book, this would be a perfectly fine introduction. But I feel glutted. I've reached my limit. People are odd and don't behave rationally all the time. I get it. Sometimes they behave completely predictably. Got it. If you can spot the difference, you can exploit a market. Great. Things are not always what they seem on the surface. Check. If you've already read one or two of these books, don't waste your time, really. If you haven't, go right ahead and pick this up, you'll begin to notice patterns of behavior you haven't paid much attention to before. You could really choose any of the books mentioned and get the same things out of it.

"Skillfully Authored for A Pleasurable Read":
"Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)" by Jeffrey Kluger, Hyperion, New 2008, ISBN: 978-1-4013-0301-3, HC 324/302 Epilogue 5 pgs., Notes 3 pgs., Index 10 pgs. 8 1/2" x 5 3/4". This book is a delightful read (authored by a well-known and published writer) on numerous diverse topics upon which we are all familiar with and oft become puzzled by unexpected complexities or simplicities which seem to defy rational explanation - many of which, the author deftly explains, perhaps to our consternation, are manifest by arithmetic mazes wherein orderliness is abruptly changed to chaos, confusion and much mumbo jumbo (and vice versa). Fortunately, the author uses myriads of example to which we are all familiar and, importantly, no knowledge of mathematics is required an understanding. Several examples that I found exceptionally interesting involved the evacuation of the Towers on 9/11, evacuation of buildings using staircases, static on phone lines, city growth and fractals, design of skyscrapers, Jackson Pollock's artistry unraveled, mathematics of cultural music, Zipf's Law, Cell-Phones, & modern washing machines in Korea, etc. finis