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From: cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: sci.econ,sci.bio,sci.psychology
Subject: Re: Where are the Econ Futurists?
Message-ID: <1991May14.180745.21480@lgc.com>
Date: 14 May 91 18:07:45 GMT
References: <711@mixcom.COM> <12548@ptolemy-ri.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov> <735@mixcom.COM>
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In article <735@mixcom.COM> mmvvmm@mixcom.COM (Daniel Offutt) writes:
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>specifically excludes market mechanisms.  If betting were not illegal in
>most places, then "idea futures" would need no promoters, "idea futures"
>would arise naturally and become very common.  On the other hand, I have
>never heard of betting on scientific questions, or presidential campaign
>promises in Las Vegas.  Maybe the basic problem is that the government
>increasingly refuses to enforce contracts in this country.  Who will buy an
>long-term idea future when the government might decide to invalidate them ten
>years hence?
I'm sure that's a lot of it.
>
>Getting the market process up and running inside computers is a different
>matter.  Miller and Drexler have talked and written about doing that, and have
>maybe done some experiments.  John Holland and some of his students have gotten
>into this sort of thing with so-called "classifier systems," though the
>emphasis is on machine learning, not economic modeling.  And there was some
>work done on a kind of design automation or design evolution system by
>Lawrence Davis, reported at the 1989 conference on Genetic Algorithms. 
>That system apparently works well, and though Davis did not explicitly draw
>a comparison between its operation and the market process, it seemed to
>me that there was such a similarity.  I am convinced that we will be seeing
>more of this kind of thing in design automation/evolution systems in the
>next five years or so, even on ordinary PCs.
Others are convinced too, on some level.
1.  I've come across at least two recent histories
    of the *idea* of the market, from a perspective
    consonant to your.  The references are buried
    now.
2.  Computer people now phrase some of their algor-
    ithms (is there a more general term I should be
    using?) in terms of "market-based" solutions.
3.  It might interest you to look into what I under-
    stand developmental and neurobiologists call
    Darwinian models of brain organization.  Growing
    nervous systems are made up of many smaller,
    more-or-less autonomous units; many or most or
    all of these units specialize into their final
    roles through negotiations with their environ-
    ment, in ways that are reminiscent of market
    processes.
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Cameron Laird				+1 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com (cl%lgc.com@uunet.uu.net)	+1 713-996-8546