THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC MISBEHAVIOR [7.26.09]
By George Dyson
An Edge Original Essay
Introduction
Is the economy really as bad as it seems? Is the bad economy as real as we think? Expanding upon last year's essay Economic Dis-Equilibrium, George Dyson takes another look back at how we got into the state we're in — and how to find our way out.
— JB
GEORGE DYSON, a historian among futurists, is the author of Baidarka; Project Orion; and Darwin Among the Machines.
Further Reading. George Dyson on Edge: Turing's Cathedral; The Universal Library; Economic Dis-Equilibrium; Darwin Among The Machines; Or, The Origins Of [Artificial] Life
THEORY OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC MISBEHAVIOR
"I refuse to accept however, the stupidity of the Stock Exchange boys, as an explanation of the trend of stocks," wrote John von Neumann to Stanislaw Ulam, on December 9, 1939. "Those boys are stupid alright, but there must be an explanation of what happens, which makes no use of this fact." 1 This question led von Neumann (in collaboration with Oskar Morgenstern) to his monumental Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, demonstrating how a reliable economy can be constructed out of unreliable parts.
After threats of cancellation by Princeton University Press over the "mammoth" manuscript's escalating length, the book was finally published in September of 1944. "We accepted the manuscript without subsidy or any other stipulation in the fall of 1941, at which time the manuscript was believed to be virtually complete," complained Datus C. Smith in 1943. "At that time it had a manufacturing cost of $1,275... however, in the course of finishing [the last] chapter they uncovered a rich vein of new material, and the manuscript was not actually completed for something like eighteen months... and almost quadrupled in cost." 2
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior placed the foundations of economics, evolution, and intelligence on common mathematical ground. "Unifications of fields which were formerly divided and far apart," counseled von Neumann and Morgenstern in their introduction, "are rare and happen only after each field has been thoroughly explored." 3 The von Neumann and Morgenstern approach (extended by von Neumann's Probabilistic Logics and the Synthesis of Reliable Organisms From Unreliable Components) assumes that human unreliability and irrationality will, in the aggregate, be filtered out. In the real world, however, irrational behavior (including the "stupidity of the stock exchange boys") is not completely filtered out. A new generation of behavioral economists — and new modes of economic misbehavior — are reminding us of that.
Von Neumann and Morgenstern developed their New Testament from first principles and largely ignored prior art. Among the Old Testament prophets whose work preceded them were André-Marie Ampère (1775-1836) and Georges-Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1707-1788). Buffon was a celebrated naturalist whose evolutionary theories preceded both Charles and Erasmus Darwin, advancing ideas that were risky at the time. "Buffon managed, albeit in a somewhat scattered fashion," wrote Loren Eiseley, "at least to mention every significant ingredient which was to be incorporated into Darwin's great synthesis of 1859." 4 Buffon's son and Ampère's father both died under the guillotine in postrevolutionary France.
Buffon's Essai d'arithmétique morale, published in 1777, launched the fields of behavioral economics and evolutionary game theory by posing a simple question: why will someone purchase a lottery ticket when they are more likely to die in the next 24 hours than win? Buffon also introduced what, thanks to Stanislaw Ulam, we call the Monte Carlo method. First improvised as a way to numerically evaluate a physical system by invoking a statistical model, Monte Carlo approximations — given ever more powerful computers — are steadily becoming more faithful to the underlying nature of reality than the analytical methods they replaced.
André-Marie Ampère (who coined the term Cybernétique in reference to control theory) published his Considérations sur la théorie mathématique du jeu (On the mathematical theory of games) at the age of twenty-seven in 1802. Ampère began his study by crediting Buffon ("an author in whom even errors bear the imprint of genius") as the forefather of mathematical game theory, citing his Essai d'Arithmétique Morale. Ampère favored probability over strategy and saw games of chance as "certain ruin" to those who played indefinitely or indiscriminately against multiple opponents, "who must then be considered as a single opponent whose fortune is infinite." 5 He observed that a zero-sum game (where one player's loss equals the other players' gain) will always favor the wealthier player, who has the advantage of being able to remain longer in the game.
Von Neumann's initial contribution to the theory of games, extending the work of Émile Borel, was published in 1928. Where Ampère saw chance as holding the upper hand, von Neumann showed how losses at the hand of fate could be held to a minimum through his "minimax" theorem on the existence of good strategies, proving for a wide class of games that a determinable strategy exists that minimizes the expected loss to a player when the opponent tries to maximize that loss by playing as well as possible. Much of von Neumann and Morgenstern's 625-page treatise is devoted to showing how seemingly intractable situations can be rendered solvable through the assumption of coalitions among the players, and how non-zero-sum games can be reduced to zero-sum games by including a fictitious, impartial player (sometimes called Nature) in the game.
Game theory was applied to fields ranging from nuclear deterrence to evolutionary biology. "The initial reaction of the economists to this work was one of great reserve, but the military scientists were quick to sense its possibilities in their field," wrote J. D. Williams in The Compleat Strategyst, a RAND Corporation best-seller that made game theory accessible through examples drawn from everyday life. 6 The economists gradually followed. When John Nash was awarded a Nobel Prize for the Nash equilibrium in 1994, he became the seventh Nobel laureate in economics whose work had been derived from von Neumann's results. Von Neumann "darted briefly into our domain," commented mathematical economist Paul Samuelson, looking back after fifty years, "and it has never been the same since." 7
In 1945 the Review of Economic Studies published von Neumann's "Model of General Economic Equilibrium," a nine-page paper read to a Princeton mathematics seminar in 1932 and first published (in German) in 1937. Von Neumann elucidated the behavior of an economy where "goods are produced not only from 'natural factors of production,' but... from each other." In this autocatalytic economy, equilibrium and expansion coexist at the saddle-point between convex sets. "The connection with topology may be very surprising at first," von Neumann noted, "but the author thinks that it is natural in problems of this kind." 8
Some of the assumptions of von Neumann's "expanding economic model" — that "natural factors of production, including labour, can be expanded in unlimited quantities" and that "all income in excess of necessities of life will be reinvested" — appeared unrealistic at the time, less so now that Moore's Law is driving economic growth. Other assumptions, such as an invariant financial clock cycle, are conservative under the conditions now in play. The problem, as recent events have demonstrated, is that the surface of a bubble is also a convex set.
Von Neumann's collaboration with Oskar Morgenstern was followed by a similar collaboration with Stanislaw Ulam, aimed at developing a unified theory of self-reproduction among living and non-living (or yet-to-be-living) things. Von Neumann's death at age 54 (and the choice of a collaborator not as disciplined as Oskar Morgenstern) left a fragmentary, incomplete manuscript that was compiled posthumously and published as Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, edited by Arthur W. Burks. 9
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior and Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata were launched on a collision course. The five kilobytes of random-access electrostatic memory that spawned von Neumann's original digital universe at a cost of roughly one hundred thousand 1947 dollars, costs one-hundredth of one cent today — and cycles a thousand times as fast. An increasingly permeable barrier separates living from non-living codes. Over billions of years, biological species learned to survive in a noisy, analog environment by passing themselves, once a generation, through a digital, error-correcting phase, the same way repeater stations are used to convey intelligible messages over submarine cables where noise is being introduced. A world that was digital once a generation is now all-digital, all the time.
"An organism (any reason to be afraid of this term yet?) is a universal automaton which produces other automata like it in space which is inert or only 'randomly activated' around it," explained Ulam, reporting on a conversation with von Neumann that took place on a bench in Central Park in early November 1952. The two mathematicians had probably retreated to that park bench to discuss the top secret Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test conducted on November 1 at Eniwetok Atoll in the South Pacific, yielding 10.4 megatons — almost one thousand Hiroshimas — and a fireball three miles across. The explosion, based on an insight of Ulam's that had been fleshed out with calculations organized by von Neumann, removed the entire island of Elugelab from the map. That part of the conversation went unrecorded, but when the subject turned to creation and evolution in a digital universe, Ulam preserved some sketchy notes.
"This 'universality' is probably necessary to organize or resist organization by other automata?" Ulam asked. He (and von Neumann) realized that any real evolution in a digital universe "would have to involve an enormous amount of probabilistic superstructure to the outlined theory. I think it should probably be omitted unless it involves the crux of the generation and evolution problem — which it might?" The unbounded (and increasingly probabilistic) digital universe that Ulam and von Neumann imagined as a mathematical abstraction now exists, growing by billions of transistors per second and with more secondary storage than anyone can count. We are surrounded by codes (some Turing-universal) that make copies of themselves, and by physical machines that spawn virtual machines that in turn spawn demand for more physical machines. Some digital sequences code for spreadsheets, some code for music, some code for operating systems, some code for sprawling, metazoan search engines, some code for proteins, some code for the gears used in numerically-controlled gear-cutting machines, and, increasingly, some code for DNA belonging to individuals who serve as custodians and creators of more code. "It is easier to write a new code than to understand an old one," von Neumann warned.
Evolution in the Ulam-von Neumann universe now drives evolution (and economics) in our universe, rather than the other way around. The current misbehavior of our economy, however much it reflects misbehavior by human individuals and institutions, is more a reflection of the behavior of self-reproducing machines and self-replicating codes. We measure our economy in money, not in things. In the age of self-reproducing automata, we can suffer a declining economy, and pandemic unemployment, while still producing as much stuff as people are able to consume. We are facing the first economic downturn to include free cell phones, more automobiles than we have room for (in many locations you can now rent a car for less than it costs to park one) and computers that cost less than a month's health insurance yet run at billions of cycles per second for years.
Why the growing imbalance between the cost of people and the cost of machines? What prices are going up the fastest? Health care — the cost of maintaining human beings. What prices are going down the fastest? The cost of information and machines. What, really, is health-care reform? Human beings are being cared for by a dysfunctional, antiquated system, and we hope that this can be reformed by adopting efficiencies from the domain of machines. Where will this lead? Are we using computers to sequence, store, and more faithfully replicate our own genetic code, or are computers optimizing our genetic code (and health) so that we can do a better job of replicating them?
Replication of information is generally a public good (however strongly pockets of resistance may disagree). When financial instruments become self-replicating, trouble often ensues. The derivatives now haunting us were produced, not from natural factors of production or other goods, but from other financial instruments. There are numerous precedents for this.
As early as the twelfth century it was realized that money, like information but unlike material objects, can be made to exist in more than one place at a single time. An early embodiment of this principle, preceding the Bank of England by more than five hundred years, were Exchequer tallies — notched wooden sticks issued as receipts for money deposited with the Exchequer for the use of the king. "As a financial instrument and evidence it was at once adaptable, light in weight and small in size, easy to understand and practically incapable of fraud," wrote Hilary Jenkinson in 1911. "By the middle of the twelfth century, there was a well-organized and well-understood system of tally cutting at the Exchequer... and the conventions remained unaltered and in continuous use from that time down to the nineteenth century." 10
A precise description was given by Alfred Smee, resident surgeon to the Bank of England and the son of the accountant general (as well as the inventor of electroplating, electrical facsimile transmission, an artificial muscle, and other prescient ideas). "Curiously enough, I have ascertained that no gentleman in the Bank of England recollects the mode of reading them," Smee reported in 1850. "The tally-sticks were made of hazel, willow, or alder wood, differing in length according to the sum required to be expressed upon them. They were roughly squared, and one end was pointed; and on two sides of that extremity, the proper notches, showing the sum for which the tally was a receipt, were cut across the wood." 11
On the other two sides of the tally were written, in ink and in duplicate, the name of the party paying the money, the account for which it was paid, and the date of payment. The tally was then split in two, with each half retaining the notched information as well as one copy of the inscription. "One piece was then given to the party who had paid the money, for which it was a sufficient discharge," Smee continues, "and the other was preserved in the Exchequer. Rude and simple as was this very ancient method of keeping accounts, it appears to have been completely effectual in preventing both fraud and forgery for a space of seven hundred years. No two sticks could be found so exactly similar, as to admit of being identically matched with each other, when split in the coarse manner of cutting tallies; and certainly no alteration of the particulars expressed by the notches and inscription could remain undiscovered when the two parts were again brought together. And, as if it had been further to prove the superiority of these instruments over writing, two attempts at forgery were reported to have been made on the Exchequer, soon after the disuse of the ancient wooden tallies in 1834." 12
Exchequer tallies were ordered replaced in 1782 by an "indented cheque receipt," but the Act of Parliament (23 Geo. 3, c. 82) thereby abolishing "several useless, expensive and unnecessary offices" was to take effect only on the death of the incumbent who, being "vigorous," continued to cut tallies until 1826. "After the further statute of 4 and 5 William IV the destruction of the official collection of old tallies was ordered," noted Hilary Jenkinson. "The imprudent zeal with which this order was carried out caused the fire which destroyed the Houses of Parliament in 1834." 13
The notches were of various sizes and shapes corresponding to the tallied amount: a 1.5-inch notch for £1000, a 1-inch notch for £100, a half-inch notch for £20, with smaller notches indicating pounds, shillings, and pence, down to a halfpenny, indicated by a pierced dot. The code was similar to bar-coding, or the notches still used to identify the emulsion speed of photographic film in the dark. And the self-authentication achieved by distributing the information across two halves of a unique piece of wood is analogous to the way large numbers, split into two prime factors, are used to authenticate digital financial instruments today. Money was being duplicated: the King gathered real gold and silver into the treasury through the Exchequer, yet the tally given in return allowed the holder to enter into trade, manufacturing, or other ventures, producing real wealth with nothing more than a wooden stick.
Until the Restoration tallies did not bear interest, but in 1660, on the accession of Charles II, interest-bearing tallies were introduced. They were accompanied by written orders of loan which, being made assignable by endorsement, became the first negotiable interest-bearing securities in the English-speaking world. Under pressure of spiraling government expenditures the order of loan was soon joined by an instrument called an order of the Exchequer, drawn not against actual holdings but against future revenue and sold at a discount to the private goldsmith bankers whose hard currency was needed to prop things up. In January 1672, unable to meet its obligations, Charles II declared a stop on the Exchequer. At the expense of the private bankers, this first experiment with derivative financial instruments came to an end.
Today's Exchequer, distributed across the global banking network, splits digital tallies by the millions in milliseconds: above human scale in magnitude and beyond human scale in time. High-speed trading programs not only have access to unlimited funding; by dividing time into ever-smaller increments they also, effectively, have access to unlimited time, and, in the words of Ampère, "must then be considered as a single opponent whose fortune is infinite." Can this be stopped?
Financial systems exhibit the Gödelian incompleteness characteristic of all sufficiently powerful formal systems: within the given system it is possible to construct statements (or financial instruments) whose value appears to be sound, but cannot be proved within the system itself. No financial system can ever be completely secure and closed. There is no limit to the level of concepts (including fraudulent ones) that an economy is able to comprehend. The system depends on trust.
"A Banke is a certain number of sufficient men of Credit and Estates joyned together in a stock, as it were for keeping several mens Cash in one Treasury, and letting out imaginary money at interest... and making payment thereof by Assignation, passing each mans Accompte from one to another, yet paying little money," wrote Francis Cradocke in 1660, in An Expedient For taking away all Impositions, and raising a Revenue without Taxes, By Erecting Bankes for the Encouragement of Trade. 14 Establishing a bank requires secure information storage to keep accounts, a license from the government (or an entity beyond government), a small amount of capital, and a large amount of trust.
"A Banker," explained Sir William Petty, co-founder of the Royal Society and author of Political Arithmetick, in 1682, "is honest only upon the Penalty of losing a beneficial Trade, founded upon a good Opinion of the World, which is called Credit." Credit, by definition, cannot easily be restored; its nature is to shift somewhere else. We should be less concerned with loss of money and more concerned with loss of trust. If we have to start over with more trust and less money, is this really so bad? "Is not a Country the Poorer for having less Money?" asked William Petty. "Not always," he answered, "For as the most thriving Men keep little or no Money by them, but turn and wind it into various Commodities to their great Profit, so may the whole Nation also." 15
Charles II had the right idea. He trusted (and endowed) the small group of oddballs who were forming the Royal Society, and put a stop on the Exchequer. If he had rescued the bankers, and ignored William Petty's band of Natural Philosophers, where would we be now?
When philosophy dealt with metaphysics it revealed certain facts about the human situation, which can all be summarized in the statement that it is impossible to be certain of anything.
However, as a direct consequence of the human evasion, it was very difficult for philosophers to think for too long at a time about total uncertainty, so that various partial aspects of it were stated by different people, and they very often combined their thoughts about uncertainty with a good deal of their favourite kind of evasiveness. This is why their books were so much longer than necessary -- but this is true of almost all books by sane people.
Descartes, for example, began by placing everything in doubt.
I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth; but that there is an evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent, and does his utmost to deceive me. I will suppose that sky, air, earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external objects are mere delusive dreams, by means of which he lays snares for my credulity. I will consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, no senses, but just having a false belief that I have all these things. I will remain firmly fixed in this meditation, and resolutely take care that, so far as in me lies, even if it is not in my power to know some truth, I may not assent to falsehood nor let myself be imposed upon by that deceiver, however powerful and intelligent he may be.[1]I will reject ... whatever admits of the least doubt, just as if I had found it was wholly false; and I will go on until I know something for certain - if it is only this, that there is nothing certain.[2]
Descartes proceeds from this to the famous 'cogito ergo sum': even if all his thoughts are erroneous, something must exist to think them.
And here commences the evasiveness of Descartes: in fact, he is not really entitled to say, 'I think, therefore I exist', but only 'I think, therefore something exists'. Nonetheless, this is the highest point reached by his philosophy.
After this he first reinstates his own psychology:
What then am I? A conscious being (res cogitans). What is that? A being that doubts, understands, asserts, denies, is willing, is unwilling; further, that has sense and imagination. There are a good many properties -- if only they belong to me. But how can they fail to? Am I not the very person who is 'doubting' almost everything; who 'understands' something and 'asserts' this one thing to be true, and 'denies' other things; who 'is willing' to know more, and 'is unwilling' to be deceived; who 'imagines' many things, even involuntarily, and perceives many things coming as it were from the 'senses'? Even if I am all the while asleep; even if my creator does all he can to deceive me; how can any of these things be less of a fact than my existence? Is any of these something distinct from my consciousness (cogitatione)? Can any of them be called a separate thing from myself? It is so clear that it is I who doubt, understand, will, that I cannot think how to explain it more clearly.[3]
Having reinstated his own ideas, Descartes decides that they include an idea of an infinite and perfect God. Descartes might be deceived in believing two and three to make five if a sufficiently powerful God chose to deceive him, but God must exist because Descartes has an idea of God, and such a God could not be a deceiver. So Descartes may now proceed with trustful confidence to reinstate 'the whole field of corporeal nature that is the subject-matter of pure mathematics'.[4]
Before the modern atheist mocks this line (or rather convolution) of argument too uninhibitedly, he should recall that it is Descartes's only way of avoiding the conclusion that there is no certainty except total uncertainty.
If you are trying to ward off uncertainty, you can believe in the infinite reliability of God, or of common sense, or of New Society -- it makes little difference. (Of the three, an infinite and perfect God would probably be the most elasticizing to the imagination. But I realize that that is no recommendation from a sane point of view.)
Incidentally, it is perhaps interesting to note that while 'establishing' the existence of God, Descartes shows a typically sane desire to accept his limitations. Considering how recently he has recovered from an attack of total uncertainty, his confidence in the permanence of his position is remarkable:
But perhaps I am something greater than I myself understand. Perhaps all the perfections I attribute to God are somehow in me potentially, though they do not emerge yet and are not yet brought into actuality. For I experience already a gradual increase of my knowledge; I do not see what is to prevent its being thus increased more and more indefinitely; nor why, when my knowledge has thus grown, I may not use it to acquire all the other perfections of God; nor, finally, why the potentiality of such perfections, if it exists in me already, is not enough to produce the idea of them.All these things are impossible. First, it is true that my knowledge gradually increases, and I have many potentialities as yet unactualised; but this is alien to the idea of God, which implies absolutely no potentiality; for the mere fact of gradual growth is a sure sign of imperfection.
Again, even if my knowledge always grows more and more, yet I see that it will never be actually infinite; for it will never reach a point where it is not capable of still further increase.[5]
Then again, consider Hume. He saw clearly enough that 'all our reasonings concerning causes and effects are derived from nothing but custom.'[6] And as for the continued existence of objects when out of sight, he said: '... this conclusion beyond the impressions of our senses can be founded only on the connection of cause and effect; nor can we otherwise have any security that the object is not changed upon us.'[7]
More critical than Descartes of the origins of his ideas, Hume saw no way in which philosophy could save him from scepticism, and undisguisedly fell back on human nature to do so.
I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every member and faculty. Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterates all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any further.[8]
However, frightened and muddled though the sceptical philosophers may have been, once some aspect of the total uncertainty had been plainly stated, it could never subsequently be refuted and it became a permanent piece of philosophy.
One of the aspects of uncertainty that became firmly embedded in philosophy was that there were no absolutes.
What was originally stated was that there was no way of finding out if there were any absolutes. Everything could only be assessed by reference to a specific standard, and the only available standards were finite ones.
The human race, in its anthropocentric way, took a particular interest in the conclusion that there was no moral absolute. There was no way of saying what was 'good' or 'evil' except by referring to the only standards available -- which were the opinions of human beings about what constituted a desirable life. These were obviously very subjective.
The human race eagerly responded to this finding by rejecting all former sets of opinions about the desirable life and developing a new one. The new one stated that heroic and extremist ideals were always based on foolish beliefs and prejudices, so that the thing to do was to seek pleasure, comfort, and security in a moderate and unheroic way.
Moreover, this finding gave rise to a feeling that it had now been proved that absolutes did not exist -- there were no standards other than human ones.
This last is an interesting conclusion, if you remember that the original statement was to the effect that whatever might be absolute, human standards certainly were not.
This interesting conclusion, that human standards constituted the only absolute, was reached emotionally before it could be formulated intellectually. No one was in serious doubt of it, but professional philosophers found it difficult to state explicitly. Statements about certainty such as the assertion that solipsism was possible remained obstinately irrefutable.
This did not prevent philosophers from engaging in strange attempts to assess the 'probability' of sceptical statements. In this they showed an unawareness of what I can only call 'logical priority' that is typically sane.
Once you have admitted you may be dreaming, what value can you attach to your reflections on the likelihood that you are dreaming? Yet comparative statements are made; it is more likely that we are deceived about this; less likely that we are deceived about that.
My own tentative view is that tactual perception ... justifies us in being practically certain that there are foreign bodies and that they do interact with our own bodies. It seems to me just conceivable, though extremely unlikely, that I might have had the kinds of experience which I describe as 'seeing' or 'hearing' foreign bodies even if there had been no foreign bodies or if they had never emitted light-waves or sound-waves to my body.But I find it almost impossible to believe I could ever have had the kind of experience I describe as 'pushing' or 'pulling' or 'struggling with' foreign bodies unless there had been foreign bodies and they had quite often interacted dynamically with my own body through contact. [9]
It was then that linguistic philosophy arrived, the true philosophy of evasion. It stated that it was under no necessity to refute statements about total uncertainty, because it did not accept them as possible statements.
('Scepticism is not irrefutable, but palpably senseless, if it would doubt where a question cannot be asked.'[10]) It declared that the only way of deciding what was an acceptable statement was by reference to human standards.
For example, when you use the word 'uncertainty' you mean that you are not certain about something that may or may not happen. You have learnt to use this word in connection with a number of finite situations, such as whether or not it will rain tomorrow. The word is not usually used to mean 'the uncertainty whether anything will go on existing' or 'the uncertainty whether anything is existing now'. It is illegitimate to use the word 'uncertainty' to refer to these kinds of uncertainty, and it is therefore impossible to formulate any statements whatever about them.
When philosophers use a word -- 'knowledge', 'being', 'object', 'I', 'proposition', 'name' -- and try to grasp the essence of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.[11]
In this simple way all discourse about the infinite and inconceivable is eliminated, for it is evident that all human words have actually been developed by finite beings to deal with things they are able to conceive.
There is now no need to think about 'reality' except in the sense of 'what all right-thinking humans are in verbal agreement about'. So Malcolm, discussing the idea that a person may realize he is dreaming while he is having the dream, comments: 'Surely there is something dubious in the assumption that there can be a true judgement that cannot be communicated to others'.[12]
What clues do we have to the human evasion in the psychology of Wittgenstein? At the end of the Tractatus (an earlier work), a series of ambiguous utterances:
Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.[13]There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.[14]
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.)
He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly. [15] Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.[16]
And in the Philosophical Investigations, on which his fame chiefly rests, a number of utterances in which it is not difficult to see an anguished desire for anaesthesia:
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to. -- The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself in question. -
Instead, we now demonstrate a method, by examples; and the series of examples can be broken off. -- Problems are solved (difficulties eliminated), not a single problem.
There is not a philosophical method, though there are indeed methods, like different therapies.[17]
The philosopher's treatment of a question is like the treatment of an illness.[18]
... what is hidden ... is of no interest to us.[19]
Let us conclude this chapter by putting philosophy in its place in the sane perspective.
Philosophical questions have no intrinsic importance. Some questions are important for particular men because of the way in which the questions perplex them and deflect or obstruct them in going on with some other activity to which they are purposefully committed in life. [20]
<a name="9.1">[1]</a> Descartes, <i>Philosophical Writings</i>, edited by E. Anscombe and P.
T. Geach, Nelson, 1954, p.65.
<a name="9.2">[2]</a> Ibid., p.66.
<a name="9.3">[3]</a> Ibid., p.70.
<a name="9.4">[4]</a> Ibid., p.108.
<a name="9.5">[5]</a> Ibid., pp.86-87.
<big><big><b>(in </b>DEOXY.ORG</big></big>)
Desde os tempos clássicos mais recônditos que a sociedade humana se debruça atentamente sobre um dos fenómenos mais importantes no quotidiano do ser humano: o Prazer. Nos tempos que correm, com todas as funcionalidades e facilidades que a civilização nos tem oferecido e, perante a concepção algo ambígua do prazer, o sentido prático do ser humano teve por bem considerar que a ausência de desprazer era desde logo objectivo suficiente para o estado confortável que se denominou chamar de “qualidade de vida”. No fundo, continua apenas a ser sempre a clássica cultura do Hedonismo que criou os pilares da modernidade e a alavanca necessária para o desenvolvimento tecnológico e sociológico dos povos e das nações.
Mas há dois Hedonismos (do grego, Hedoné = Prazer) totalmente distintos: o hedonismo pessoal ou psicológico e o hedonismo ético ou social. O primeiro preocupa-se com a obtenção do prazer pessoal em tempo útil, o egoísmo, e o segundo, que pode facilmente ser relacionado com a busca do prazer social geral, o socialismo. Richard Brandt, filósofo moderno que dedicou toda a sua atenção ao tema define-o assim: “uma coisa é intrinsecamente desejável se, e só se, nos dá prazer”.
Quando eu falava anteriormente que a concepção pessoal do prazer é algo ambígua era exactamente por esta definição de Brandt. Há muita gente para quem o desprazer é um fenómeno de hedonismo por ele lhes causar prazer, o que pode ser aceite a nível pessoal e intransmissível desde que ele não tome proporções gerais por uma generalização do conceito. É nesse caso específico que se situam as ditaduras: “o que é um prazer para mim tem que ser prazer para todos”. Aqui a liberdade dos outros não começa onde termina a minha, mas sim, a minha liberdade começa porque termina a dos outros. Pode substituir-se o termo “liberdade” por “prazer” que a afirmação não se torna exorbitante.
Mas, mais preocupante ainda, é a determinação de uma ética proibida do prazer. A Igreja medieval organizou sacramentos de penitência a partir do modelo de uma jurisdição sobre “A concupiscência da carne e do espírito” e já Cassiano nas suas “Instituições” falava do “Espírito de fornicação” e “Dos oito vícios principais”. Chega a estabelecer pares de vícios que têm entre si relações particulares de aliança e identidade. A fornicação, para ele, faz par com a gula porque são dois vícios “naturais” inatos em nós e de que, por isso, é muito difícil libertarmo-nos porque há entre eles causalidade directa: o excesso de alimento acende no corpo o desejo de fornicação. Por isso a base do exercício ascético dos monges, o jejum, como meio de vencer a gula e, desse modo, cortar cerce a fornicação.
Este “combate” terrível contra o prazer, contra o desejável, contra o “natural” fez da Igreja durante séculos, para não dizer milénios, o algoz da naturalidade, da vida, extrapolando a importância do sexo ad nauseam e suscitando a filosofia do proibido/desejável até ao patológico e ao doentio, proibindo as mais básicas técnicas de prevenção de doenças sexualmente transmissíveis por padrões obsoletos de comportamento para evitar o prazer.
Neste caso existe um contra-senso entre a Igreja e o Hedonismo Geral. Não está provado que o cumprimento dos preceitos religiosos conduza ao prazer e, segundo relatos históricos, conduz ao desprazer e à morte. Um dos símbolos mais importantes da religião morreu efectivamente uma morte terrível de crucificação, o que explica em si mesmo o conflito entre dois Hedonismos inconciliáveis: um que se basta a si mesmo pelo ascetismo, pelo exercício do prazer na renúncia do prazer, e o outro que se rege pela lei do menor esforço do que é adquirido, sendo a aquisição sinónimo de prazer.
Nas filosofias políticas o Hedonismo teria socialmente a sua coroa de glória no Socialismo, do ponto de vista ético: a divisão dos bens comuns pela comunidade, ou seja, o acesso ao prazer equitativo geral, enquanto que no Capitalismo o acesso ao prazer tem uma visão totalmente psicológica e organiza-se na aquisição em tempo útil do objecto do desejo ou dos bens a nível estritamente pessoal.
Mas teremos sempre que considerar uma coisa básica: o ser humano. É na sua constância ou inconstância que se determina o usufruto do prazer e o que ele é na subjectividade da análise dos nossos dados imediatos de consciência. Só depois da constatação desses dados se poderá construir uma filosofia geral.
Os Budistas Zen dizem que o único mal do mundo reside no fenómeno do Ter. Uma vez compreendida a paixão, o desejo e a impossibilidade de Ter de forma permanente e infinita, a existência resume-se ao Ser, ou melhor, à função contemplativa não apenas de nós mas do Todo onde estamos inseridos. Deste ponto de vista o Hedonismo é absoluto, não se pode esperar mais prazer do que ser o prazer em si mesmo. Esta solução não deixa de ser psicológica e, tal como a de todas as religiões, ascética e auto-suficiente: excluído o objecto do desejo porque se tornou parte de nós, não existe o síndrome da perda, porque tudo deixou de ter existência física, temporal e finita para se transformar num continuum espiritual onde todas as coisas, ainda que com existência própria, só existem pela parte componente do Todo.
É claro que nada disto, à primeira vista, tem a ver com a invenção da roda ou da chave de fendas que nos veio sobremaneira facilitar a vida a todos. Nesse aspecto os seres humanos continuam tão completamente hedonistas como sempre o foram e distanciam-se dos animais pela sua capacidade de modificar o universo que os rodeia com recursos cada vez mais utilitários e confortáveis.
A nossa sociedade transformou-se num local tão aprazível (para alguns) que a própria dor tende a ser mitigada, anestesiada ou suprimida de alguma forma e a morte tornou-se uma figura de retórica, uma relação semântica com o Além, uma metáfora. Já não se morre em casa rodeado pelos filhos e pelos netos numa despedida solene mas numa cama higiénica de um hospital para onde somos enviados logo que nos consideram, de alguma forma, uma ameaça ao hedonismo familiar ou uma visão inevitável de desprazer que todos queremos evitar tomar consciência porque, quer queiramos ou não, nos irá acontecer a nós.
O hedonismo não consiste em afirmar-se que o prazer é um bem, mas sim em afirmar que o prazer é o único bem supremo. Mas isso não implica cegamente relegar o doloroso e o inevitável para a prateleira da ignorância. Também o pai de Sidarta Gautama, o que haveria de ser o futuro Buda, evitou que o filho conhecesse a doença, a velhice e a pobreza fechando-o num palácio rodeado de beleza e de bem-estar. Acabou por partir aborrecido com aquilo tudo.
Tal e qual eu, quando me deparei com uma frasco de vitaminas que dizia “abertura fácil”…. Tentei abri-lo várias vezes sem êxito nenhum. As coisas com abertura fácil são extraordinariamente complicadas, ora não encontramos a fitinha que abre a caixa das bolachas, ora se parte o dispositivo da lata de conservas e acaba por ser tudo à facada. Descobri então, em letras muito pequeninas uma frase que dizia: “à prova de crianças”. Aí, senti-me renovado porque as crianças também não a sabiam abrir.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=31757e29-aace-47c6-929b-b71178daff16)
 More than 50 studies were included in the review |
Organic food is no healthier than ordinary food, a large independent review has concluded.
There is little difference in nutritional value and no evidence of any extra health benefits from eating organic produce, UK researchers found.
The Food Standards Agency who commissioned the report said the findings would help people make an "informed choice".
But the Soil Association criticised the study and called for better research.
Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looked at all the evidence on nutrition and health benefits from the past 50 years.
 |  Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review  Peter Melchett, Soil Association |
Among the 55 of 162 studies that were included in the final analysis, there were a small number of differences in nutrition between organic and conventionally produced food but not large enough to be of any public health relevance, said study leader Dr Alan Dangour.
Overall the report, which is published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, found no differences in most nutrients in organically or conventionally grown crops, including in vitamin C, calcium, and iron.
The same was true for studies looking at meat, dairy and eggs.
Differences that were detected, for example in levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use and ripeness at harvest and are unlikely to provide any health benefit, the report concluded.
Gill Fine, FSA director of consumer choice and dietary health, said: "Ensuring people have accurate information is absolutely essential in allowing us all to make informed choices about the food we eat.
"This study does not mean that people should not eat organic food.
"What it shows is that there is little, if any, nutritional difference between organic and conventionally produced food and that there is no evidence of additional health benefits from eating organic food."
She added that the FSA was neither pro nor anti organic food and recognised there were many reasons why people choose to eat organic, including animal welfare or environmental concerns.
Dr Dangour, said: "Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority."
He added that better quality studies were needed.
Peter Melchett, policy director at the Soil Association said they were disappointed with the conclusions.
"The review rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences.
"Although the researchers say that the differences between organic and non-organic food are not 'important', due to the relatively few studies, they report in their analysis that there are higher levels of beneficial nutrients in organic compared to non-organic foods.
"Without large-scale, longitudinal research it is difficult to come to far-reaching clear conclusions on this, which was acknowledged by the authors of the FSA review.
"Also, there is not sufficient research on the long-term effects of pesticides on human health," he added.
Pleno de actualidade, "Um Cântico para Leibowitz" (A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1959), longe de ser somente uma das melhores obras pós-apocalípticas da FC, é um retrato brilhante do paradigma tecnológico da Humanidade e um relato contundente da eterna luta entre os valores da Ciência e da Religião.
A obra épica de Miller não é uma alegoria política, mas a ilustração cabal de que aqueles que falham em aprender com a História estão condenados a repeti-la.
Na primeira parte, “Fiat Homo” ["Let There Be Man"], o cenário é a idade das trevas, 600 anos depois de uma guerra nuclear; o mundo destruído é aterrorizado por bestas, mutantes e salteadores. O conhecimento está misturado com mitos e os mosteiros católicos preservam resquícios indecifráveis da antiga civilização. Basicamente, durante esse período, não há salvação fora da Igreja Católica. Na Abadia de São Leibowitz os monges copiaram, gerações após gerações, as recordações de Leibowitz, sem entender o seu significado. Leibowitz é considerado um santo, mas ironicamente, é somente um Técnico de Electrónica judeu e os seus tão idolatrados textos são listas de mercearia, um bilhete de lotaria e desenhos de sistemas de controle eléctrico. O Irmão Francisco, um jovem monge, encontra um desenho técnico, que está incluído nas relíquias de Leibowitz e morre violentamente quinze anos mais tarde.
“Depois de tirar o último tabuleiro, o noviço tocou os papéis reverentemente: apenas um punhado de documentos, mas na verdade um tesouro, pois tinham escapado das chamas ferozes da Simplificação, quando até as Escrituras Sagradas se tinham contorcido enegrecidas e dissipado em fumo, enquanto as turbas ignorantes urravam e saudavam aquilo como um triunfo.
Segurou os papéis como se seguram as coisas sagradas, protegendo-os do vento com o hábito, pois estavam frágeis e quebradiços devido à antiguidade. Havia um certo número de desenhos esboçados e de diagramas.
Havia também notas feitas à mão, dois grandes papéis dobrados e um pequeno livro intitulado ''Memorando".
Examinou primeiro as notas. Tinham sido rabiscadas pela mesma mão que escrevera a nota colada à tampa, e a letra não era menos abominável. "Libra de pastrami", dizia uma nota, "lata de kraut, seis bagels — tragam para Emma."
Outra continha um lembrete. "Não esquecer de apanhar o formulário 1040, Renda do Tio." Outra, nada mais era que uma coluna de algarismos com um total dentro de um circulo do qual um segundo total era subtraído, com uma percentagem seguida da palavra "bolas!" O Irmão Francis conferiu as contas. Pelo menos, nenhum erro havia na aritmética do escriba abominável, mas nada podia deduzir a respeito do que poderiam representar aquelas quantidades. Tomou o Memorando com especial reverência, porque o título sugeria Memorabilia. Antes de abri-lo, persignou-se e murmurou a Bênção dos Textos. Mas o pequeno livro foi um desapontamento. Esperara encontrar páginas impressas, mas só havia listas de nomes e lugares, números e datas escritas à mão. As datas cobriam a última parte da quinta e o princípio da sexta década do século XX. Outra vez firmava-se a sua ideia de que o que havia no abrigo vinha do declínio da Idade da Luz. Uma descoberta realmente importante.”
« Centre névralgique de la Brigade criminelle, le palier du troisième étage était un lieu de passage obligé pour qui désirait connaître les dernières nouvelles. Les notes de service et autres télégrammes étaient punaisés sur les murs, une vieille armoire vitrée présentait les produits vendus par l’amicale (…) Il faisait bon vivre dans ce service. Des flics s’interpellaient à qui mieux mieux, d’autres se lançaient des vannes après s’être serrés la main… »
Hervé Jourdain est capitaine de police à la brigade criminelle et au fil des pages, dans son roman (policier, évidemment), Sang d’encre au 36 (éd. Les Nouveaux auteurs), il nous invite au sein d’un groupe d’enquêteurs. Et nous nous retrouvons un peu comme un stagiaire qui suit la progression d’une enquête criminelle – de l’intérieur. Et quelle enquête !
Tout démarre avec le meurtre du surveillant d’un collège de banlieue : deux balles à bout portant, tirées par un mystérieux motard. Une scène de crime sur le trottoir, et pour les policiers, le même scénario que d’habitude : « Identifier le cadavre, entendre les témoins, annoncer la mort aux proches, assister le médecin légiste lors de l’autopsie, tirer les ficelles, confronter les idées, monter le dossier, vérifier les alibis, travailler les pistes, mettre hors d’état de nuire, obtenir les aveux (…) Des jours de labeur, des nuits d’insomnies et de doutes. »
Mais cette fois, ce qu’ils ne savent pas encore, c’est que ce mort est le premier d’une longue liste et qu’ils partent à la chasse d’un serial killer…
Et on va les suivre, tout au long de leurs recherches, même si elles ne mènent à rien, comme c’est souvent le cas dans la réalité. « La nouvelle enquête de voisinage n’avait rien donné, malgré la vingtaine d’hommes déployés durant quatre heures (…) Les flics n’apprirent que des broutilles. »
Pas de héros dans cette histoire, mais un travail d’équipe. C’est un peu du Ed McBain à la française, sauf qu’ici on côtoie les techniques les plus modernes. Le tueur vient chatouiller l’un des enquêteurs sur son blog en utilisant l’adresse georges-simenon@hotmail.fr, mais « il y avait autant de protocoles Internet que d’échanges avec son blog » car le lascar piratait des liaisons Wi-Fi non sécurisées (aïe la loi Hadopi !).
Simenon, sa vie et son œuvre, c’est un peu le fil de cette histoire - mais les « seigneurs du 36 » mettront un certain temps à le comprendre.
L’auteur ne nous épargne 
rien. Il nous entraîne à l’institut médico-légal : « Chaque organe était retiré et pesé par l’aide technique, avant d’être déposé sur une planche en bois, découpé en fines lames, puis étudié par le médecin légiste. Un prélèvement était systématiquement mis en tube. Les restes étaient remisés dans un seau de cinq litres coincé entre les jambes du défunt, avant que le contenu soit reversé dans son habitacle, en attente de la couture. »
Hervé Jourdain est entré dans la police à l’âge de vingt ans. Gardien de la Paix en banlieue parisienne, au bout de 4 ans, il a rejoint les RG, à la 4° section, celle qui s’occupe des « phénomènes de société ». En 2001, une fois son grade de lieutenant en poche, il a intégré un groupe de la brigade criminelle. C’est la découverte de Thierry Jonquet, m’a-t-il dit, qui lui a véritablement donné envie d’écrire : « Car auparavant, j’étais persuadé qu’il était impossible de décrire un groupe d’enquête. Jonquet a été le déclic, d’autant que j’arrivais à saturation lorsque je lisais les polars vantant les flics ou enquêteurs solitaires, borderline, effectuant des miracles malgré des pressions de toutes parts ».
C’est son troisième roman. Le premier, si j’ai bien compris, est resté dans un tiroir ; le second comptait parmi les finalistes du Prix du quai des Orfèvres, mais il n’a jamais été publié ; et celui-ci, Sang d’encre au 36, a obtenu le prix des lecteurs de VSD.
Franchement, ce livre, c’est tout gagnant. Pas de petits génies, pas de « Mais oui, bien sûr ! », pas de renversement de dernière minute, mais le travail rigoureux d’un groupe d’enquêteurs de la crim’ qui s’accrochent à leur affaire, qui veulent la sortir à tout prix, qui sont même prêts à renoncer à leurs vacances, et qui, le nez dans le guidon, passent parfois à côté du petit détail qui pourrait changer tout.
La vraie vie, quoi !
