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I might note that perhaps this is coming more to the fore at the moment because evolution and economies work at very large scales that not only are difficult to grasp, but which have relatively low impact on individual decision making. I have faith that evolution works, but it really doesn't matter, because no matter what I think about evolution, it isn't going to change my day-to-day decision making. In contrast, whether I have faith in the reliability of wikipedia does change my day-to-day behaviors. So that makes coming to grips with these kinds of systems more relevant than they had been in the past.
I call thinking that relies on these statistical mechanisms "population thinking" and I do believe that it is hard for people to accept, but conversely that these mechanisms are far more robust and effective in a lot of domains than deterministic mechanisms.
As a curious sidelight, the standard model for market economics, the neo-classical Walrasian synthesis (actually formalized by Arrow and deBreu), uses a deterministic mechanism, tattonement, rather than statistical trading. Ironically, this makes the Walrasian model very fragile and computationally intractable, while the statistical model has more robust and extensive equilibria (which are also closer to real world data) and is computationally trivial. The statistical methods existed when the Walrasian model was developed and formalized, and the economists chose deterministic ones instead.
So apparently even theorists of naturally statistical domains, like economics, have a deep aversion to population thinking.
Similarly AI and linguistics tried to use deterministic mechanisms, but they are finally coming around to a thoroughly statistical approach, since that actually works and the deterministic one didn't.
"The Use of Knowledge in Society" is one of his more famous essays, and it's available online here. That'll give you a basic introduction to his most famous thesis--that the price system is a decentralized mechanism for coordinating individuals with dispersed information.
I imagine you're too busy with law school at the moment to read longer works, but next time you have some time on your hands The Constitution of Liberty is probably the best introduction to liberal (in the classical sense) political philosophy as you're likely to find.
The Road to Serfdom is his most famous work, and although it's well written and historically important, it has limited relevance today because he was arguing against a hard-core socialist philosophy that hardly anyone subscribes to these days.
Based on your analogies, why is FOSS (which has been around longer than most proprietary technologies) not leading in every category. Any why do you continue to push for bending US policy to accommodate it. Darwin and Hayek will not help unless FOSS does something for itself in the market (which I'm supportive of, but remain skeptical). The limitations to FOSS, as far as I see, are principles on which it distinqishes itself from propetiary industry. FOSS should learn to be more practical now that its beyond the phase of proof of concept.
Whats the most important entity in technological innovation. The market, right? The market: meaning consumers, those who invest, buy and decide the societal value of technologies. So, whats the need for these silly metaphors from Darwin, Hayek, etc, when there is a market right in front of us- unless you need to explain away sub-par market performance with philosophical justifications. Well, Darwin and Hayek will not help FOSS build market share. But still, this discussion is interesting.
Jed, population thinking is different from the "market." Thats not an analogy I see you getting at, but one I believe Tim hinted to. A lot of misconception arises when the concepts of population thinking and the market are compared. The market resides on incentives and competition. Population thinking, well, its the driving force behind spam, patent trolls and other societal anomolies. Some claim it is the virtue of things like Wikipedia and FOSS projects, but- it probably does not apply to FOSS development. Wikipedia perhaps..
The concept of Darwin's evolution aside (I won't delve into it, but note that it has no predictive value), there is conflation of two distinct principles when Darwinism is compared to market economics. Darwinist theory predicts that the best technologies naturally arise and lead follow-on and peripheral innovations. Those who apply Darwinist theory *usually* equate the "strong" with the "best technologies." In reality, the best technologies per se are not always those that win. It's the technologies that are most adaptive to consumer and market demand that win.
Noel's claim that evolution has no predictive power is addressed in this summary.
I'm not sure why Noel believes that "population thinking is different from the 'market'". Evolutionary game theory arose from evolutionary theory, and is now heavily applied in economics. A detailed study of related explanatory mechanisms was done by Sunny Auyang in Foundations of Complex System Theories (a fascinating book about the mechanisms of spontaneous order, by the way).
As for the relative success of FOSS -- the remarkable thing is that FOSS development processes are a viable way of solving some very large, complex coordination problems, without institutional enforcement mechanisms -- either bureaucracy or contracts. This was considered impossible in conventional social and economic models. Evolutionary game theory approaches do better at modeling FOSS type coordination.
Or play around with some cellular automata.
here.