Critical Mass, Income Inequality, and Bacon As I noted in an earlier blog post, I am working my way through Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another and here is the post I promised.
Critical Mass weaves its way through a host of diverse topics, from traffic to economics to networks to counterfactual history to reciprocity and social interactions, the whole time drawing analogies to topics in physics such as magnets, gas particles, and energy landscapes. It starts off slow, but really picks up about halfway through, and then kicks ass all the way to the end.
Coincidentally, Critical Mass also backs up a point I made earlier while discussing wage issues over an apple martini at Lenin's Sexual Utopia. I stated that income inequality is unfortunate, but may possibly be inherent in the system (sweet capitalist America) and consequently, impossible to change. Critical Mass points out that Pareto distributions (the power-law probability distribution commonly used to describe income inequality, i.e. the "80-20 rule") holds back as far as the 14th century B.C. in ancient Egypt (inferred from house sizes in the ruins of Akhetaten). Furthermore, these income distributions arise in artificially simulated environments, such as Sugarscape- a torus-shaped world where rules allow the simulated agents to fight, trade, collaborate, pass on cultural traits and reproduce. As a result, I'm willing to consider inequality inherent to any trading society.
Granted, the argument is no longer seems to be whether or not inequality should exist, but rather, how disproportionate means lead to unequal representation in democratic governments- which is a legitimate problem that I have no solution for. However, the score for the first part is Jackscolon:1, Charles: well, 1- he never really said I was wrong. So I win.
Anyway, Bacon numbers also come up briefly in Critical Mass in the section on networks. Since EAP practically made out with him in some Syracuse airport, I guess that would give me a Bacon number of 2. Sweet.
Critical Mass weaves its way through a host of diverse topics, from traffic to economics to networks to counterfactual history to reciprocity and social interactions, the whole time drawing analogies to topics in physics such as magnets, gas particles, and energy landscapes. It starts off slow, but really picks up about halfway through, and then kicks ass all the way to the end.
Coincidentally, Critical Mass also backs up a point I made earlier while discussing wage issues over an apple martini at Lenin's Sexual Utopia. I stated that income inequality is unfortunate, but may possibly be inherent in the system (sweet capitalist America) and consequently, impossible to change. Critical Mass points out that Pareto distributions (the power-law probability distribution commonly used to describe income inequality, i.e. the "80-20 rule") holds back as far as the 14th century B.C. in ancient Egypt (inferred from house sizes in the ruins of Akhetaten). Furthermore, these income distributions arise in artificially simulated environments, such as Sugarscape- a torus-shaped world where rules allow the simulated agents to fight, trade, collaborate, pass on cultural traits and reproduce. As a result, I'm willing to consider inequality inherent to any trading society.
Granted, the argument is no longer seems to be whether or not inequality should exist, but rather, how disproportionate means lead to unequal representation in democratic governments- which is a legitimate problem that I have no solution for. However, the score for the first part is Jackscolon:1, Charles: well, 1- he never really said I was wrong. So I win.
Anyway, Bacon numbers also come up briefly in Critical Mass in the section on networks. Since EAP practically made out with him in some Syracuse airport, I guess that would give me a Bacon number of 2. Sweet.
posted by Justin at 11:38 AM 
2 Comments:
made out? seriously? wow. I guess we're all big 2's now. That means we're only 4 degrees from Hitler too.
Although my husband may disagree, I like your rumors, Jack Ole Boy. He checked me out while I steadfastly concentrated on the 45-year-old Chemistry professor with whom I had struck up a conversation. Make out it was not, sadly.
And, hey, sorry I'm so slow on the post readings. What is it like five days ago that you wrote this?
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