STREET DOGS

From Sabine Hossenfelder at Edge.org:

People don’t like detours. We search for the fastest route, the closest parking spot — we optimise. Incremental modification, followed by evaluation and readjustment, guides us to solutions that maximise a desired criterion. These little series of trial and error are so ingrained we rarely think about them.

Optimisation is not a new concept. It’s the scientific variant of Gottfried Leibnitz’s hypothesis that we live in the “best of all possible worlds”. But while the idea dates back to the 18th century, it is still the most universal law of nature we know. Modern cosmology and particle physics both work by just specifying exactly in which way our world is “the best”.

Optimisation also underlies natural selection and free market economies. Our social, political, and economic systems are examples of complex adaptive systems; they are collections of agents who make incremental modifications and react to feedback. We can’t calculate what the systems will do — we just use them as tools to work to our ends. It’s easy to take the optimisation done by adaptive systems for granted. We’re so used to this happening, it seems almost unavoidable. But how well such systems work depends crucially on the set-up of the feedback cycle.

An economic system pervaded by monopolies, for example, doesn’t optimise supply to customers’ demands. And a political system that gives agents insufficient information and that does not allow them to extrapolate likely consequences of their actions doesn’t optimise the realisation of their values.

When we use optimisation to organise our societies, we have to decide what we mean by “optimal”. There’s no invisible hand to take this responsibility off us.