I jumped the gun on Tuesday, celebrating Frederic Bastiat’s birthday about a month early. Fortunately, our commenter Cloudesly Shovell saved me from embarrassment by noting that Bastiat is well worth an entire month of celebration.
On Wednesday, we had some biting words about math education from my colleague Ralph Raimi, whose web page I continue to recommend for amusement and edification.
And on Thursday and Friday, we took on current events, lamenting the President’s misleading suggestion that tax increases can be a cure, or even a palliative, for excessive spending, and lamenting the general lack of perspective that leads to more gnashing of teeth over a $10 billion oil spill than a $300 deadweight loss due to taxation.
Several commentators noted that with this last post, we’d come full circle right back to Bastiat, author of timeless That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen. In the words of commenter Seth, “A duck caked in oil is seen. The deadweight loss is unseen.” (ScottN and others made the same point.) Yes, that’s probably the explanation. How sad that after 200 years, Bastiat’s lesson (that the unseen is as important as the seen) has yet to sink in.
See you Monday.
Stumbled upon your blog regarding tic tac toe because I was searching for the ideas related the “winnability” of tic tac toe.
Searching for word “tic tac toe” in the blogs and finding how blogging is like tic tac toe that was amazing example of an self reference. Godel and Hafstadter, both would be happy.
I got introduced to the philosophy when I was a little brat in 12th and my uncle was doing PHD. I happen to ask him what is “philosophy” about post graduate course in english literature ? and just to fight his arguments I kept on reading about philosophy i kept on reading and got hooked it …long story short – I got into Computer Science got interested in AI.
Then it downed on me that the difference “computable intelligence” and human mind is the philosophical frames we use to attach meta-level meanings like value , mathematical beauty , decidability , utility etc.
The fact that we can find an isomorphism in games tic tac toe and group of people solving problem together as natural is testimony to the fact that we don’t solve problem “in the system” by collaborating but by going out of the box.
As kids “tweaked” the game of tic tac toe with movable pieces. And later sometime also added a “star” piece to it.
The fact that we can create very complicated and interesting games out of 3X3 grid is what makes us special . we can think out of the box. Simple tweak and suddenly the game could be winnable.
Regarding mathematical education – I learned complex numbers through out college. But i came to appreciate them only after reading “Imaginary tale of -1”. I learned group theory and game theory but never got really impressed until I saw how Russel Crow explaining logic behind chances of getting a date in “Beautiful Mind”. and that is exactly the failings of our education – we learned maths and never how to apply it .