randform

A reader called Silvia Hossfehler asked about a statement I made in a blog post, in which I described a design of a chair that I had subbmitted to a competition. My statement there was “I do not like competitions.” And Silvia Hossfehlers question was:

Are you sure that you do not like competitions? So why did you then send in your suggestion?

Since I think this is a more general issue, I decided to make a blog post out of this.

There are three major aspects of a competition. One is filtering, one is evaluation and one is motivation. A competition is filtering since it is making a choice between the objects/subjects under competition. A competition is evaluating since this choice is usually done with respect to some “value scale” that is for example in the olympic games the value could be e.g. “high velocity” and the filtering is thus to filter out the fastest. However in an art competition for example the “value scale” is not so obvious, people may talk about “quality”, as a possible value, but usually in an art competition, the filtering is mostly subject to a quite unspecifyable/predictable “value scale”. The third aspect is that a competition may serve as fostering motivation, it may make people increase their commitment to a certain task. That is for example the runner in the olympic games may be running faster and giving his/her best due to the “competition”.

Likewise in the working world a competition may filter out “the most efficient/capable”, moreover usually competition is regarded as a necessary condition for motivating people to work hard enough. Efficiency and a motivated workforce is usually essential to make profits and since competition solves all these demands all at once it therefore is a kind of “must-have” for “capitalists”. Often enough the principles of evolution (“survival of the fittest”) are taken as a justification of these paradigmas. However it should be noted that there there are enough examples, which display that in evolution things are more complicated, in particular the “survival of the fittest” may not hold for the individual but for a group of species.

Nevertheless as a result our western society is highly “competition-oriented”.

In my point of view – especially by looking at the odd sides of competition, like for example where it is leading to things as exploitation or monoculture – this can be very problematic and I think a more critical view on competition as such may be at place.

It is of course more or less unavoidable to take part in competitions and unfortunately one has to go through quite some competitions in order to have a saying. Grades in school already constitute a “competition”. And again in this example a competition serves as an agent for “evaluation”.

On the other hand this example already makes it also clear that the above mentioned major aspects of a competition can at least partially be transferred to other means. That is an evaluation can also be done by purely measuring capabilities/competences, i.e. the competitive aspect of being compared to others can be reduced. Likewise motivation can be driven by interest, social connectivity etc. In short competition may not even be a necessary condition for efficiency. On the contrary if the competition and “optimization of efficiency” is too strong competition can be counterproductive (see e.g. the last Toyota crisis). Last but not least the “filtering” aspect of competitions may lead to a blindness for other “filtering” criteria. Thus if for example “fast profit” dominates the “value scale” for a competition other possible criteria, like social conditions etc. are going to be neglected. Moreover the conditions for filtering may be unfair/too restricted etc. (read also this randform post about competition in the academic world).

So yes my comment in the blog post was referring to all that but it was also expressing a subjective discomfort with competition, in particular for me competition is usually not the most motivating force. For example in school sports I was especially slow if I had to run with others. I do not object to evaluation, on the contrary a regular feedback is important for me, however I do not always need the comparision to others. The comparision to others may impose quite an extra stress, rather than motivation. This can go as far as this: If I notice that someone wants to challenge me for a competition I sometimes prefer to completely step back. In particular there are people who want to make everything into a competition. I find that unpleasant, since in these cases one has not only to decide about the issue in question, but also about the aspect, wether one is up for a competition.

I took part in this design competition mentioned in the blog post, because I actually would have liked to discuss my chair with others and get critics about the design etc. and eventually connect to people who might be interested in building a prototype (if you put your design just into a forum or on your blog than the response is usually not very big). So unfortunately in this competition nothing like that happened. Thats in part what I do not like about these usual competitions. Moreover there are more and more competitions, where you have to pay an entrance fee (apart from postage etc.) in order to present your work. I think this is crazy. Who is taking part in these competitions?

I couldnt resist buying the above fashion item from a bargain-bin in Fukuoka, since it is on one hand a refreshing example of language use, but secondly because it displays an interesting connection between garment and power (here in a highly agressive way though). The T-shirt had been made by a factory called Slap Stick.

In an earlier randform post, the distribution of surplusses was discussed, among others it was proposed to simulate a different way of distributing surplusses in a game-like environment. There were some comments to this:
Sabrina Says:” why don’t you make a business model out of that game prototype?”
Victor Says:
“if you have these dangerous ideas to abolish banks or let them go bankrupt, this is communism!
And
“did you fit in all your parameters?!”

Here a reply to the comment by Victor “if you have these dangerous ideas to abolish banks or let them go bankrupt, this is communism !” :

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Vlad Alexeev had created a website called Impossible World which collects “impossible figures”, from Vlad Alexeev’s website:

Since some time I became interested in such artworks and figures that look usual at a first sight, but there is something wrong with them if you look at them more attentively. For me, the most interesting such figures are “impossible figures” which make an impression that they cannot exist in a real world.

I wanted to know more and tried to find some information about these figures in the Internet. I found numerous sites containing three or four different impossible figures, but there was no site devoted exclusively to the study of impossible figures. During this pursuit I made the acquaintance of impossible figures of Swedish artist Oscar Reutersvärd and images of Dutch artist M.C. Escher.

It has been icy and cold the last days in Berlin with a lot of snow (see above image from today). In an earlier randform post I indicated that there is quite a lot to tell about badly built US houses. Like, when living in New England, it happened one cold day that the dishwasher didnt work. It took us quite a while to find the reason. The reason was that a pipe, which was INSIDE the house, however too close to the outer wall, froze. Yes you understood correctly – the insulation of the house was so sparsely that this pipe froze inside the house!

But back to the image – if you ever wondered what these strange signs on lamp posts and trees in Germany may mean (like the blue sign in the image above which you see if you follow the arrow). These signs are giving a detailled description of hydrants and facilities for water, natural gas, district heat and electricity use. So the above sign in the image should indicate a water gate (SCHIEBER in german). This sign methodology makes it considerably easy to detect frozen and/or broken pipes in the soil. Hopefully there will be a change in the US regarding the saving of energy, otherwise one should may be think about developping a sign methodology for frozen pipes inside US houses…

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Sometimes it happens that someone says to you something occasionally – like as a side remark, but that that phrase – despite its parenthetical nature – sticks in your head. Something similar to this happened to me when an intern at a german company where I was also as a student intern said to me: Nadja – one should buy shares only with gratuitous money, never with money that one needs. Maybe this phrase stuck in my head because this person was one of the very few persons in my surroundings which knew something about the stock market, who knows. However bank accountants and other financial consultants kept telling me to care for my retirement by investing in all sorts of bonds. In view of this discrepancy of recommendations and out of curiosity I thus took part in an online game which was organized by a german public TV station (If I remember correctly WISO, ZDF).

In this game one started with a fixed virtual start amount of money which could be virtually invested in real stocks at real prices. Despite that this “stock market” was only a game it nevertheless became quite captivating. I learned a lot in this game, like that it is rather difficult to have high returns on short term investments a.s.o At the end the game became quite time consuming though. But as a result I decided to follow the advice of the person from the internship which was sound. I never owned a bond.

But this little adventure in financial markets taught me more. It made me clear that the feature of “surplus” or “gratuitous money” is quite essential. Or in other words the often proclaimed view that financial markets are democratic and open to everybody seems to be more informed by concrete interests (like to sell financial packages to laypersons) than by actual facts.

Further deduction allows to say in a simplified manner that there are the following ways to become rich (we leave marriage and adoption out): that is either by being able to “sell” highly demanded goods (like done by hollywood actors, exceptional artists, rags to riches etc.) or via owning a surplus and letting the “money work” with high returns and/or a combination of the two. Lotto wins etc. are the exception to this rule. Lets consider criminal activities also as an exception.

It is interesting to observe that the first kind, i.e. the “self-made” riches are rather accepted while the latter the “undeserved”, “lazy” riches are seen more critically. This holds especially true for the recent protagonists of the financial crisis who still – despite their obvious failures demand more returns and/or boni than what is commonly regarded as appropriate.

However it is undenied that surplusses and the rather decentralized investment of surplusses is somewhat necessary in a technological society.

High risk investments carry a high risk of failure and thus they usually carry a high risk of personal loss, so it makes sense that high risk investments usually result in higher returns than low risk investments, in order to encourage them. However meanwhile a lot of returns in the banking businesses are exorbitantly high even without any personal risk at all. Without exagerating it can be said that the whole regulating mechanism of return vs. risk seems to be out of control – at least in the banking business.

In short –it seems that the question of how to deal with surplusses and the “return of investments” is a rather crucial point in any economic discussion.

In particular, apart from the disastrous performance of the banking business, it can be said that “capitalism” hasn’t given a satisfying answer to the question of how to encourage investments into ventures with from the outset low return or even with from the outset no return at all, despite the fact that these investments are often crucial for technological and societal developments. In my eyes this is a major flaw of “capitalism” or however you wanna call the current system.

Considering the above observations I thus started to think about: How could this flaw be mitigated ? and: How can one come up with something?

Inspired by the above described game and also by games like the Sims which usually mimick a real world in a virtual environment (and where the gameplay is supported by the fact that people like to “train” for the real world) I asked myself to what extent a “new investment system” could be implemented in a game in order to test such a system for the real world. One knows that such “experiments” have limited capabilities of providing real life evidences, however they may be not completely useless. At least it seems that the new possibilities in times of MMPORGS havent been fully explored in economic science.

My question turned thus into: “How can one set up an investment scheme (in a game like environment) which encourages investments into ventures with from the outset low return or even no return?”

Assume we have a kind of Sims game that is sort of a real life economic scenario. Could it be supplied with a different system of money distribution and storage than with the usual banking and economical scheme, in particular the system should be able to encourage investments into ventures with no return, but which are desired for technological and societal reasons? If yes – What could be possible? What can one think of?

Here – a very incomplete and rough (and probably not working) scheme as a start, which is mainly intended to encourage brainstorming about these issues rather than provide a solution.

Starting from the crucial point that surplusses are needed for investments, lets assume there exists a certain amount of surplus. In the game that surplus is just a fixed start amount of extra money. In reality and within a country one could find such a surplus in all assets which are not unconditionally needed for covering the running costs. Its a debatable point what these are, but in richer countries one can find a surplus. Or coltishly put: Schloss Neuschwanstein could a priori be liquidized. In some sense a countries surplus is an indicator of how a country florishes. If there is no surplus and if even running costs cant be covered a country is usually considered to be bankrupt.

Now a surplus could be in total centrally distributed by a government. However similar real life experiments like in a centrally planned economy showed that this was economically less successful. Nevertheless it is meanwhile also rather undisputed that governments or other societal institutions should be able to exert an influence on the distribution of surplusses.

Hence lets e.g. assume that the given surplus is evenly distributed among the participants (in order to give the most democratic chance of investment and in order to mitigate the problem of lazy riches).

Impose the rule that any personal surplus has to be spend within a short time span into various (short and long term) investments (so money has to be invested). The investments have to promise “benefits” that is either one can collect benificiary points (being e.g. issued by societal institutions prior to investment) for investments into ventures with low or no return or one can collect money returns. For the work which is related to the distribution of the surplus each participant gets a “wage” which can be used for one’s own consumption. The wage is dependend on the success of the investments. If an investment yields no return or no beneficiary points or worse if even the investment is lost then the participant is “punished”. E.g. in the worst case that is if the whole surplus is lost then the participant is punished with “getting no wage from surplus”. The actual size and dependency of the wage with respect to the earned returns and/or beneficiary points is thus an important parameter.

All made returns and beneficiary points enter the personal surplus and have to be reinvested. A venture may store collected investment and eventually issue interests until the needed lump sum is collected that would accomodate for the storage effect of banks.

It may be also be good to allow only for investments which are not ones own investments. This would e.g. encourage long-term investments, since the surplus could anyways not be spend on ones own projects and thus accomodate at least partially for the intermediation function of banks.

Note that the distribution of beneficiary points is also an important parameter. (please see also this randform post about assigning values) In particular beneficiary points may be distributed to such different things as newcomer bands, extraordinary social activities/aid or research in quantum gravity.

ironic sans has a very enjoyable quiz: 20 logos that use Helvetica redone in Arial. So you can test wether you can tell the two fonts apart or you can just ponder over the influence of typography. I found it very instructive – but TOYOTA was a particularly hard one (I failed there).

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In a comment about a recent study whose neutrality was not so clear I was asked by a reader:

If there is all this data as you say on the internet then why do you need this reputation thing at all, i mean can’t you just check wether this Greiser person is right?

The study which the reader meant to be checked used data about leukemia occurences in children who lived in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. This data was -to a great extend- gathered together via the internet and was then statistically evaluated. So the reader assumed that -given that all the necessary information is available- that one could just check wether the study is right.

My answer:
In principle -given that all information is provided in the study- and – given that oneself can access all data (this is unfortunately not always that easy) one can check wether all the in the study given data was correctly evaluated, one can follow the statistic reasoning and the methods which were used a.s.o. The question wether the study is correct or not should thus not be expected to be answered plainly with a yes or no, but at least include explanations about the involved methodology. All that takes a lot of knowledge and experience which is -for an outsider- not so easy to acquire. That is even though I am a mathematician it would take me probably quite some time to understand and evaluate the involved reasoning (it is not exactly my field), it is quite likely that I would end up with open questions and thus would need to consult other people.

One can compare this a little bit with a medical diagnosis, that is in principle all the medical information is available in text books, articles etc. and without having studied medicine one can have a “feeling” about how correct a diagnosis is, however – depending on the symptoms and ones own knowledge- people usually prefer to see a doctor instead of feeling inclined to cure themselves. The craftmanship of a mathematician -although this may not be so obvious- is comparable to that of a physician.

Nevertheless it happens that people won’t go see a doctor. This may happen because people can’t afford to pay a doctor and/or because they are convinced that their methods (or those of a non-medical-doctor) are better. And there are indeed cases were non-doctors may have better results. Nevertheless the typical scenario is that a learned doctor knows more and can help you better than a non-doctor. This holds also true for “crowd knowledge” that is you may ask around in fora about what to do with what symptoms, but typically you wouldnt like to rely on them completely.

Here one should note an important feature: Among others a doctor is someone who was evaluated by a certain group of people who know the subject. That is professional organisations, universities etc. hand out certificates which should give you some trust that this person knows what he/she is saying and doing. This is mostly what reputation is about. It is a guideline. Or put differently: Given a specified task the chance that you will end up with a completely incapable person which had been certified for this task by a respectable institution should be smaller than the chance that an uncertified person is incapable. This doesnt exclude the case that there are uncertified persons with a better knowledge than certified ones. This is just -at the moment- on average less likely.

I wrote “at the moment”, because there are unfortunately tendencies which dilute this rather helpful feature, as can be seen e.g. in the certification problem in the already mentioned outsourced learning environments/online classes. Certification problems can also be found in “cheap education” e.g. by certifying large amounts of students, which makes cheating easier (for example by handing in essays, which were not authored by oneself), academic misconduct and/or corruption e.g. due to financial interests etc. Moreover the possibilities for free autonomous learning are much, much better than before (which is good), so the number of highly trained individuals without a certificate are most probably on the rise. Traditional systems of evaluation may thus be loosing their influence. Personal recomendations would thus become more important, which makes it on the other hand harder to enter a foreign field as an outsider.

The above (unemployed) patient in the foto had a bad bike accident, which resulted unfortunately not only in a torn muscle. Thanks to a “still” rather good medical care in Germany within one week and with the help of several specialists and MRI a not so common injury could be diagnostized fastly and within 2 months the patient should be able to walk properly again….

Why do I write “still”?

Because in Germany the costs for health care are on the rise. This is not only due to an aging population but also to a great extend due to rising costs for pharmaceutical products, where new, patented products play a major role. According to this article in Berliner Zeitung on total the costs for physicians in Germany are meanwhile smaller than the costs for pharmaceutical products. Nevertheless suggestions of politicians which are about to form Germanys new government suggest to cut down on health care on the whole and instead secure a socalled “basic care” for the masses which could be supplemented by additional care – if you have the money. As a result the stockmarket for certain pharmaceutical companies soared right after the elections.

historical reading: -> hippocratic oath

little artwork in between, video: “herfortragendes abtragen im untertagungsbau”

math comment: the involved tranformations are not using Moebius transformations like in In2, but are similar to those used in Leiden.