tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post2422349395927350571..comments2024-03-29T10:48:38.142+00:00Comments on Coppola Comment: Harmony and dissonanceFrances Coppolahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-34183991365439973652012-10-11T16:32:09.674+01:002012-10-11T16:32:09.674+01:00Plucking a guitar string is not making music. It&#...Plucking a guitar string is not making music. It's making tuned sound, that's all. So it's physics, not music. The Pythagorean monochord does pretty much what you describe - we tune it using resonant frequencies, actually (although I always cheated and tuned it by ear, because I do have perfect pitch!)<br /><br />However, let's assume that rather than a single note being plucked, a known piece of music were played once an hour. The pitch and quality of sound would vary, not only as the strings slackened but simply due to weather conditions, the player's mood, the guitar tuner going deaf. If the guitar were not tuned, there would be a gradual increase in dissonance as the strings slackened, which would make the player less willing to play, since he would not be able to avoid making sounds that cause him pain. If he is forced to continue playing, eventually he will find the pain so bad that he will call in a guitar tuner. Tuning the guitar restores both harmony and the player's pleasure in playing (and hence his willingness to play). This is a more passive example of dissonance than the examples I used, where dissonance is deliberately created to make music exciting and give it momentum. But it is none-the-less a good example of what I meant when I said that the pain of dissonance eventually forces change. <br /><br />Music does change over time, and as I said, every performance is different. But sudden changes in music are almost impossible: the "black swan" event in your example would not necessarily cause the music to stop, unless that were the only guitar in the world. The music could continue with a different instrument. There would be a qualitative difference in the sound, but the "shape" of the music - its skeleton, if you like - would be the same.<br /><br />Music is a human system built upon a physical system. And I'm certainly not disputing that cycles of human behaviour can and do change, both gradually and suddenly. But the physical laws underpinning music don't change, or if they do the rate of change is far, far slower. My problem with economics is that it is almost entirely a human system and therefore change, including sudden change, is INNATE to it. It's much more like a living system: perhaps econobiology would be closer to the truth than econophysics.Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-83464305722727455462012-10-11T11:51:22.307+01:002012-10-11T11:51:22.307+01:00Let me try an extended analogy. The fundamental f...Let me try an extended analogy. The fundamental frequency - the pitch - of a guitar string is determined by its length, its tension, and its linear density. I propose a thought experiment by which I measure the frequency (by plucking the string) once an hour, for many years. The frequency will tend to drift down slightly as the string slackens, then go up when the guitar is tuned. However, the tuning will not exactly restore the frequency (at least not if someone with my ear does it), so the frequency will drift around until, from time to time, the guitar is tuned with reference to some frequency standard, or by someone with perfect pitch. And, from time to time, the string will break, so that, until it's replaced, there will be a few observations where the frequency has fallen to zero.<br /><br />All these cycles will create what seems to be a roughly predictable pattern. But there is no reason why any of them shouldn't change unexpectedly - a change in habits by the guitar's tuner, or a new owner, or the invention of a new sort of guitar spring that breaks less often...<br /><br />And then one day some oaf will come along and tread on the guitar, breaking its neck. There's nothing in the historical data that would predict that.<br />PaulBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16861432701458977844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-43404882489262539972012-10-09T18:08:35.157+01:002012-10-09T18:08:35.157+01:00Paul, you're making the same mistake as the pe...Paul, you're making the same mistake as the person in a previous post who dismissed music as "just maths". <br /><br />Music is as much a human system as a physical system, and it is constantly changing - it is dynamic, not static. You never hear the same piece of music twice (except recordings): every piece of music is to a degree "re-composed" in every performance. Even what we define as "music" changes over time. And music technology changes all the time - even acoustic instruments vary from day to day because of the influence of temperature and humidity, and the sounds they make depend on the skill, personality and mood of the player. In these ways it resembles economics. <br /><br />However, it's true that you can only stretch an analogy so far. Economics doesn't have much of a physical component at all, unlike music. It is a human system which mimics a physical system. There is a limit to our ability to change music, because as you say the sounds themselves are bound by physical laws. But economics we could change completely if we choose. The question is whether we want to. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-73430095619065394782012-10-09T17:08:34.593+01:002012-10-09T17:08:34.593+01:00There are economic feedback mechanisms that tend t...There are economic feedback mechanisms that tend to produce oscillatory behaviour, but I think it's a mistake to treat the economy as if it were a physical system. A musical instrument for example is usually much the same from one day to the next, and behaves always according to the same laws of physics. It will therefore produce much the same note if plucked in the same way. But the properties of the global economy change with every technological development and every change in the availability of resources. The properties of the economy of one country change also with every change in the economies of its trading partners. There's therefore no reason why any particular cycle should persist. <br />PaulBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16861432701458977844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-39357945221216941402012-10-08T17:26:24.699+01:002012-10-08T17:26:24.699+01:00Paul,
really in this piece I'm sort of thinki...Paul,<br /><br />really in this piece I'm sort of thinking aloud - it's not a set of finished ideas by any means - so your feedback is helpful. <br /><br />I don't think I mean that we "need" economic crises, just that it's hard to maintain common purpose and creative energy without some form of stress, and sometimes that stress has to be a LOT of stress - such as a war. If we could find a way of maintaining common purpose and creative energy without the stress, that would be far better, obviously. <br /><br />I think we live within an oscillating system, rather than a system in simple equilibrium, but we don't see the oscillations clearly because they appear infrequent and we also have shocks which disturb their frequency and amplitude. The business cycle is the best-known example of economic oscillation, but I reckon there are others - a whole set of waveforms, if you like. <br /><br />I read something recently that suggested that there is a financial cycle which is longer than the business cycle and has greater amplitude: from time to time the two combine and the result is a mega-crash, but the intervening period is a "moderation" caused by one negating the other (in other words, an interference pattern). This is econophysics,really, and I'm more than slightly out of my depth as my physics doesn't go beyond A-level. But I thought it was an interesting idea. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-39966898066514149662012-10-08T13:39:06.393+01:002012-10-08T13:39:06.393+01:00Frances, I disagree strongly that we need economic...Frances, I disagree strongly that we need economic crises. There's enough grief in life already to stop us getting too comfortable.<br /><br />But I agree strongly with your last paragraph - too much smoothing is a bad thing, because stopping the small crises can lead to big crises. There's an analogy with forest management - if you put out all the small fires you leave fuel for an eventual big fire.<br /><br />And then again, I'm rather uncomfortable with your talk of cycles, which tends to give the impression that these fluctuations are much more reliable than they really are.PaulBhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16861432701458977844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-33552850845212618192012-10-06T20:01:26.819+01:002012-10-06T20:01:26.819+01:00I think economic forecasting is pretty similar to ...I think economic forecasting is pretty similar to weather forecasting. One week ahead is pretty accurate. But the further ahead you attempt to forecast, the more it becomes like divination - and if you base policy on it, you are behaving like the kings of old who consulted sages to tell them the most propitious times and places to hold battles. <br /><br />I don't mean to preach. I just don't think we understand our system anywhere near well enough to be able to change the way it works. Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-88486348919429623582012-10-06T17:54:16.740+01:002012-10-06T17:54:16.740+01:00Your a gettin' all preachy on us, Francis.
I ...Your a gettin' all preachy on us, Francis.<br /><br />I see it like this, History is a series of accidents (good and bad) that from a distance look to have some sort of order in them. They don't. History like economics is not a science. That's not to say its not useful or important it is. But I think our will to shape the future is actually very harmful.<br /><br />And just as when You are playing a piece of music you don't want to get too far in front of yourself. You need to be in the moment to let the music flow or you just lose your rhythm or the whole thing becomes either wrong of bad, and sometimes both.<br /><br />I hate the happiness metrics. How do you know what happiness is if you have never experienced sadness? Harmony is contentment, not replacing your kitchen every other year on the back of a property credit card. I am not saying we need to banish happiness, it does need putting in its rightful place though.<br /><br />We need to be lucky as well as good, you cant force luck. Even if we get everything right we still need to be lucky.Its not an admission of failure to admit that.Seanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04362169593902131947noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-81123367569143716872012-10-06T09:37:47.454+01:002012-10-06T09:37:47.454+01:00Thanks Frances. I agree with this one 100%.
Evol...Thanks Frances. I agree with this one 100%. <br /><br />Evolution just takes time. To achieve harmony, imo human kind not only has to seperate church and state, we also have to seperate market and state. <br />My background is IT. I'm a programmer. You just make a mess of the flow if you don't split functionality. This is fractal, as it works this way on all levels and in all systems. Economy or biomass no different.<br /><br />We can only achieve harmony if we set up the collective arcitecture to fascilitate. without double functionality.<br />or we will just create another third world on another place. <br />if you don't cure the cancer, it will just grow another tumor ...<br /><br />where blood is needed for on organism, economy needs money. without the double functionality. Our friends the freegolders stopped with splitting just two monetary funcions. we need to split all three !<br />Just as we will do with religion, state and market. we will do this with medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account. Harmoney(c)<br />We could do this easily with a Bretton Woods 2.0, it could also take another dark ages but I am not a doomsday regression guy. As time moves only in one direction, I believe we will also move forward. When things get really rough in a year or two we will have the restructuring of our systems. we do not have a choice. its the invisible hand. <br /><br />markets will decide so.<br />you speak chinese yet ?<br />Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08106028167162534649noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-8900710462672952352012-10-05T20:29:16.452+01:002012-10-05T20:29:16.452+01:00That will do nicely!That will do nicely!Frances Coppolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09399390283774592713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-59472034922226015652012-10-05T20:26:16.467+01:002012-10-05T20:26:16.467+01:00Music's a nice metaphor but I'd have used ...Music's a nice metaphor but I'd have used the difference between a sweet cider and sharp beer :)<br /><br /><br />Dave Holdennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8764541874043694159.post-85379117821675574682012-10-05T11:31:38.908+01:002012-10-05T11:31:38.908+01:00Given economic, social and international harmony, ...Given economic, social and international harmony, the human race would find plenty to do and keep itself occupied . . . . . if the human race was wise. But of course it isn’t.<br /><br />Give people a smoothly functioning bank system, and they’ll think of ways of taking ever increasing risks, till the bank system blows up. Give them full employment, and they’ll introduce rules and regulations that mess up the labour market and raise unemployment.<br /><br />As Elvis Presley rightly observed: “You don’t know what you’ve got untill you lose it.” Or as the 17th century Spanish writer Baltasar Gracien said, "New mediocrity is preferred to traditional excellence." <br />Ralph Musgravehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09443857766263185665noreply@blogger.com