Economic Test Bed

CSGnet Archive CSG2003
21

I was going to send some further revision of this to the net. I’m sending
it to you instead. Does it make sense? I understand breach of trust. What
are the actual grounds, and which are imagined?

    /Bruce

[From ]

Let’s see. Is this what just happened?

The public exchange between Bill Williams and Bill Powers was interrupted
by “Darth Vader (2003.12.06.2200)” in which Marc Abrams said
that BP does not adequately distinguish between personal issues and
technical issues. It was further interrupted by an exchange between Marc
and Bill Williams labeled “Private” but accidentally sent to
the list by both of them (accidentally four times).

BW said (Sat, 6 Dec 2003 23:58:08) it seems to him that BP sees nothing
unusual or exceptional in what Marc is criticizing (it “amounts in
effect to the American way”). He wondered if there was something
“ambiguous” in BP’s character that invites Gregorian
irony.

Marc (Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:42:41) criticized BW for giving BP “a
pass” (in some unspecified way), and replaced “ambiguous”
with “two faced”.

Setting aside the usual choleric ad hominem venom like “jerk”
and “set up to fail”, Marc said:

That BP misinterpreteded BW’s post.
That BW should clearly state his agenda and BP’s and keep them
clearly in mind.
That BP perceives others and not himself as responsible for conflicts
they have with him on the net. (My interpretation of the word
“tight” in “when things start getting tight he never,
ever, looks at himself as a cause of his own problems, he’s always trying
to dish it out to someone else.”)

When Bill Williams replied “Don’t let me forget this.” The
word “this” is ambiguous. Did he mean one or two of these
points (which?), or all three points?

When Bill Powers said the collaboration with Bill Williams was ended, was
it because he perceived Bill Williams agreeing in the vituperation
(“jerk”, “two faced”, etc.)? Because he perceived BW
agreeing with all the substantive parts of what Marc said? Because he
concluded from this that BW was not entering into the proposed
collaboration in good faith, and that it was therefore doomed to fail?
Because he could not distinguish between personal and technical issues
and assigns blame for conflict to others, as Marc believes? Is Bill
Williams accepting this because he in fact does concur in everything that
Marc said and how he said it? Is everyone going to back away from this
without learning doodley squat?

    /Bruce

Nevin

22

I was going to send this to the net. I’m sending it to you instead. Does
it make sense?

    /Bruce

[From ]

Let’s see. Is this what just happened?

The public exchange between Bill Williams and Bill Powers was interrupted
by “Darth Vader (2003.12.06.2200)” in which Marc Abrams said
that BP does not adequately distinguish between personal issues and
technical issues. It was further interrupted by an exchange between Marc
and Bill Williams labeled “Private” but accidentally sent to
the list by both of them (accidentally four times).

BW said (Sat, 6 Dec 2003 23:58:08) it seems to him that BP sees nothing
unusual or exceptional in what Marc is criticizing (it “amounts in
effect to the American way”). He wondered if there was something
“ambiguous” in BP’s character that invites Gregorian
irony.

Marc (Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:42:41) criticized BW for giving BP “a
pass” (in some unspecified way), and replaced “ambiguous”
with “two faced”.

Setting aside the usual choleric ad hominem venom like “jerk”
and “set up to fail”, Marc said:

  • That BP misinterpreteded BW’s post.
  • That BW should clearly state his agenda and BP’s and keep them
    clearly in mind.
  • That BP perceives others and not himself as responsible for conflicts
    they have with him on the net. (My interpretation of the word
    “tight” in “when things start getting tight he never,
    ever, looks at himself as a cause of his own problems, he’s always trying
    to dish it out to someone else.”)
    When Bill Williams replied “Don’t let me forget this.” The
    word “this” is ambiguous. Did he mean one or two of these
    points (which?), or all three points?

When Bill Powers said the collaboration with Bill Williams was ended, was
it because he perceived Bill Williams agreeing in the vituperation
(“jerk”, “two faced”, etc.)? Because he perceived BW
agreeing with all the substantive parts of what Marc said? Because he
concluded from this that BW was not entering into the proposed
collaboration in good faith, and that it was therefore doomed to fail?
Because he could not distinguish between personal and technical issues
and assigns blame for conflict to others, as Marc believes? Is Bill
Williams accepting this because he in fact does concur in everything that
Marc said and how he said it? Is everyone going to back away from this
without learning doodley squat?

    /Bruce

Nevin

23

Bruce,

Your posts always make sense? What a question. Are you sure you aren't "the other Bruce?"

First, is there a bit skepticism expressed below about as you say, more or less, a four times repeated accident by two people? I genuinely don't understand how this happened, but I most solemn declare that what I did was entirely accidental. But, under the circumstances I wouldn't blame anyone for wondering.

Second, what did I mean by "this?" That I was convinced that it was important that I keep in mind that Bill Powers is capable of acting in the ways that Marc was describing. I genuinely do think that the way Bill sometimes behaves can, and should, be attributed more to his frustration and exasperation than to "mean spiritedness." But, I don't have any doubts that whatever the source Bill can and sometimes does behave in unpleasant ways. In my old age I am considering the wisdom of becoming cautious. But, nothing in what I meant by remember this was intended to state, as it might possibly be read, to indicate that I wished to remember "this" for purposes of somehow getting Bill. There wasn't on my part any malicious intent.

Did I make a mistake in listening to Marc and not correcting him by at least asking if the way he was expressing himself was consistent with the criticisms he was making of Bill Powers? Maybe. What he was saying was quite raw. But, I've indicated to Marc from time to time my position in this regard-- which is that it is better to consider why someone is doing something, and think about the consequences involved than it is to characterize them in unfortunate ways.

One of the justifications in my own mind for insisting in considering collaborative efforts with Bill that we first discuss general issues, was my understanding that his interest in economic issues is bound up with a lot of anger. This it seems to me to be obvious in his reply to me in which he described Von Mises as, and I forget the exact phrase, but I think it was "self-absorbed jerk." I genuinely don't think it serves any purpose to characterize people this way, and it often seems to do a lot of harm. The harm consisting of a mistaken idea that these people are in most ways much different than you or me-- the fortunate people who know better. (Warning label: the preceeding sentence has been identified as containing a minor, but inept, departure on the author's part into irony.)

I'm not sure from what you've said, if you are considering posting the stuff below, or something close to it, to the CSGnet. I wouldn't have any objections to your doing this. However, I really have doubts about Bill Powers and the anger that I perceive he has regarding economic questions. I doubt the problems of economics are going to be solved in a context in which the interest has it source, and the effort is fueled by anger.

Despite any impression I may have inadverantly created by the comments above, your interest and intervention ( where ever it goes, including possibly nowhere ) is very much appreciated.

My interest sometimes faltered when the recent linguistics thread dipped into technicalities, but despite the fact that I don't think it came to any definitive conclusions I thought you presented the material extra-ordinarily well.

best

Bill Williams

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Nevin [mailto:bnevin@cisco.com]
Sent: Sun 12/7/2003 5:24 PM
To: Williams, William D.
Cc: bn@cisco.com
Subject: Re: Economic Test Bed

I was going to send this to the net. I'm sending it to you instead. Does it
make sense?

         /Bruce

[From ]

Let's see. Is this what just happened?

The public exchange between Bill Williams and Bill Powers was interrupted
by "Darth Vader (2003.12.06.2200)" in which Marc Abrams said that BP does
not adequately distinguish between personal issues and technical issues. It
was further interrupted by an exchange between Marc and Bill Williams
labeled "Private" but accidentally sent to the list by both of them
(accidentally four times).

BW said (Sat, 6 Dec 2003 23:58:08) it seems to him that BP sees nothing
unusual or exceptional in what Marc is criticizing (it "amounts in effect
to the American way"). He wondered if there was something "ambiguous" in
BP's character that invites Gregorian irony.

Marc (Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:42:41) criticized BW for giving BP "a pass" (in
some unspecified way), and replaced "ambiguous" with "two faced".

Setting aside the usual choleric ad hominem venom like "jerk" and "set up
to fail", Marc said:
    * That BP misinterpreteded BW's post.
    * That BW should clearly state his agenda and BP's and keep them
clearly in mind.
    * That BP perceives others and not himself as responsible for conflicts
they have with him on the net. (My interpretation of the word "tight" in
"when things start getting tight he never, ever, looks at himself as a
cause of his own problems, he's always trying to dish it out to someone
else.")
When Bill Williams replied "Don't let me forget this." The word "this" is
ambiguous. Did he mean one or two of these points (which?), or all three
points?

When Bill Powers said the collaboration with Bill Williams was ended, was
it because he perceived Bill Williams agreeing in the vituperation ("jerk",
"two faced", etc.)? Because he perceived BW agreeing with all the
substantive parts of what Marc said? Because he concluded from this that BW
was not entering into the proposed collaboration in good faith, and that it
was therefore doomed to fail? Because he could not distinguish between
personal and technical issues and assigns blame for conflict to others, as
Marc believes? Is Bill Williams accepting this because he in fact does
concur in everything that Marc said and how he said it? Is everyone going
to back away from this without learning doodley squat?

         /Bruce Nevin

24

Hi, Bruce –
In confidence, please:
I appreciate your offer to intercede, but it’s probably hopeless. Marc
has a bad combination of a short fuse and an overweening ego (whatever
weening is, his ego does too much of it) and Bill, I’m afraid, is just
sick. Bill is working up to the same tirades as before: economics is
terribly serious business and economists should be treated with respect;
nothing short of total committment to our joint economic project is
acceptable, and not much farther in the background, it is very unlikely
that an amateur or hobbyist (guess who) is going to say anything that
would add significantly to all the work that has gone before in
economics. And of course I am pushing my father’s ideas, and so on. All,
of course, as the same time he is saying that vastly important advances
can come out of control theory.
What hasn’t come out, and what I have been strenuously avoiding saying
anything about, is the fact that Bill is pretty bad at modeling. In that
last model he put on the net, there is one line of code (repeated for
each control system) that is simply an arbitrary formula inserted to make
the performance of the model come out to be what he thought it should be.
He fiddled with those ratios until he got the answer he wanted. I know
this sounds close to fitting a model to data, but it’s not: the behavior
of the model he wanted was simply what he imagined it ought to be. There
was no data.
The previous blowup, months ago, was closely preceded by Bill’s
submitting a series of models to me, saying he was just practicing
writing control-system code. Unfortunately I took him literally. After
working through several of these models and showing him how to
drastically reduce the amount of code he had to write, I suggested that
we turn our attention to building some models that were more directly
aimed at real economic problems, instead of (bite my tongue and scold
myself for an idiot) just generating pretty pictures. Well, of course it
turned out that he thought he was building models having to do with
economics, and that he had been presenting his “practice”
models to his colleages as illustrations of the power of control theory.
I had dismissed something he was quite proud of as “making pretty
pictures.”
I think that was one trigger. Another came about when I asked him what I
should read in economics to learn what models they had produced (he
insisted that such models existed). He referred me to Keynes’ General
theory book, and I obtained it and began to read it. And I started
asking questions, because I didn’t understand what Keynes was saying. The
result was really strange. First, Bill told me to skip the first 5
chapters – nobody read those – and just read Chapter 6. I found
problems in Chapter 6 and asked about them, and he started going on about
how poorly Keynes wrote, and after a bit more of this he was saying that
Keynes wrote the worst book on economics that ever existed, I think he
had flipped by that time, and of course was just throwing my words back
at me and not meaning what he said at all – he was furious.

A little later, someone – I have wondered if it was you – sent me a
letter Bill wrote to me or about me – it wasn’t clear which – in which
he literally went off the deep end, threatening to hurt me and destroy me
and to do things to me ten times worse than anything I had tried to do to
him, It was pretty sick. Then he cut off communications. Having seen the
recent scenarios, I wonder if he didn’t simply send me that letter
himself, by accident.

Well, no matter. That’s over. I was willing to give it another try, but
it’s clear that the same problems are seething just under the surface,
and the slightest misstep on my part would bring it all out again. I just
don’t want to go through that again. There must be other economists who
would be open-minded and willing to lend a hand, rather than being
walking powder kegs. At worst, I can write up what I’ve done so far and
hope that someone in some later year will come across it and take it
up.

Needless to say, it would be too cruel to tell Bill all this. I don’t
think he can help it. But I can’t put up with it any more.

Bill

25

Bruce,

It seems to me that perhaps the best course is to allow Bill Powers to make yet one more attempt to create his "economic test bed" on his own. Who knows, perhaps he will, in some sense succeed. I notice this time that he is using Keynes as something of a background in his attempt to figure out how to configure his program. But, the way in which he comments on Keynes, it seems to me, includes an element of irritation that may get in the way of what he is attmepting to do. Just as well, I think, that I'm not involved-- but I find it most interesting to watch. Not so much in a malicious sense of anticipating that Bill's seeming unwillingness or inablity to put aside his own position to consider if some other system has some element of validity, but more in the sense of facination with what happens when what amount to two conceptual systems clash.

I had the same interest in following your disucssion with Bill in regard to linguistics. I will confess, however, that I didn't have the intellectual free energy to follow some of the parts of that thread with enough attention to attain comprehension. However, I'd be interested to know if in your view the fundamental question regarding the existence of a social aspect of expereince (the status of language) was not resolved?

I got a lot of satisfaction ( of a non-maximizing kind of course ) out our exchange about meaning and value.

Bill Williams

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Nevin [mailto:bnevin@cisco.com]
Sent: Sun 12/7/2003 5:24 PM
To: Williams, William D.
Cc: bn@cisco.com
Subject: Re: Economic Test Bed

I was going to send this to the net. I'm sending it to you instead. Does it
make sense?

         /Bruce

[From ]

Let's see. Is this what just happened?

The public exchange between Bill Williams and Bill Powers was interrupted
by "Darth Vader (2003.12.06.2200)" in which Marc Abrams said that BP does
not adequately distinguish between personal issues and technical issues. It
was further interrupted by an exchange between Marc and Bill Williams
labeled "Private" but accidentally sent to the list by both of them
(accidentally four times).

BW said (Sat, 6 Dec 2003 23:58:08) it seems to him that BP sees nothing
unusual or exceptional in what Marc is criticizing (it "amounts in effect
to the American way"). He wondered if there was something "ambiguous" in
BP's character that invites Gregorian irony.

Marc (Sun, 7 Dec 2003 02:42:41) criticized BW for giving BP "a pass" (in
some unspecified way), and replaced "ambiguous" with "two faced".

Setting aside the usual choleric ad hominem venom like "jerk" and "set up
to fail", Marc said:
    * That BP misinterpreteded BW's post.
    * That BW should clearly state his agenda and BP's and keep them
clearly in mind.
    * That BP perceives others and not himself as responsible for conflicts
they have with him on the net. (My interpretation of the word "tight" in
"when things start getting tight he never, ever, looks at himself as a
cause of his own problems, he's always trying to dish it out to someone
else.")
When Bill Williams replied "Don't let me forget this." The word "this" is
ambiguous. Did he mean one or two of these points (which?), or all three
points?

When Bill Powers said the collaboration with Bill Williams was ended, was
it because he perceived Bill Williams agreeing in the vituperation ("jerk",
"two faced", etc.)? Because he perceived BW agreeing with all the
substantive parts of what Marc said? Because he concluded from this that BW
was not entering into the proposed collaboration in good faith, and that it
was therefore doomed to fail? Because he could not distinguish between
personal and technical issues and assigns blame for conflict to others, as
Marc believes? Is Bill Williams accepting this because he in fact does
concur in everything that Marc said and how he said it? Is everyone going
to back away from this without learning doodley squat?

         /Bruce Nevin