Thanks. I had read it years ago, but didn’t remember that he had many more points than O(n^3.5 log(1/h)) scale and provides useful references (other than Red Plenty).
(I initially thought it would be better not to mention the context of the question as it might bias the responses. OTOH the context could make the marginal LW poster more interested in providing answers, so I here it is:)
It came up in an argument that the difficulty of economic calculation problem could be a difficult to a hypothetical singleton, insomuch a singleton agent needs certain amount of compute relative to the economy in question. My intuition consists two related hypotheses: First, during any transition period where any agent participates in global economy where most other participants are humans (“economy” could be interpreted widely to include many human transactions), can the problem of economic calculation provide some limits how much calculation would be needed for an agent to become able to manipulate / dominate the economy? (Is it enough for an agent to be marginally more capable than any other participant, or does it get swamped by the sheer size of the economy is large enough?)
Secondly, if an Mises/Hayek answer is correct and the economic calculation problem is solved most efficiently by a distributed calculation, it could imply that a single agent in a charge of a number of processes on “global economy” scale could be out-competed by a community of coordinating agents. [1]
However, I would like to read more to judge if my intuitions are correct. Maybe all of this is already rendered moot by results I simply do not how to find.
([1] Related but tangential: Can one provide a definition when distributed computation is no longer a singleton but more-or-less aligned community of individual agents? My hunch is, there could be a characterizations related to speed of communication between agents / processes in a singleton. Ultimately speed of light is prone to mandate some limitations.)
Can anyone recommend good reading material on economic calculation problem?
It’s been a while since I read it, and it’s a blog post rather than anything formal, but I recall liking https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/ .
Thanks. I had read it years ago, but didn’t remember that he had many more points than O(n^3.5 log(1/h)) scale and provides useful references (other than Red Plenty).
(I initially thought it would be better not to mention the context of the question as it might bias the responses. OTOH the context could make the marginal LW poster more interested in providing answers, so I here it is:)
It came up in an argument that the difficulty of economic calculation problem could be a difficult to a hypothetical singleton, insomuch a singleton agent needs certain amount of compute relative to the economy in question. My intuition consists two related hypotheses: First, during any transition period where any agent participates in global economy where most other participants are humans (“economy” could be interpreted widely to include many human transactions), can the problem of economic calculation provide some limits how much calculation would be needed for an agent to become able to manipulate / dominate the economy? (Is it enough for an agent to be marginally more capable than any other participant, or does it get swamped by the sheer size of the economy is large enough?)
Secondly, if an Mises/Hayek answer is correct and the economic calculation problem is solved most efficiently by a distributed calculation, it could imply that a single agent in a charge of a number of processes on “global economy” scale could be out-competed by a community of coordinating agents. [1]
However, I would like to read more to judge if my intuitions are correct. Maybe all of this is already rendered moot by results I simply do not how to find.
([1] Related but tangential: Can one provide a definition when distributed computation is no longer a singleton but more-or-less aligned community of individual agents? My hunch is, there could be a characterizations related to speed of communication between agents / processes in a singleton. Ultimately speed of light is prone to mandate some limitations.)