Weapons of Reason: The paradox of skill

"The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all." ― Ecclesiastes 9:11

Stephen Jay Gould is known not only for his work in biology, but also for a collection of essays on baseball.  In "Why No One Hits .400 Anymore," he explains just that, with a fairly elegant solution.  The pool of talent in baseball has grown since the early days, strategies and tactics have been improved, and players receive better training.  Another way of putting this is that the average skill among players has improved.  However, as they have improved, they are also beginning to approach the natural limits of what the human body is capable of.  When the entire community of players approach this limit, the community looses variation—there is now less room to spread out.

2009 Belmont Stakes photo finish.

This observation is sometimes called the paradox of skill—the greater the average skill level in a community, the less important skill becomes in determining the outcome of competition.  In the above photo finish, the difference between the two horses is only a few inches.  Both the horses were bread and trained to run competitively; however, the outcome was likely determined by essentially random factors that gave one horse a slight edge over the other.  This effect can be seen at work elsewhere.  At one time, higher education would have ensured employment in highly desirable, relatively low stress jobs.  Now, college education is becoming necessary for gainful employment at all.

Weapons of reason: Jevons' paradox

"The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed." ― Mohandas Gandhi

Jevons' paradox is an example of how economics can defy common sense.  We use energy for useful things, such as manufacturing or transportation.  Creating machines that can use energy more efficiently can help to reduces prices and reduce our consumption of fuel.  However, the latter is not guaranteed.  150 years ago, an economist named William Jevons realized that more cost-effective coal plants resulted in an increased demand for coal.  However, the increase in demand was greater than the increase in efficiency, which meant the industry was consuming more coal, rather than less.

Jevons' paradox is more likely to occur in cases of elastic demand, where demand more than doubles when cost is cut in half.

Price elasticity is necessary to understanding how Jevons' paradox occurs.$$\text {Elasticity} = \frac{\text{Percent change in demand}}{\text{Percent change in price}}$$Elasticity is typically a negative number. More negative values represent more elastic price—that is, the products demand changes faster with a given change in price.  Energy efficiency is not the only contributing factor to price, but more efficient use of energy will cause lower prices.  Because of other factors, Jevons' paradox is likely to occur only in cases of high elasticity when energy efficiency is the only change.  Energy demand is typically inelastic in the short-term; but, it can be substantially higher in the long-term.  If price can be reduced without an increase of energy efficiency, then the corresponding increase in demand will naturally increase overall energy consumption.


The Luddite response—which is too reactionary—would be to never improve energy efficiency.  There are two obvious problems with this.  First, improving energy efficiency doesn't always lead to Jevons' paradox.  Second, society could potentially benefit from increases to energy efficiency.  Instead, new technologies need to be combined with new policies that would help offset any increases in fuel consumption.  An example would be a green tax, which incentivizes manufacturers to create less pollution—perhaps by burning fewer fossil fuels.

Weapons of Reason

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

What will happen in the future?  This seems to be a profound question—deep and philosophical.  But, it's actually quite vague.  If we tried to study history by asking "What happened in the past?" we wouldn't get far.  The concept of the future involves not only time, but also place and people, which naturally compounds the difficulty in understanding it.

We need to narrow the scope of this question.  It would be better to ask what will happen in the next century—during our and our children's lifetimes—and to ask where these things will happen.  This question is also wrapped up in personal issues—our desires and aspirations—which makes us susceptible to wishful thinking and other biases that would only confirm our hopes for the future.  This means that it's important to exercise as much objectivity as possible and to put our faith in the weapons of reason: mathematics, science, and logic

What will happen in the future?  This is the topic that I want explore, in the hopes that at least a few more people will think more critically about the experiences we will have and the challenges we will face.