Frank Schirrmacher (1959–2014)

Dieses Buch von Frank Schirrmacher steht auf wackligem Grund. Schon bei den Prämissen schleichen sich Fehler und Ungenauigkeiten ein. Ist die Idee des Homo oeconomicus tatsächlich eine verbreitete Idee der Wirtschaftswissenschaft? Was ist mit Spieltheorie, meint er tatsächlich die übliche Definition. Vielleicht sollte man dieses Buch mit Vorsicht genießen, denn es birgt so einige paranoide Ideen.
Dabei schafft Frank Schirrmacher es nicht einmal die Probleme, die er aufzeigt gegeneinander so abzugrenzen, dass eine sonnige Argumentation möglich ist. Er betrachtet das Problem der KI als trivialen Teil eines von ihm heraufbeschworenen apokalyptischen Szenarios, dabei allerdings die tatsächliche Schwere des Problems der KI verschweigend und die eines nicht existenten Problems aufbauschend. Alles in allem ist die Argumentation einfach zu paranoid, um überzeugend zu sein. Man muss aber eingestehen, dass dieses Buch doch dazu anregt, sich selbst zu hinterfragen.… (meer)

It’s a John Nash World out there

Ego: The Game of Life in inflammatory. Extraordinarily so. On nearly every other page there is an inflammatory statement to challenge the reader. It is relentless and effective. Right in the preface, Schirrmacher says in the game of life, you have to accept the idea that “the universe has singled you out to be its personal enemy.” It is not possible for me to put down a book that begins this way. And it does not disappoint.

At its core is Schirrmacher’s premise that rational choice theory and game theory are now running society. And that they were developed by a certified paranoid schizophrenic – John Nash. Nash could not countenance people acting selflessly. Fraternity and solidarity made no sense to Nash, who dismissed them as factors. It was all about self interest, and nothing else mattered. Nash is aided and abetted by economists who invented homo economicus, the evil twin of every human, who only acts selfishly to maximize returns. Plugged into faulty, incomplete models, the results have been unparalleled disasters, producing “impossible” failures and repeated once in a million year setbacks.

We are now players in John Nash’s game, the game of life. Google, Yahoo, Amazon and Facebook all build assumptions about us. They take us in new directions whether we want to go or not. Google Adwords uses an algorithm reputed to be the most advanced in the world, more sophisticated than any military app, which also models everyone and every action on Nash’s paranoia. Every internet search is an ad auction that adds to the knowledgebase. They are same as the algorithms used by hedge funds and real time traders, pumping millions of trades around the clock. Finance and the internet are merging to dominate everything.

This reductive analysis is as good as any out there, and better than most. But the primary impact from the book is in the challenging statements that pop up continually. Some are Schirrmacher’s and some are from other people, but they all have the same disturbing quality:

-The Cold War simply moved to Wall Street.
-After the end of the Cold War, a new cold war is opening up in the heart of societies.
-Economists invented homo economicus and convinced the world that it was natural law.
-Wall Street has reinvented the alchemist, turning worthless paper into real money at will.
-Derivatives went from zero in the 1970s to $1.2 quadrillion: 20 times more than the GNP of the world.
-In the 50s, stocks were held an average of four years. In 2010 it was two months. In 2014 it was 22 seconds.
-The most imperialistic economic theory was obviously Marxism.
-Everywhere today it is a binary question of exclusion or inclusion. You are with us or against us, you are worthy or not, you are in or you’re out.
-Individuals are being fashioned by the machinery of an unrestrained information market.
-What if the system didn’t reflect our “preferences”, but actively shaped them?
-The Philosopher’s Stone was not a stone but a fluid: pure liquidity
-Information is not the precursor of knowledge, but the tool of salesmen.
-Twenty years’ experience is really one year of experience repeated twenty times.
-Computers, from stock exchange terminals to PCs are merely tools that imitate the capabilities of the autistic.

He lays the blame for the financial crisis squarely on the shoulders of John Nash and those who leverage him. The perverse result is the twisted, unequal society we have today. Schirrmacher died in 2014 at the age of 54. It’s unfortunate he is not around to collect the reactions to The Game of Life, and tell us how right he was.

David Wineberg… (meer)