John Casti Interview (Part 2)

  

Ts.Yordanova:  Nassim Taleb says about your books: “I am an assiduous reader of John Casti’s books as they provide a complex-system perspective on things, in addition to being very pleasant to read. He is a real scientific intellectual”. What do you think of Taleb’s books: “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets” and “The black swan”?
John Casti: I think these books have a huge value in pointing out that the way the world really works and the way we think it works are not always in harmony with each other. So for this reason I am a fan of Taleb’s work. It’s important and I’m pleased to see it has gotten the attention of the general public. 

Ts.Yordanova: In this context, what do you think is the role of chance in people’s lives?

John Casti: As stated in MOOD MATTERS, all human actions and behaviors arise as a combination of chance and necessity. My work focuses on the necessity part, since I believe that is the only aspect that can actually be analyzed and even forecast (in a probabilistic way). But chance also plays a big role by tipping the scales toward one “attractor” event rather than another. But the landscape within which events unfold (the necessity part) is always changing. So a given chance event at one moment may result in an entirely different outcome than if it had happened at a different time because of the shape of the landscape.

Ts.Yordanova: This year you took part in the Socionomics Conference, held in the USA. Would you please share some more  information about the organization of the event, the lectors and the overall impression it left on you?

John Casti: I think you can find most of the details on the web page of The Socionomics Institute www.socionomics.net. Just search under “Socionomics Summit.” My overall impression was very positive, as I found it encouraging that so many people attended this event and I received a lot of positive feedback about the ideas presented there. 

Ts.Yordanova:  How could you explain the wave of protests   happening   all over the world? And   furthermore the rise of the populist political parties and organizations?  Even  here  in Bulgaria there were several protests held against the minority population.

John Casti: These are all perfect examples of increasing negative social mood in the populations you mention. When the mood turns negative, you can *expect* to see events that would be labeled “separating,” “localizing,” “xenophobic” and the like instead of their opposites. Massive social unrest is then just a specific manifestation of the social mood. The next few years will see a lot more of these demonstrations, accompanied by increasingly violent behavior until the old social, political, financial and power structures are simply swept away. 

Ts.Yordanova: In his book “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets” Nassim Taleb suggests that the issuing of Nobel prize for economics should be discontinued. Why do you think the Economics science cannot deal successfully with the crises?

John Casti: First of all, to call economics a “science” is an abuse of language. This field simply does not (and cannot) employ the scientific method in its investigations of economic phenomena. 

As for the Nobel prize in Economic Science, to give it its official title, I agree with Nassim that it should never have been instituted in the first place. You may not know, but in fact this prize is not awarded by the Nobel Foundation at all, but by the Swedish National Bank. The Bank just made a clever deal with the Nobel Foundation to allow them to piggyback their award on the *true* Nobel prizes, and most importantly, to be able to call it the “Nobel” prize. I think it’s a joke, and every year when the prize is awarded I think to myself, “Yes, one more good reason why there should not be a Nobel prize in economics.”

Ts.Yordanova: Thank you very much for this conversation. Would you please say a few words to your readers in Bulgaria?

John Casti: My concluding message is two-fold: First, I appreciate your interest and support of my work on social mood and its role in helping to create the events we see every day in the social domain. Secondly, keep an open mind on what you see and don’t always take what you see or hear in the media as the gospel truth. You have to make independent judgments for yourself, using both media information and the evidence of your own eyes. Socionomics can help you systematize that process.