82,891
edits
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
So, we get ''infected'' with the idea of Apocalypse ''by each other''. Our legume-buying habits ''are not independent after all''. They are all formed out of a collective consensus about the ''non-imminence'' of the second coming. While each person’s threshold for precautionary lentil purchase in the event of imminent apocalypse will differ, across the group, news of the unchecked spread of coronavirus will bring each person closer to that threshold, and will push some of them over it. | So, we get ''infected'' with the idea of Apocalypse ''by each other''. Our legume-buying habits ''are not independent after all''. They are all formed out of a collective consensus about the ''non-imminence'' of the second coming. While each person’s threshold for precautionary lentil purchase in the event of imminent apocalypse will differ, across the group, news of the unchecked spread of coronavirus will bring each person closer to that threshold, and will push some of them over it. | ||
As they walk past the tinned goods shelf, it only takes a small proportion of that 95% to pick up a tin to blow the grocer's expectations out the window. | As they walk past the tinned goods shelf, it only takes a small proportion of that 95% to pick up a tin to blow the grocer's expectations out the window. Let’s say, unnerved by all this elbow-touching and hand-washing carry one, just 5 of the 95% decide to buy an extra single tin this week. As the hippies vegans and health nuts, who buy lentils for fun, are also buying their regular quota, in these nervous times the lentil supply quickly diminishes. | ||
A second order of dependence emerges. For some of the 95%, who have not yet crossed the the threshold for precautionary lentil purchase, ''notice'' that the lentil shelf is nearly empty. They reconsider their apprehension of apocalypse. They move closer to their threshold. They collect a tin each. The shelf is cleaned out. | |||
The supermarket management will now intervene, alarmed at this sudden run on lentils. | The supermarket management will now intervene, alarmed at this sudden run on lentils. They impose an item limit of 3 tins each. But limiting most customers, who would not normally be seen dead buying ''one'' tin, to ''three'', has no effect on the problem, since the lentils-for-judgment-day-only contingent, only wanted one tin each in the first place: the problem is not that one or two people are bulk buying, but that ''all'' people are ''single''-item buying. | ||
The three-items per customer limit (a) irritates hippies and rabbit-food munchers who would ordinarily buy more tins than that even when they weren’t panicking, and (b) further validates the suspicion among the 95% non-hippies that we are indeed in desperate times. After all, one could hardly ask for a clearer sign of of imminent Armageddon than LENTIL RATIONING — could things get any more desperate? | |||
Every distant fear about a forthcoming final reckoning now confirmed, they stampede for the couscous and quinoa. | The 95%, as one, increase their demand to the maximum permitted. It is only common sense. | ||
[[File:Lentil convexity.png|300px|right|thumb|The [[fat tail]] of the distribution. In the middle of the “bell”, the distributions look quite similar. At the extremes they are very different.]]Still: no panic hoarding, but the shelf is bare. And those latecomers, discovering it is now ''too late'' to buy lentils, head to borlotti beans and Mexican bean fiesta. To their horror they discover ''these have been cleaned out as well''. Every distant fear about a forthcoming final reckoning now confirmed, they stampede for the couscous and quinoa. | |||
===Implications=== | ===Implications=== | ||
We can see the interconnectedness between human decisions like lentil-buying, at the extremes is not stable. You can’t model it. You can’t predict it. The [[correlation]] ''changes'' on account of the very ''existence'' of each buying decision, and each other people’s reaction to that decision. In ordinary times one person’s buying decision won’t affect another’s. They ''look'' for all the world like truly independent events. What do I care whether you bought lentils? But events which are ''really'' independent ''stay'' independent, however weird things get. The odds of flipping heads on a fair coin stays 0.5 however often you flip it, and whatever the previous results.<ref>Practical point though: the longer your sequence of heads, the greater the probability that the ''coin is not fair''.</ref> This makes the job of modelling independent events much, much easier. In fact it makes it ''possible''. Modelling dependent events isn’t just a case of more complex maths. It isn’t ''possible''. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} |