“We’ve got that, without externalities, or with only positive externalities in the case of finding a maximum, what you’re gonna get is that, it’s easy to construct a Lyapunov function, and boom, you get there. The system’s gonna stop. But if there’s these negative externalities, I’m making myself happier but I’m gonna make other people less happy, then the system could continue to churn, and we may not be able to say whether or not the system’s gonna go to equilibrium or whether it’s gonna be complex. But we do have some intuitions. And those intuitions suggest that markets, simple markets trading goods should go to equilibrium, should constantly improve. People choosing routes should constantly improve. But things like international alliances or coalitions within political parties, or possibly even dating, that these things may be more complex, and certainly that’s how it appears out there in the real world.”-Transcript from Scott Page Coursera
Source:
Scott Page Model Thinking MOOC Course
