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Rafael wrote: > ... I'm > actually still hoping to see an example in a "society" (whatever it > is) and not one that is about gas molecules or "genes": I'm looking > forward to being convinced of your counterintuitive and nice theory. (Note: remember my 'theory' was merely that adding constraints on individual action does not necessarily make the macro phenomena easier to predict). It never seems possible to *convincingly* demonstrate conjectures such as this without abstracting at least a little from reality. Thus I have a choice of presenting either a fairly realistic example where the conjecture is plausible but where alternative explanations abound OR abstracting away from reality where the conjecture is more clearly applicable. This seems to be in the nature of generalising about extremely complex phenomena (rather than my particular confecture). Abstract example: people playing 'scissors, paper, stone'. Case 1 - people 'play' the game but with no constraint to win, i.e. they can just choose any action (maybe they do not even know the other's choice). Case 2 - they are constrained to try and win and play against a person who, unknown to them at the start, always uses a fixed strategy. Your task is to find the best possible model of what the subjects, en masse, will play. I suggest that the less constrained case (1) would be easier to predict because they will act, *en masse*, *as if* they were choosing at random (one of the rare cases where this may be true). I guess that case 2 would be far more difficult to model *en masse*. Real example: Is it easier to predict the outcome of legal cases where the judge is allowed to use his common sense more (e.g. in adoption cases) or where the judge (and other participants) is considerably constrained by legal precedence and explicit laws? Regards. -------------------------------------------------- Bruce Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan University, Aytoun Bldg., Aytoun St., Manchester, M1 3GH. UK. Tel: +44 161 247 6479 Fax: +44 161 247 6802 http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/~bruce %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%