Ole Peters
@ole_b_peters
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Physicist, Ergodicity Economics @LdnMathLab, @sfiscience. Book: https://t.co/Ud4s4YSGD0
Joined November 2014
1/thread🧵 Almost 20 years ago, I started thinking about the ergodicity problem in the context of economics. That turned out to be surprisingly fruitful, and now there's a book about it.
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...wherein I suggest, around 5m:20s, that the ergodicity problem is the problem of emergence, which in turn is the problem of complexity. Things I worked on with Murray Gell-Mann at @sfiscience.
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Also, of course "The ergodicity solution of the cooperation puzzle." https://t.co/8xYMKTxX0X
royalsocietypublishing.org
When two entities cooperate by sharing resources, one relinquishes something of value to the other. This apparent altruism is frequently observed in nature. Why? Classical treatments assume circums...
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The abstract sounds interesting. The "altruism puzzle" is another one that has a clean simple solution in ergodicity economics. Chapter 9 of the EE textbook.
New paper out! People share on average ~25% of gains/losses even when it reduces expected gains, and when altruism, fairness & reputation are stripped away. Non-ergodic dynamics offer the explanation. https://t.co/97BH0enwqB
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Twitter has 561 million users. And 560,990,000 don't follow @davidbessis. Absolutely scandalous.
@SinghPanshul @lavabisme I was immune to that as an undergrad (because the stars were aligned), but this seriously impaired my graduate studies (because, due to personal circumstances, I had become a very insecure person). This made me realize that fear is the #1 enemy of intelligence and creativity.
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Passing this on to economics students: see equity-premium puzzle and St. Petersburg paradox. They have very neat solutions in ergodicity economics. Time to stop writing endless essays about their supposed mysteries.
Note to mathematicians and math students: open problems are meant to be solved or proved unsolvable. They are not meant to be passively contemplated and serve as an excuse for hot air philosophizing.
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When the collective is qualitatively different from the individual. Complexity, emergence, ergodicity breaking.
I'm planning to read this book this weekend, I hope to achieve it ↓: BTW, I discovered this book thanks to @ole_b_peters !!!
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About 100 registered attendees so far. Are you coming next week?
1/ It's hotly debated how close simple heuristics can get us to the time optimality of ergodicity economics. My personal hunch: I think heuristics are excellent. Are they the algorithmic implementation that makes EE so successful in experiments? Oliver Hulme is less optimistic.
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If you happen to be in London on 10 December, 4pm, come along to my seminar in the Financial Computing and Analytics Research Group at @ucl.
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Many of @nntaleb's readers became aware of ergodicity through his books and articles. For a textbook that develops the full story one step at a time, from ~high-school mathematics to recent research, have a look at our "An introduction to ergodicity economics."
@momo47444 @RealJavadRazavi I was introduced to Ergodicity from NNT with Incerto. The Logic of Risk Taking. A central chapter that crystallizes all… | by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | INCERTO | Medium https://t.co/zn9OBl5rmg Also the original is Ole Peters (@ole_b_peters)
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2/ Join the discussion live next week https://t.co/d0ijuW6gXn
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1/ It's hotly debated how close simple heuristics can get us to the time optimality of ergodicity economics. My personal hunch: I think heuristics are excellent. Are they the algorithmic implementation that makes EE so successful in experiments? Oliver Hulme is less optimistic.
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4/ sources: 1/ left: Bernoulli's 1738 paper introducing expected utility theory. right: Peters and Adamou "An introduction to ergodicity economics." 3/ Friedman, Isaac, James, and Sunder. "Risky curves. On the empirical failure of expected utility."
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3/ A) has no out-of-sample predictive power. B) has astonished even the neuroscientists.
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2/ A) creates a problem by averaging over the statistical ensemble, i.e. imagined worlds. Because that has little to do with reality, a fudge factor is introduced: the utility function. B) insists on one reality. No problem created, no fudge required.
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1/ A) Orthodox economics: people decline the St. Petersburg lottery because it decreases their utility averaged over the statistical ensemble. B) Ergodicity economics: people decline the St. Petersburg lottery because otherwise they'd lose money over time.
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Seems about right (should be ordered by platonism score, though).
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A pleasing amount of ergodicity economics here. @ProfSteveKeen taking the problem seriously. https://t.co/WHhyvqWV85
podcasts.apple.com
Podcast Episode · Debunking Economics - the podcast · 06/11/2025 · 47m
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