Red Queen and the Court Jester: World Views

In a recent Science magazine article on evolution, Michael Benton presented a wonderful article on The Red Queen and the Court Jester world views in evolution.

Simply put, the Red Queen model is one of incrementalism in the milieu of the competing species, a collection of small but unending incremental changes results in the ultimate change in the involved species. This model is called that since in Through the Looking Glass, Alice says (Chapter 2):

"A slow sort of country!' said the Queen. `Now, HERE, you see, it takes all the running YOU can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!' "

To Darwin it was incrementalism, the slow and unending and environmentally controlled changes in selection, a gene at a time, or better yet a base pair at a time.

The Court Jester Model is an evolutionary model which is effected by large unpredictable changes. An example is a meteor smashing into earth and then all hell breaking loose. The current economic crisis is another example.

The Red Queen model is that of Darwin and the Court Jester is that of Van Valen.

In France, philosophically all Frenchmen are either Cartesians or Pascallians. The Cartesians start by doubting everything and ending up in abject certainty, whereas the Pascallians are those who have core beliefs and end up probabilistic believers in their world. There is a tension between the diptych sets of doubt-certainty and belief-probabilistic.

In our current economic environment there are the free market players versus the regulators. The Free market players are the Court Jesters, "stuff happens" and the market adjusts. They believe in the fundamental structure of the market. In many ways they are Cartesians. The Regulators are the Red Queens, they believe that they are smart enough to ensure incrementalism and that they can control this uncertain but incrementally changing monster we call an economy.

On the sidelines are the likes of Taleeb and Norouri who are Court Jester believes, at least from their actions. On the other side are the Krugmans and Steiglitzs who are believers in a vision while being able to project a patina of controllability.

In 1990 I wrote a paper on Telecommunications at Harvard and looked at the evolution of telecommunications in the same dichotomous manner. World view is essential to understand. What is the world view of the people making the decisions and from that one could possible hope to ascertain what the result may be.

The current Administration is in my opinion a group of Red Queen people facing a Court Jester challenge. There is an impedance mis-match here, a tremendous impedance mis-match, and this will result in cognitive dissonances until they better understand their and our predicament.

Perhaps this was the cause of the Depression of the 1930s. Perhaps it is best to look at these economic events in evolutionary terms. Perhaps both Red Queen and Court Jester modes operate simultaneously. What is most important to do is to understand your world view and try to reconcile it with the reality of the moment, then and only then will your actions have the opportunity to resonate with the challenge.