Combinatorics and more | Gil Kalai’s blog
The ICA3 conferences on Laws, Rigidity, and DynamicsMichal Feldman and Gil Kalai A. Some general thoughts about the meeting(Gil:) The ICA 3 workshop was the most interdisciplinary scientific event I took part in in my life (so far). Also the title of the workshop around "laws" was very ambitious.?Let me explain that Eliezer and I are long term friends since the late eighties and I was not surprised that he is involved in a daring endeavor and I was flattered that he suggested me to join.I was happy that a young friend and colleague Michal Feldman also joined. The fact that my wife came with me make of course a big difference and the fact that she had chance to spend time with Michal and?Eliezer gave a special added value.It was not clear to me how the mentor/fellows relations is going to be. Me, a mentor? For many years I used to be among the youngest participants in?conference and I never regarded myself mentoring. The experience itself was for me very pleasant.?The fellows were young and brilliant and they seemed to like each other, to be enthusiastic about their research and interests?and also I think we the mentors genuinely succeeded to interest them. ? (Michal:) Despite the fact that I am quite used to interdisciplinary workshops, coming from a background of computation and economics, this workshop was by far more interdisciplinary than what I have ever experienced. Sharing a room with mathematicians, physicists, philosophers, economists, historians, cognitive scientists, legal scholars and more was a fascinating experience for me. Even more amazing was the fact that somehow we all managed to connect around the theme of the workshop—Laws: rigidity and dynamics. ?I would like to use this opportunity to share the story of how I came to be a mentor in this workshop. It all started with an email I received from the rector’s office in TAU inviting me to submit an application to participate in something called “International Academia (ICA): Laws: Rigidity and Dynamics”. I had no idea what it meant; I didn’t understand any of these words separately, let alone their combination. Nevertheless, the interdisciplinary nature of the workshop attracted me, as well as its unique location, so I decided to submit an application. In response to my application, I received a letter asking me to join as the youngest mentor rather than as a young fellow. Since youngest sounded younger than young, it seemed to me a dominant strategy to accept this generous offer; especially after I found out that my friend Gil Kalai was one of the other mentors.?Moreover, being the only computer scientist in my family, surrounded by legal scholars, lawyers, and judges, it was very exciting for me to participate in a workshop about law. (Even more exciting for me was the follow-up letter I received, stating “Your expertise and experience as an exceptional litigation lawyer will enhance beyond measure the ethos and outcomes of this unique project”.) Interestingly enough, I am currently co-organizing a workshop that will take place in the Simons Institute in Berkeley this summer, under the title “Algorithm Design and Law”. Maybe it was there, in the ICA workshop, where the seeds of law and computer science combined were planted in my mind. I remember myself working on the presentation for this workshop, thinking how anything that I do is related to Laws: Rigidity and Dynamics. The closest to law I have ever come was dealing with the laws of mathematics. But dynamics is a very relevant and interesting theme in game theory and strategic behavior, a field that is dear to my heart. So I ended up giving an introductory talk to my area of research, termed “algorithmic game theory”, which lies in the intersection of computer science, game theory and microeconomics. The best part about participating in an interdisciplinary workshop, aside from listening to the great and diverse speakers and getting to know so many brilliant and enthusiastic researchers, is the rich and diverse feedback one gets from the audience. The participants asked great questions about the roots of my field, questions that are ought to be asked, yet somehow, when we are talking to close colleagues for so many years, we forget to ask these questions, and to challenge ourselves about the assumptions that underlie the research we conduct. The whole experience was extremely pleasant. The fellows, as well as the other mentors, were brilliant, curious, and full of energy. The atmosphere was very collaborative, lively and vibrant (especially the dancing party, see below). People were very interested in each other’s research and opinions.????B. Some of the talks: The lecture by Penny Andrews (Gil)Penelope (Penny) Andrews who had just arrived after a 24 hours flight from Cape Town gave a beautiful (and moving) talk entitled “The ‘casserole’ constitution – South African constitution and international law”. The talk was about the creation of South African human-rights based constitution, and the struggle of South African democracy afterwards.? I strongly recommend watching the lecture. I was moved by the description on the magical days in the period after the end of the Apartheid, the feeling of being able to do things better than in other parts of the world, and the reality today. I was scheduled to be one of the responders.What do I have to contribute to a discussion on the South African constitution? I had one personal story to tell: My father’s parents left from Lithuania for Israel (or Palestine as it was called under the British rule) in 1923 and my grandmother’s brother Hirsch stayed there.? During WWII ?Hirsch’s daughter (my father’s cousin) Dora Love (Rabinowitz) was moved from one concentration camp to another, and lost her sister and her mother in the Nazi camps. After the war she met and married an English soldier Frank Love and they both moved to South Africa. Dora was a teacher at a Hebrew school in Johannesburg (among her students were Peter and Neil Sarnak), and also spent much of her life lecturing about the Holocaust. Her younger daughter Janet Love joined Mandela’s ANC at a young age, was considered a “terrorist” for more than a decade and had to flee South Africa. She eventually returned to South Africa and actually took part in the negotiations for the new constitution. After that she served in the South African parliament for five years and later on several governmental posts, now serving as the South Africa Human Rights Commissioner. This story took Penny Andrews by surprise and it turned out she knows Janet well, after that Penny referred to me a Janet Love’s cousin.Besides that I prepared one comment on the issue.? My comment/question/suggestion was about applying South Africas’s famous Truth and Reconciliation policy ?in the criminal law. Can we apply similar principles there? I was especially thinking about the situation regarding sexual harassments and other sexual crimes which seem to be very wide spread. Here, as in other aspects of criminal law, it is not clear at all whether the instinctive demand for harsher punishments is correct. Restorative justice seems of relevance. (I suppose this is also an appeasing approach of some sort.) ?Penny Andrews gave a very thoughtful answer including on cases in SA and elsewhere where a restorative system of justice is implemented.The lecture by Michel Spiro (Michal): Michel Spiro from the French National Center for Scientific Research (Former President of CERN Council) gave a talk titled “CERN: a collective machinery to test laws against nature”. I have never visited CERN, and to me, this was a truly fascinating talk. Michel told us about the history of CERN, and the major breakthroughs that took place there. I even got to learn a bit about elementary particles and fields and their interaction. To me, one of the most fascinating attribute of CERN was its truly collaborative nature. It made me wonder whether such a huge-scale international collaboration could take place in other areas of research. I was assigned to comment on Michel’s talk. At first I wondered, wouldn’t it be more reasonable to have people closer to each other research wise commenting on one another? But then, it occurred to me that this was indeed a feature, not a bug. The organizers intentionally assigned commentators from very different disciplines to respond to their peers’ talks, which led to open discussions, ones that are often missing in meetings of closed research communities. It occurred to me that the web started in CERN, due to the need for connecting computing centers. I found the fact that the Internet, which pretty much rules our daily lives nowadays (and my own research in part), originated from a scientific need to unite computational resources of particle physicists is thought provoking. So after all, the Internet is a serendipity. C. Our talks (told by Gil)My own talk was about quantum computing. It was called: When the laws of physics meet the laws of computer science”. Given the wide interests of the audience I promised to be non-technical and to have less mathematics in my talk compared to the talk about history by Patrick Geary. I briefly described some basic insights about computation and physics, then I explained my argument against quantum computers, and finally I moved to describe the laws of physics that supports the failure of quantum computers being careful enough to be consistent with quantum mechanics. David Gross asked me if I really thought that my hand-waving computer-science argument against quantum computers applies to show infeasibility of structures that serious physicists had given much thought to. ?(He mainly referred to topological quantum computing.) My answer was “yes”.Atul Parikh Anupam Chattopadhyay and Willem Hendrik Gravett did a brilliant job in responding to me. Atul raised some exciting related questions and salient insights about biological systems, Willem asked me about practical applications in the case that quantum computers do succeed, and raised the analogy with the chess triumph of IBM’s “deep blue” over the world champion Kasparov. Michal’s talk on algorithmic game theory – the border of economics and computer science was the opening talk of the meeting. Michal introduced a new scientific discipline that combine major notions from computer science – algorithms, computational complexity, randomization, optimization, and approximation, with major notions from economics – incentives, asymmetric information, equilibrium, rationality, utility maximization, and opportunity cost. Michal’s first two examples dealt with auctions, which has ancient roots. She started with single item auctions and with Vickery’s second-price truthful mechanism. The second example was about sponsored search auctions on the internet. Michal explained the distinction between welfare maximization and revenue maximization, and described some violations of rationality in the context of auctions. She then moved to talk about the broader notion of algorithmic mechanism design and also explained the approximation paradigm in computer science and how it can significantly affect the economic theory. The lecture ended with Braess’s paradox – an example of a road network where the addition of a fast road (paradoxically) decreases the travel time for everybody. Michel Spiro responded to Michal and discussed to what extent algorithmic game theory can help in facing global challenges and the role of incentives and of irrational behavior. Michal responded by commenting that the fact that we are dealing with computational agents rather than human beings bring a lot of opportunities. The next responder Wai-Yip Ho raised the important issue of privacy in applications and weather we and information about us become part of the revenue for the big companies. This added to the CS and economics soup additional considerations of law and ethics, which led to a vivid discussion. The last responder was Petra Liedl and she referred to irrational behavior of people and asked “can we educate people to rationality?”D) Partha Dasgupta, Robin Mason, Frank Ramsey, and Bond (told by Michal and Gil)?It was a great pleasure for both of us to get to meet?Partha Dasgupta in person after hearing about him for many years and to listen to his lecture. Partha was introduced by a person we did not know but who made a strong impression and he devoted part of his introduction to mathematician and logician Frank Ramsey. Seeing the introducer, Robin Mason, three words came into our minds (more precisely two words, one repeated twice): “James, James Bond.” Indeed, this have led to a sequence of ideas:?1) Robin Mason is a perfect choice for a new generation James Bond.?2) The name "James Bond" is overused. "Robin Mason" is a perfect name to replace the name "James Bond".3) Espionage is a little obsolete and it lost much of its prestige and charm.? An international interdisciplinary academics is the perfect profession and this profession deserves at present the past prestige of the espionage profession.?In summary, we came a full circle.? Robin Mason is the perfect new choice for?James Bond,?"Robin Mason" is the perfect new name to replace the name "James Bond," and Mason’s academic activities and titles are the perfect replacement for the '007' title and activities.?(The option of Mason playing his role on the movies rather than in real life should be considered. ‘Q’ could be handy for science as well. )?F) A fun session and the dancing partyA fun session that took place during the workshop was one where the workshop participants, fellows and mentors, presented pictures that they took throughout Singapore, and connected them to the theme of the workshop.?One evening we had dinner followed by a spontaneous (and impressive) dancing party, led by Gil Kalai. In the first 10 minutes or so, Gil was pretty much the only dancer on the dance floor, but with Gil’s charisma, within 10 minutes the dance floor was full with everyone, even the ones you would never expect to find on the dance floor, with a lively and fun party. Our DJ Tom Schonberg chose (via You Tube) great new and oldies English/Americans songs and some rocky French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Israeli songs.G) Our video for the Birmingham conference: (Michal and Gil)Both of us couldn’t make it to the Birmingham conference so we decided instead to send an entertaining yet educating video with a conversation related to various aspects of our research. (Michal:) My research is related to an area in economics called mechanism design, which studies the design of mechanisms that give the right incentives to make people behave in a desired way. In the video we sent, I told the story of the first mechanism I designed (before I knew anything about mechanism design).The year was 1999, and in that time I had to get from Berkeley to San Francisco every morning. My friends enthusiastically recommended the neat initiative of the “carpool line” in the North Berkeley Bart station. Apparently, all I had to do was get to the North Berkeley Bart station and stand there in a well-established line of people. There was a parallel line of cars whose drivers want to avoid the traffic jams to San Francisco. This is a classic win-win situation: the people standing in the line get a free ride to San Francisco, and the drivers are then allowed to drive in the carpool lane, saving valuable time. Seemingly ideal. The rules were strict: all people using this initiative should get off in the same predetermined location—Embarcadero Center in the city, the first exit from the highway. I had to arrive in Civic Center, a number of exists further. However, like everyone else, I had to get off at Embarcadero Center and continue from there via public transportation, in the city, during the most congested hours. As they say: no free lunch. After spending a couple of weeks in this line, I realized that the final destination for a major portion of the drivers was also Civic Center, but they too had to drop off their guests at Embarcadero Center and continue slowly in heavy traffic to Civic Center. One morning, I arrived at the station with a sign that says: Civic Center. I stood there quietly with the sign and waited. Within a few minutes, I started to get very stern glances. One person approached me and said: “This isn’t how we do things in this country!”I was naturally very embarrassed, but before I could respond, one of the drivers drove toward me, and offered enthusiastically to give me a ride if I would get off at Civic Center, saving him the need to make a stop at Embarcadero Center. I happily got in the car. In the following few days, two queues gradually formed: the good old Embarcadero Center line, and the newly initiated Civic Center one. Social welfare increased.Since then, my toolbox for designing mechanisms has expanded to include new mathematical tools and ideas. Together with my students and colleagues, I wrote papers regarding more sophisticated mechanisms, involving deeper analysis. But I’ll always have a warm spot in my heart for the first mechanism I designed—the Civic Center mechanism—which was by far more influential than any of the mechanisms in my papers. ................
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