My First Austrian Moment?

Your comments suggest you would enjoy reading Jeffrey Freidman's & Wladimir Kraus' new book, _Engineering the Crisis_. They argue that radical ignorance on the part of regulators and market participants paved the way for the recession. Regulation is one-size-fits-all, but the market process is trial and error at the level of the firm and is not likely to generate systemic errors. I would love to see a review on Econlog.

I'd be very surprised if Hayek hadn't had interactions with Herb Simon, of bounded rationality fame. I have proceedings of early cybernetics and AI conferences where he is listed as an attendee, particularly the self-organizing systems ones.

'What I had going for me was an intuitive sense that trial-and-error learning and bureaucratic planning are two ways to handle innovation in a complex world.'

I wonder if you've read Tom Slee's review of Adapt, which is a very good critique of this false dichotomy.

I am particularly reminded of William Easterly's distinction between planners and searchers: http://www.aei.org/article/24294

Lee,
I have had a number of posts on Friedman and his book. See here, for example.

I came to Austrian economics through chaos theory, complexity, cybernetics, self-organization, network theory, far-from-equilibrium theory, evolution, and evolutionary psychology. It's the economics that makes the most sense, by far, in that light.

Troy,

If you are interested in complex mathematics as applied to economics then you might enjoy David Orell's Economyths.

I'm not jumping to any conclusions, but I find many Austrians have an anti-government bias. If you do you won't like that book, but if you are genuinely interested in complex phenomena, no matter the policy conclusions, then you will enjoy it.