Is anyone surprised by the notion that ratcheting is critical for consolidating gains made from chance events? I thought that was a trivial observation (maybe my biologist bias is showing here).
It might be obvious but worth saying anyway. Giving something a name can help you use it as a unit of work, or reason more effectively/accurately/mechanically.
A lot of arguments are built on abstractions like "competition" and "chance", and having a short list of common exceptions to those heuristics on hand is pretty useful. Now when discussing federalism in the U.S., I'll not only wonder whether there are free-rider problems or economies of scale missed out on, I'll also think about whether local decisions are effectively "locked in" forever.
Biology, game theory, informatics, and complexity are full of ideas that one can pluck out in isolation and look like a hero for injecting into other areas. I think its because those fields are insufficiently studied by those outside them.
A lot of arguments are built on abstractions like "competition" and "chance", and having a short list of common exceptions to those heuristics on hand is pretty useful. Now when discussing federalism in the U.S., I'll not only wonder whether there are free-rider problems or economies of scale missed out on, I'll also think about whether local decisions are effectively "locked in" forever.