iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Nick Hanauer on how the ergodicity problem in economics informs his thinking about inequality. youtube.com/shorts/cOhbe...

youtube.com

Monopoly Economy: Why Markets Aren't Ergodic #shorts

YouTube video by Blackbook Protocol

022

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I just checked, and you can get the book for EUR 5.17 at the moment: www.kennys.ie/shop/fortune...

kennys.ie

021

Reposted by Ole Peters

James King @jamesking.io · 29/07/2026

Just finished reading the 20th anniversary edition of Fortune’s Formula by William Poundstone. It is such a good book. The new edition has an extra part, titled Ergodicity, which covers the work of Ole Peters and others.

The cover of William Poundstone’s book, Fortune’s Formula, 20th Anniversary edition.

111

Reposted by Ole Peters

Sean Carroll @seanmcarroll.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Applications now open for Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships at @sfiscience.bsky.social! apply-sfi.smapply.org/prog/complex...

apply-sfi.smapply.org

Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowship - Santa Fe Institute

23814

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

"ohne daß irgendwelche besondere Hypothese zugrunde gelegt werden müßte"

000

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

So good to see this book in libraries. Everyone should have access.

010

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

If you’re interested in — I was going to say ergodicity, then I thought ‘decisions theory’, and now I’m settling on — life?, have a look at the 20th anniversary edition of William Poundstone’s classic Fortune’s Formula. It has a brand new part about the rise of ergodicity economics.

011

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Interesting exercise: use ergodicity economics to determine the conditions under which the answers are rational.

122

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

If ergodicity had been part of our cultural vocabulary, we wouldn’t have got into the communication mess over Covid vaccines. Another 100 years and we’ll all be on the same page…

031

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

1/ Very curious about this, @cfcamerer.bsky.social. Long-term growth optimization, studied in ergodicity economics, provides an interesting baseline for the "cold calculation" part of loss aversion. It makes predictions that may already be testable using data you've collected.

111

Reposted by Ole Peters

kajak.bsky.social @kajak.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

likewise I thank @opeters.bsky.social for dispelling the myth the rational actor cannot be altruistic of Micro101 because "ergodicity fallacy", i.e. treating optimization as if it had no memory and running into St. Petersburg paradox. In reality: The Farmers Fable of utlity maximizing cooperation

farmersfable.org

Farmers Fable. A Tale of Cooperation

From Marc Elsberg thriller GIER, based on scientific work of London Mathematical Laboratory, explains the fundamental principle of the cooperation benefit.

032

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

If I post a link on here, will my post be suppressed, like on twitter and linkedIn, or is BlueSky the last refuge for people who actually want to communicate content?

111

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Not entirely surprising in a tutorial session about ‘An introduction to ergodicity economics.’ Having said that — it is the only book on the subject, and there really is a feeling of witnessing science in the making here.

040

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Nothing like the comedy store players.

010

Reposted by Ole Peters

Santa Fe Institute @sfiscience.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

New book: An Introduction to Ergodicity Economics A new textbook by SFI External Professor Ole Peters and Alexander Adamou re-examines core assumptions in economic theory. It presents a formal challenge to expected-value thinking and shows how non-ergodicity can arise naturally in economic models.

santafe.edu

New book: Introduction to Ergodicity Economics

An Introduction to Ergodicity Economics is a new textbook that draws on physics to re-examine traditional economic theory. It begins with flipping a coin. And a hypothetical gambit. Imagine you were o...

1135

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

For those of you who couldn't make it to the launch event in June, here's a video about the "why" behind writing the textbook.

youtu.be

Why we wrote a textbook

YouTube video by Ergodicity TV

031

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

The story that orthodox economics is as good as a formal theory of human behavior can ever be has been holding economic theory back for a long time. I know one formal theory that’s better than the orthodoxy.

011

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

Is there an age limit to apply?

010

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

This book has been such a delight! By my friend and mentor Reuben Hersh, about his friend and mentor Peter Lax. Reading it feels like listening to Reuben speak about his love of mathematics and his respect, friendship, and admiration for Peter.

020

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

It makes me exceedingly happy that there are people all around the world who enjoy this kind of gentle slow meditation. Social-media scatter brain be damned. And if one of them is Dave Bacon, you know it's good stuff!

040

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 28/05/2025

1/6 How can I put this? "Expected-utility maximizers don't maximize utility." Why? Because utility is not usually an ergodic quantity in the mathematical models used by economists, and maximizing its expected value doesn't mean much in the real world.

140

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

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. ergodicityeconomics.com/publications/

281

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Sending this straight to the publisher.

040

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Happy to announce that "An Introduction to Ergodicity Economics" can now be ordered. Here: ergodicityeconomics.com/publications/

041

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

So there's this country. It produces money, electronically. Then sends that money to other countries, and in return receives all the goods its citizens might want. Just for sending an electronic notification that it's created more money. And it doesn't like that.

112

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

For those of you who couldn't join us at our in-person EE2025 conference in Cascais, I've written up a dinner conversation I had with Gerd Gigerenzer and put it up on LinkedIn. www.linkedin.com/pulse/ergodi...

010

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

I don't believe in rushing things, but 10 years into the writing of the EE textbook, it's good to see the cover is ready. If you want a ping when it's ready to order (very soon), sign up to our EE mailing list at ergodicityeconomics.eo.page/4ct3k

090

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

1/2 I would love a deep dive on the clock ambiguity. If I understand it correctly, then there's a fascinating parallel to expected-utility theory. You can solve certain problems in economics by picking a non-linear utility function. But we've found that that corresponds to assuming (or generating)..

100

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

Point of view: Expected-utility theory has been the dominant model of economic decision making for 300 years. That does not mean it's a good model. It's such a convoluted disaster of formal errors, misunderstandings, failed corrections etc. that critics just give up.

030

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Conundrum: Stock markets generate prices every few seconds to accurately reflect the rapid changes in the fortunes of businesses. But the fastest-paced industries, tech/biotech, barely use public markets. It's more VC, and valuations and trades happen ~once per year. fast pace -> slow valuation?

000

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Here's something fun: models indicate that in the US, average wealth is a repellor. Good news: you just have to become wealthier than the average, and then you can sit back and watch the money come in. Bad news: average household wealth is just above one million bucks.

031

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Jeremy Hunt said this. He is, of course, completely right. The question for me is how anyone who’s thought about capitalism for more than two minutes could ever get this wrong. It’s astonishing.

131

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

Interesting etymologies in English v German. tax -- from Latin taxere, to assess or charge (a compulsory charge) Steuer (German word for tax) -- from stiu for "help" or "support" (supporting a community)

071

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I often misread "uninformed" as "uniformed." Has anyone else experienced this?

010

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Given that humans operate at about 80W and, if knowledgable, can produce answers at least as good as those of large language models — is there going to be an enormous efficiency revolution in AI, @melaniemitchell.bsky.social ?

060

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Serious question for anyone knowledgeable of the health system. The UK waiting list for elective surgery is long. Couldn’t some of those elective surgeries be carried out abroad where there’s more capacity?

000

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

I follow mostly British news. Every winter, hospitals overflow and patients are treated in corridors. Today I tuned into German news. Germany has too many hospitals and will spend EUR50bn to reduce excess capacity. If only hospitals were more mobile…

141

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Nice little application of ergodicity economics to reinforcement learning, published just now. The ‘economics’ in the name of my research program is sort of a frozen accident…

020

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

This comment on Emanuel's book, by the 2003 Nobel Laureate in literature, makes me very happy. Congratulations!

110

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

1/2 Sometimes we learn something surprising about ourselves. Many years ago, I was out on my skateboard in central London. A pebble caught my wheel, I fell, and the board zipped off and hit a parked taxi. I went over to check if there was any damage and to offer to pay for it.

140

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

For example, when we work in the t->infty limit in ergodicity economics, it's not the positive statement that we assume that people live forever. Instead, it's the negative statement that we assume that for this computation we can ignore the boundary imposed by their finite lifetime.

110

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 05/01/2025

I’ve written a book. When I now re-read sections, I find them delightful. It seems this is what I wanted to do: write a delightful book. I’m sure my publisher will get very rich from it but I’m happy to report that feels irrelevant. I wanted to write it, and that’s done. Does that make sense?

100

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

The term "ergodicity economics" is less than a decade old. But the developments that led to its coining go back centuries (or millennia, depending on how you count). I wrote about its history here: ergodicityeconomics.com/2024/02/05/e...

ergodicityeconomics.com

Ergodicity economics — a history – Ergodicity Economics

151

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 04/01/2025

Good to read how other people put it. A nice summary of a core argument of ergodicity economics. Utility theory is a solution born from the paucity of the mathematics of the time of its invention. Astonishingly, it still crowds out better approaches. sinaas.blogspot.com/2020/02/warr...

sinaas.blogspot.com

Warren Buffett's Rules Nr. 1,2 & 3? In the light of the “THE ERGODICITY PROBLEM IN ECONOMICS"

Warren Buffett’s Rule Nr. 1 “Don’t lose money intrinsic value.” Rule Nr. 2 " Don’t forget Rule Nr. 1" ...a possible Warren Buffett Ru...

0104

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

When it comes to gendering, the Portuguese have the solution. They just mumble, eliminating any perceivable difference between male and female endings.

120

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 31/12/2024

So refreshingly down-to-earth (this is Reuben Hersh). I often talk about infinity as an error message. Using Reuben's language, if a computation ends up with "infinity" then we've hit the boundary of the domain we're studying, a boundary we thought we could ignore. content.ems.press/assets/publi...

000

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

These days between the years are so productive. I have no idea how but I came across this lovely conversation between Ulf Persson and Reuben Hersh. It captures the Reuben I knew. Playful, even rambling at times, but fearless and sharp on the important bits. content.ems.press/assets/publi...

content.ems.press

000

Ole Peters @opeters.bsky.social · 30/12/2024

Something I've wondered about. 1. Fuel prices in Europe are 200% or 300% of those in the US. $8 or $9 per gallon is normal in Europe. 2. GDP per capita is 50% higher in the US. In how far is 2. just a consequence of 1? What would happen if energy was as cheap in Europe or as expensive in the US?

121