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Today there is an interview with Art De Vany at the UCI website:

http://today.uci.edu/profiles/profile_detail.asp?key=43

Here are the introductory and concluding paragraphs:

From chaos, order

For economist Art De Vany, the natural order that emerges spontaneously
from chaos is more efficient and responsive than anything a planner could
devise.

UCI economist Art De Vany confronts chaos cheerfully. He believes it is
the source of creativity and true efficiency. He also believes there's a
lot more of it around than people are willing to admit.

Chaos theory isn't easy to understand, and De Vany faces the added
handicap of trying to explain it in economic terms. So he frequently uses
this example: "A crowd can empty a football stadium in minutes, solving
what is an intractable computational problem and exhibiting large-scale
adaptive intelligence in the absence of central direction."

Never far from a question, he goes on: "Why are decentralized processes
ubiquitous throughout nature and society – evolution itself is such a
process – and why do people remain so distrustful of them that they will
sacrifice their autonomy and freedom for centralized solutions?"

Why do human beings, apparently, yearn to have somebody in charge? Why do
they find it so easy to believe that somebody IS in charge – Alan
Greenspan of the American economy, for instance. Is it human nature? Is it
Western thought? De Vany doesn't know but he theorizes, constantly.

<snip>

De Vany thinks he'll be moving on from movies and utilities deregulation
into a new interest - physical fitness and diet. A former minor league
professional baseball player, fitness has been important to him all his
life; at 63, he boasts the health of a man in his 30s. He's writing a book
on his concepts about "evolutionary fitness," prescribing randomness and
variety in both diet and physical activity.

A diet book can be a sure moneymaker, especially when the media gets
interested. But De Vany says that's not why he doing it. You can't predict
success any more than you can predict any other kind of future, he
believes, so you might as well just follow your interests, and do what you
enjoy doing.

(ends)

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