Better known to his readers as "oldman", from a family nickname, Loan Nguyen was a TA at Iowa State University, having earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan. However, it is in the area of applied non-linear dynamics, particularly to the social sciences, which his writing in the electronic world centered upon.
[Earlier a short announcement brought a wide range of appreciation from other members of the bop community. you can read them here.]
He had experienced great personal and professional isolation, he was both alone as a thinker until he came to the electronic world, and, to some extent, as an individual. For most of his life he took a highly disciplined approach to work, and was extremely focused. This focus paid dividends, as he was able to apply his learning to a broad range of fields.
It is too early to assess all of what he was doing, however, the center of his work was combining classical formal game theory with non-linear dynamics. Game theory is a kind of algebra. In boolean alegebra - the kind computers run on - there are truth tables that are fixed in advanced. A given operation, such as AND or OR takes known inputs - 1 and 0 - and creates a table of answers.
Game theory also uses these tables, but, instead of having fixed answers and fixed operations, it has many different inputs - whatever choices the players can make, and many different answers - whatever the "dead variables" are. From this comes a complex range of possible strategies. Instead of one fixed calculus, any system which can be reduced to choices, interactions and results can be represented.
When the results of a given step feed back into the game itself, the result can be "non-linear" - that is structured and orderly, but without smooth curves that come from the algebra and calculus that we use on a daily basis. Instead of such systems becoming more predictable over time, they become less predictable.
Because the social sciences deal with choices, results and interactions, but want results that are measurable, the combination of game theory and non-linear dynamics offers powerful insights into how economics, sociology and other social sciences should measure and model human behavior. Loan was an ardent non-linearist: "The non-linear solution is always the correct solution." He tried to explain the results in linear terms when possible, but was forceful and forthright in stating "Linear approximations will never predict as well or as quickly as the right non-linear solution." He was sure his work would be vindicated - as am I.
Many long time readers of bopnews know that often the posts here are difficult to read, this is because there is a basis for many of them that reaches into this field - which he and I termed "mesoëconomics" - and more broadly to using nonlinear dynamics in a wide range of the physical sciences. As he applied his insights into social sciences, he also looked into the physics and was making strides in chemistry as well. It will take time with his papers to determine the final state of his work, it is almost certain that there are undiscovered gems among his papers that are of general interest to a wider community.
We stand at the shore of another, different, century. One that asks of its inhabitants to change the shape of their thought. Loan's work is a light that peers out into the dark and stormy seas that separate this shore from the other side, and convinced many readers to begin warping wood to travel those seas and find the other side. His life was all too short, his work cut short by what is, in its deepest sense, tragedy. His learning and concentration were matched by a deep sense of justice and right.
It is a loss keenly felt, one of our own, in the most important sense, has left us. We can, and should, express personal grief, and compassion for his mother who has lost both a husband and an oldest son. But we should also carry on his work, and his memory, and give great thanks that he was among us at all - that alone was an honor and a privilege, which cannot lightly be set aside. He gave unstintingly and unsparingly, he leaves behind the etchings of a greater vision, one which, a century hence, may well seem common place. But it will not have always been so, and for this cause for which he worked so nobly, he must, and should, be remembered.
He was not merely an intellectual force, but a moral force, not merely a gifted mathematical thinker, but a powerful writer who took the time to explain in detail difficult concepts to the general audience. I can truthfully be said that Loan was one of the heros of the 21st century - it is probable that his very high pressure work load and uncompromising standards contributed to his death after a short illness.
But there is a better world coming, and those who live in it will, in some part, have him to thank for it. Rest in peace, oldman, for what you had time to give us, more thanks than we can express in words, but only in deeds.
(The family has said that cards may be sent to:
The Nguyen Family
11157 Canyon Creek Dr
Zeeland, MI 49464)
::
And From Ian Welsh:
I never met Loan in person. We talked on the phone a couple times, and we e-mailed, usually in flurries with weeks or sometimes months between the flurries.
I remember the first time I followed a link back his personal blog. I spent the rest of the day reading his entries, most of which were long, detailed and brilliantly informative. I linked to him and we spent the next few days e-mailing back and forth - mainly about hedonic adjustments to GDP, although we touched on other subjects.
Oldman wasn't content to take the world at face value. He spent the time to investigate and to rip the numbers apart and find out what went into them. He was tireless and would read everything he could find on a subject, then run it through his own rigorous analysis. As an analyst he was first class and Stirling has done more justice to his technical work than I am capable of, though we hope to come back to it in the future.
But it's as a friend that I'll remember him.
Loan's relations with other people were characterized by two things: his bluntness and his kindness. What struck me was that to people in pain; to the weak, he was invariably kind. Those who struck out at Oldman in pain, were not struck back at, they were comforted. Oldman reserved his attacks for the strong, for the proud, for the intellectually presumptuous and even for his friends whom he thought needed a hard dose of realism.
Though he had a facade of cynicism, he was, in fact, a deep romantic. He believed in honor, and patriotism and justice, even as he believed that those things were rare. He had, over the last few months, gone through a period of uncertainty in his work (his real work, not his job), but had just recently come out the other side. (I do not think he would mind my quoting one of his last e-mails to me):
All is well though, just a little hesitant about how things are going to work out in the details. I have never been more inspired and confident in the eventual vindication of my work - economic, fiction writing, or hard physics.
At the same time Oldman was deeply worried for the US. His work indicated that the economic situation was far worse than the official metrics would suppose (from what I know of his work and other items I follow, I am quite certain he was correct). But worse than that he was very scared for the political health of the Republic itself. While the current fall of the House of Bush brought him some satisfaction he believed that the problems were much deeper than that, and that current political realities indicated things were likely to get much worse, before there was a chance to pull them out. I hope he was wrong, and know he would share that sentiment, but Loan was wrong much less than almost anyone else I know.
For Loan politics was bound up in his code of honor. He felt, very strongly, that he had a personal duty to the Republic, to uphold the Constitution and to protect the United States. It was that that drew him into blogging, and on occasion it was that which sent him into despair.
Loan was, ultimately, both kind and generous. In large respect to each he gave not what they wanted, but what they needed. To those in pain, kindness, even if they had asked for anger. For those who were over confident, or over proud, a blunt stripping down of delusions. For those who needed help understanding something, explanations, often running at multiple page length. Those who just needed help, who were weaker than him, received the help they needed, without hectoring.
I really, really liked Loan. I felt that we would be friends for life, a curious assumption since we never discussed it. We just started talking one day, as if we had always been friends, and didn't stop.
I will miss him greatly and will try to honor his memory in deeds and the words that I often use as my deeds. He was unique, and truly brilliant, and cannot be replaced, but it would be a great injustice not to try and pick up the torch he can no longer carry, no matter how misshappen our hands.
Au revoir, Loan.