Kevin asked:

How would an individual, without having earlier experience, go about learning by themselves, the
theory of reflexivity? Does reflexivity require an earlier understanding?

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Take a look at this website:

http://www.soros.org/textfiles/speeches/042694_Theory_of_Reflexivity.txt

I assume by the above that you are referring to Soros' theory of economics. What he is saying, if I
understand him correctly, is that there are feedback effects in economics. When people know
something about the market, that knowledge affects their interactions with the market and changes it.
Seems reasonable to me, but he admits that he's no mathematician, and without a mathematical
theory there's not a lot you can do past some very vague generalizations. Now, I have also read that
recently there has been a great deal of time and money put by a couple of firms into extremely
sophisticated computer simulations of the market, and that those are starting to work fairly well,
although it's really too early to tell. That sort of thing, however, is what is needed to check out a theory
like this, and I'm sure those simulations include just that feedback, i.e., where knowledge of the
market influences the market, which influences knowledge of the market... etc.

So the question is, just what do you want out of this? If you reallywant to learn this kind of thing you
have to learn economics, and enough about artificial intelligence to evaluate what's being done in that
field, and in addition, some of the mathematics of recursive functions. Not a trivial set of subjects. If
you just want a nodding acquaintance with this, then take a look at Gleick's book Chaos(I think that's
the name), the article above, and some basic writings in economics and perhaps game theory.

Steven Ravett Brown