Don’t worry, this will be conveniently disregarded just as it was when I mentioned it yesterday:
Honestly, I’m surprised this bizarre thread lasted even 4 pages. Must be a slow weekend at mises.org.
Z.
Ok.
The concept of length exists independent of the invention of the foot or the metre. The concept of temperature exists without the invention of kelvin or celcius.
Things can be determined to be the same/different length or the same/different temperature without any discussion of the units of measurement.
My discussion of ABCDE is not dependent on the selection of any units.
We don’t need to appeal to philosophy in order to invalidate this nonsensical proposition. It simply can never happen in a free market, period. It is an impossibility.
Do you believe we respond to you because you put forth something interesting, or somehow profound? No, it’s because (a) you’re entertaining, and (b) this kind of arrogance is quite rare. Every week you believe you’ve refuted economic axioms.
Edited - by nirgrahamUK
will you be doing math with A B C D E, or won’t you?
the issue is not that you have infinite number of servicable candidate units to choose from, and so it is irrelevant which to choose…
even if you want to do some cartography and you say it is irrelevant whether you measure distance in mm or meter or km, it is still relevant that you don’t attempt to measure it in joules, or in numbers of jellybeans per inch, or as ‘quantities without measure’ (which is an oxymoron) . i.e. you need length to be quantifiable, and you need to always use the same unit when you are manipulating various quantities…
… it is that there could not be units for the given phenomenon, what you are dealing in can simply not be quantified. do you depend on quantification or do you not?
consider reading the Stringham paper before you respond. I will not think less of you for delaying your next post.
Yes, but some mathematical operations don’t require units.
If someone came to me and said “I have a stone A one one side and a stone B plus a stone C on the other, which weighs more, A or ‘B+C’?” I would say “I have no idea without weighing the stones.”… but if he then gave me the additional information that stone A and stone B were identical then I could deduce that A weighed less than B+C. No units, no weighing required.
? I need a reference.
the concept weight is quantifiable, it admits of units. hence it is reasonable to make quantitative statements about it. now pick something that is unquantifiable, that does not admit of the possibility of units. things beyond measure. and then see where you are
you love your father first, you love your mother second, you love your brother third at a moment in time
does your love for your brother and mother exceed the love for your father at some other moment in time?
is there a scientific response one could take to such a line of questioning?
I know full well that I am not respected on this forum. My number one motivation for posting here it to check my ideas. In this regard my interaction with this forum has been hugely productive for me. I have indeed made many modifications of my ideas based on the responses I have received. The response that most pleases me is one that makes me think “Hmm, I’d never thought of that… I’d better change my idea or define some things more carefully”. If I get a response which is “You are crazy because of reason X” then if X is in fact flawed logic and is not really a challenge to my assertion, then I can’t usually be bothered to respond.
When you are faced with a choice between action A and action B and you choose B, isn’t that simply a proof that
“happiness caused by action B” > “happiness caused by action A”
?
using ‘greater than’ and ‘more than’ is only a metaphor; it is simply ‘preferred over’, or ‘better’ or ‘superior in an unmeasurable way’. there are no utils. one stresses that one does not hope to make quantative statement but qualatative
The Mengerian tradition embraced ordinality of preferences, and the neo-classical’s say that they do too, but when they realise that they can’t mathematise and make quantative statements, they map from an ordinal set to a cardinal and set about with fallacies of value. its a major issue. There are technical papers on this you can read. But i suggest Stringham as it is easily readable, and states the Austrian position, rather than focusing a lot of technical analysis at the neo-classical ‘tricks’ wherein cardinality is snuck in through the backdoor.
Your usage of letters to represent value presupposes cardinal measurements of utility, that is, mathematical expressions. But, happiness (utility) can only be expressed ordinally, and is never constant. From this, then, speaking about “greater good,” as you’re implying, is something (good) economists cannot handle. They generally leave it to presumptuous philosophers who consider themselves to be the epitome of truth. But again, your proposition is absurd, and could never happen in a free market: if the loanable funds market had just enough savings for either the capital investment, or the house extension, than the former would receive the loan by virtue of his rate of return (since interest rates would be equal to the highest rate of return). Or, in a more realistic scenario, he could go to a bank, issue stock, or find a venture capitalist. Hell, I would finance him if his innovation was so revolutionary.
I’m not claiming this has exactly happened yet… but try this thought experiment… What if it were the case that brain science developed to such a great extent that one day scientist discovered the “happiness” cells of the brain and could attach some electrodes and measure a voltage, and that voltage could be used to predict human choices. i.e. A subject could be presented with photographs of two different items before being asked which he would prefer to buy. The choice made would invariably correlate with the one that had induced the highest voltage.
Now your position could be one of the following
A) “I would change my mind if that scanario came about, but it could never, so I don’t have to”
B) “Even if that scenario came about I still wouldn’t change my mind”.
C) some other position, please explain.
What is your position?
C. The fact of the matter is that it wouldn’t change anything, because preferences are never constant (they’re constantly in flux). All it could do is tell me how much more I like chocolate at that point in time, relative to how much I like vanilla, at that point in time. It would be a useless snapshot.
But once the technology was developed we could have the electrical probes permanently implanted and then broadcast the results to a data storage device. So now we have a continuous reading.
Besides, when someone makes an economic choice, i.e. to purchase something, there is an instant at which the exchange takes place, so surely even in your book, it is only that instantaneous thought that is taken into consideration.
Stringham cites Robbins on this issue.
Robbins considered whether the blood could be tested to ascertain ‘satisfaction’.
well, blood can test blood not satisfaction…
you can test electrical pulses but you will not derive a mapping to ‘satisfaction’
That sounds very much like option A)
“I would change my mind if that scanario came about, but it could never, so I don’t have to”
Is that a fair assesment of your position?
You’re quoting peoples thoughts on how the brain might work from *** 1932 *** !!! people have accused me of bringing up straw man arguments…
Brain sciences has changes beyond recognition in the past 20 years so the discussion of what people were thinking about brains in 1932 is irrelevant.
If you can somehow reduce human minds to perfectly predictable mechanical devices, then, yes, free will would not exist and the concepts of freedom and/or liberty would be mute. If that happens, I would change my mind, but then you wouldn’t even have to ask the question as you’d know the answer to it ahead of time. Btw, people have been contemplating your “data storage device” over the last few thousand years already. They called it God.
Z.
Yes. You could configure experiments to test all of those things. The fact that your opinions change from one moment to the next has no bearing on our dispute. Praxaology is all about choices made at fixed, instantaneous points in time. Its is perfectly possible to order chocolate ice cream at the restaurant because at the instant of ordering that is what you prefer. It may be that the waiter is slow and by the time the ice cream arrives you wish you had chosen vanilla.
I don’t see how the fact that you can change your mind is an argument against anything I’ve said.
no you could not.
This test assumes that all brains operate exactly alike. This is false and will forever be false. You seem desperate to find a way to calculate human action. I am wondering why is this. Modern behavioral analytics like to remove the brain from the laws of genetic inheritance and other physiological factors that occur from one person to the next. You sound like you may be espoused to such concepts, I hope I am wrong.
I’m glad to see that after NirgrahmUK and Esuric had repeated themselves several times you are finally considering the weight of their argument.
Furthermore that was no thought experiment you presented but a fairy tail. What if I were to tell you that we all transcended into a state of omniscience? All our problems would be solved.
Well yes my argument would be correct, all our problems would go away. It is only a red herring however and does not disprove anything that was argued previously as it removes itself from the natural laws of reality. There is a big difference in thought experiment. The difference being, using the narrative to justify your logic, or using logic to create your narrative. I would recommend you using the latter.