Sorry folks, but I’m going to withdraw from this thread. I can see little or no prospect of learning any more from it. If any of you knew anything about how brains worked that was any more up to date than 1930 (but preferably 1990) then our discussion may stand a chance of being more productive. Oh well.
Okay, so we’re assuming this technology is possible, fine. Either way, it wouldn’t matter; you would have scientists observing continuously changing value scales. Consider your purchasing behavior when you do something as trivial as deciding what to eat. You change your mind 3-4 times on the way there, when you get there, you take time to figure out what to order. Even if value could be cardinally measured, there needs to be a constants for it to be quantifiable. Demand function Q=A+bP, where A is constant. There is no transitivity.
But even if I grant you all of this, your original proposition is, again, impossible. That’s not how the loanable funds market operates.
the scientist’s machine pips 'he is choosing the apple" just as the man chooses an apple over an orange.
the scientist’s machine pips 'he is walking home via the bridge route rather than the park route" just as the man steps to take one of the forks of the road.
i think the scientists machine is called ‘binoculors and understanding’; its a good thing the scientists doesnt have a machine that pretends to make such absurd claims as that the degree of want satisfaction achieved by the man in walking that way home was 3.785 times greater than the degree of want satisfaction that was involved when he had picked the apple over the orange…
What is your relevant contention about how brains work? I watched the whole hour-long video you linked to. It was indeed very interesting, but I don’t see any relevance to this thread.
Unfortunately, I also watched the entire hour long video following “mick’s” suggestion. It explained nothing. I did learn one thing, that is, to be wary of “mickanomics”. As this train wreck of a thread comes to an end, I can say he did help me understand the “mathematical mindset” that I was totally unfamiliar with. I learned how a flawed premise can be reduced to precise mathematical terms, and the confusion grows exponentially from there.
His blogs primary post is “The value of money”. In it he has some absuredly huge equation which supposedly will help him identify the value of money. (42?)
The value of money.
What does that even mean?
I have nothing against Mick. I share his compassion for math and science, I myself do a heavy dose of binary Math on an almost daily basis. I would want to encourage him to become a better mathmatician, scientist, and developer. I don’t want his feelings hurt nor do I want to tear him down as a person.
I just can’t stand it however when he takes a position of arrogance on subjects he knows nothing about. And I really dislike his willingness to neglect Austrian literature while claiming to be a follower of it’s school of thought. On his blog he misrepresents the whole thing. The higher you stand the farther you fall.
I hope this painfully lengthy thread won’t deter him from the Austrian school of thought and I hope he would reconsider reading it’s literature.
What can you do? shrug
What’s the link to his blog. I’m curious.