I know it is, but tell me very precisely why you would use different terms for the two cases. Why not answer “somewhat” to both?
In 1983 I became interested in the challenge of writing a computer program to play the ancient oriental game of “go”. I found a local club and went to ask people about how you play the game. I was told that it was impossible to write a program that could play the game. I knew that there were some academic papers published about other peoples attempts but I deliberately chose not to read them because I feared that it may set me off thinking on the wrong track… over the coming years there were many international contests pitting one go program against another. In 1999 at a contest in Shanghai, I became world champion.
It is obvious that there are vast amounts of bad economics out there and I could spend a lifetime reading only a tenth of it. It makes sense to be very selective. Obviously there is the risk that I may re-invent a few wheels, but at least in the process I will get a good grasp of how the wheels work. I started this thread for the purposes of finding out what work had been done in finding the value of a fiat currency, and in that regard this thread has been a success. I never knew LvM himself had worked on exactly the problem I was interested in, so I am grateful for the tip-off.
If you want to discuss etiquette then I suggest you have words with a few other people first. I have been called every kind of idiot in this forum, there are some incredibly rude and childish people here, I have no idea why they weren’t barred long ago. I’m not saying I’ve never insulted anyone here, but if you look at the history of my posts (painful I know) you will find that I dish out about one insult for every ten that are thrown at me.
Yes. Ordinal is concerned with the ranking of things. Cardinal is concerned with the value (in the numerical rather than economic sense) of things.
Often though you can have both concepts going on at the same time. For example, imagine a collection of pebbles of varying weights in a room. Lets say that someone has already placed them in a row in order of weight before you enter the room. Yes there is some ordinal information available about the stones (you can see that from the arrangement in a row) but at the same time there is cardinal information - you could get some scales and weigh them yourself.
Now you may say “aha, but you can’t measure human thoughts, so human choices only have ordinal information available”, so to carry the analogy over to the stones scenario its like only being allowed to view the stones and not touch. You can now say that only ordinal information is available. But with both human thought and with stones you can’t touch, there is not zero cardinal information. Instead there is only crude information. So in the case of the stones you may be able to see that one stone is much bigger than the others and you can say something like “Well it looks bigger than the others and most stones are quite dense and its not very likely to be hollow (etc. etc.) so its probably quite heavy” Similarly in the case of the chocolate/water/desert scenario you could say that the thirsty man probably wants the water much more than the chocolate, not just somewhat more.
Hmmm, good question… probably amps, because its an electrical phenomena in the brain. It may correspond to the total positive electrical signal received by the set of neurons responsible for instigating the action that will satisfy your desires.
If you’re going to approach human beings as machines, then start with the anatomy of the brain and the central nervous system. Economics cannot help you understand the complex biological structures of human thought. You’re on the wrong forums. No economist ever doubled as a neurobiologist, let alone synthesized it with economics.
Even if it were somehow scientifically possible to hook up wires to his head and measure the value of his choice against the endless values of those foregone, what would that accomplish? And how will you measure his preferences in the past? You can’t go back in time and hook up the wires to his head and measure.
And preferences and values aren’t constants through time. Doing the exact same thing you just did in the near future will yield different results. There can never be a cardinal unit of measure of values. It must always be ordinal.
What he’s saying is that if you somehow could know the quantum state of every atom in your body (and necessarily the universe because electric/gravitational fields effect your body) he could know what you would do.
You will find very little bad economics in the writings of Ludwig von Mises, so it’s a safe bet that making yourself very familiar with Human Action won’t be a waste of time.
I’m sure some people have rudely over-reacted to the excesses in your posts which I mentioned, and that is indeed condemnable. Nonetheless you’d be less likely to be the victim of such over-reactions if you toned down the swagger in your posts, or at least backed up the swagger by making sure you’ve read up on the relevant literature before pronouncing to have revolutionized economics.
Well my PhD was in neural networks, so I already have…
Agreed… its the other way round.
Why ever not I wonder… actually I’m not sure its true. But I shall confess I have no way to be sure. Anyway I would suggest that:
economics = psychology + maths.
No?.. if your answer is no, then please answer me this question - if economics had not been invented, any you were put in charge of starting a world’s first economics research institute, then from which academic fields would you choose your first researchers?
Wow, that’s an incredible conclusion to draw from what I have said. The modelling of human behaviour is a matter of degree. Its idiotic to suggest that you can either do it or you cant. Its very easy to say that when people are starving they will try and get food. When they are thirsty they will try and get water. I can go one step further and say that the hungrier they are the harder they will try to get food. I think those statements are pretty irrefutable without having to delve in to any quantum states of anything.
Just because a measure is cardinal does not mean it is fixed in time and my modelling would never suggest fixed values are required. My body weight has a cardinal value, but it can increase if I eat too many donuts.
Why on earth do you think I need to know the exact mental state of the entire worlds population going bak in time in order to make my model? I’m not claiming 100% accuracy. I don’t need to survey the mental state of all of mankind to make s statement like “the hungrier people are the harder they will try and get food” which is the kind of feature that my model would include.
I don’t claim to have read huge ammounts of AE literature, but I have read enough to know that there are copious instances of Austrian economists stating things like “people would do this” and “people would do that”. On what basis are the authors making these predictions? If your answer is “praxeology” then, I ask, on what basis does praxeology make those predictions?
Insofar as they are pursuing economic history, they are speculating. Insofar as they are pursuing economic theory, the statements aren’t real-event predictions. They are, at bottom, the conclusions of a compound syllogism, the first premise of which is “the ‘people’ in this syllogism are actors”.
I’m not sure I understood all that. Please help me by considering this quote from “economics in one lesson”.
“But as most people are so firmly in the habit of thinking of their wealth and income in terms of money, they consider themselves better off as these monetary totals rise.”
Is HH “speculating” or “pursuing economic theory” with this sentence? If he is pursuing economic theory, can you explain the difference between his statements about human behavior and mine.