Yeah I forgot to mention that…
But we cannot say he is being irrational because he wants Sally instead of Molly, even though Sally is fatter and uglier and nastier in every way, and even though we would prefer Molly hands down. This is what he means in the second part of the quote, never to ultimate ends. [=5]. We already explained why he thinks this above, where we paraphrase his position in Theory and History.
But certainly we can conclude that Sally doesn’t have what he really wants in a woman, that she wouldn’t be good for him, and that he is mistaken about her. The only type of ultimate end we can speak of is the end as “thing-in-itself.” But the end conceived this way has no fixed appearance, no other properties we can latch onto it permanently. Any state within time, such as being with Sally, can be criticized according to its rationality. Nothing is self-sufficient and everything leads to something else. Every end is also a means.
But certainly we can conclude that Sally doesn’t have what he really wants in a woman, that she wouldn’t be good for him, and that he is mistaken about her.
Oh no we can’t. On what basis?
The only type of ultimate end we can speak of is the end as “thing-in-itself.”
That may be true and defensible, but it is certainly not Mises’ position. And I don’t see how you can prove the correctness of your position.
But the end conceived this way has no fixed appearance, no other properties we can latch onto it permanently.
Not sure what you mean. The “end”, according to Mises, is what I want, nothing more, nothing less.
Any state within time, such as being with Sally, can be criticized according to its rationality.
Sorry, FOTH. Much as I am pleased that you read my humble posts, we once again reach a point where yours are way over my head, so to speak.
Oh no we can’t. On what basis?
On the basis that it is possible to know people.
That may be true and defensible, but it is certainly not Mises’ position. And I don’t see how you can prove the correctness of your position.
Kant already did it for me. See for example the First Antinomy. (Although he probably wouldn’t call it a proof. It’s just that this notion of an ultimate end is an unsupported dogma, which isn’t a possible experience.)
Not sure what you mean. The “end”, according to Mises, is what I want, nothing more, nothing less.
Sure, but what you want is not permanently fixed. You may want one thing and then change your mind to wanting another thing. Is this process of changing one’s desires not a rational one? If Harry discovers that Sally isn’t a very honest woman, and he decides he doesn’t want her anymore, is that not a decision that appeals to rationality?
I kind of agree with FOTH. It seems to me that every end is just another means to something else. If we had one absolute final end, once we achieved that end, we would sit in perfect bliss. We would cease to progress, and we would die. This is why happiness if over-rated. Nothing will make you happy forever. The reason we progress and innovate is because we are never satisfied with where we are with regard to our lot in life. Suppose I do believe I have a final end, say to marry my high school sweet heart, turned world’s sexiest lingerie model. I perform all of these tasks, employ all of these means, and through this I am able to finally take her hand in marriage. What now? Do i just keel over and die? No, I work to provide a better life, buy her a better car, live in a better house. I never stop doing this. Even if I retire, I am always working toward something, even if I appear to be doing nothing.
As for game theory,
Central Planning’s Computation Problem
This is a really interesting speech made by Lucas Englehardt, an austrian computer science dude who ran some tests on game theory as espoused by The Venus Project using MetLab. His findings are wild, to say the least. Try to ignore his all-to-common, quick little nervous “alrights” littered throughout his speech. Here is his conclusion (but listen to the whole 14 minute speech): He ran a computation assuming 6 billion people and 80,000 goods (the number tracked for the CPI, and far far far far fewer than actually exist) and for the computer to figure out even one viable allocation method, it would take the computer 39.7 quintillion years which is 39.7 billion billion years (or 39,700,000,000,000,000,000 years). On the timeline of human history, so far we would barely even have scratched the surface of this length of time. It would be smaller than microscopic on a computer screen over 100 miles long. In fact, the big bang occurs on the same pixel as today does. This assumes products are already produced; it does not include the time needed to produce goods. It is asserted that by the time computers can provide for us, the technology will be so advanced that these figures will be antiquated. To answer this, a few physicists at Boston University have suggested that there is a maximum to how fast computers could ever hope to be made. They found that it could only be about 10 billion times faster than we have now because information and computation must always travel through a processor of some kind. So, if we divide 39.7 quintillion by 10 billion, then we’re still looking at a 4 billion year process of computation for a simplified economy.
Tex,
It depends on the context. You wanted a certain girl. You married her. Mission accomplished. Now you want something else as well, better life, car etc. If you say that getting the girl was not the ultimate goal because you wanted other things after you got her, that is true.
But that is not what Mises meant when he used the phrase “ultimate goal”. If you look at the context, you see that he was contrasting means to ends. The end is what you want, the means is what you do to get it. Now there may be a whole string of intermnediate ends before you get to the ultimate end.
For example, say you want to go fishing. You will have some intermediate goals, like filling up the gas tank, buying gear, driving to the fishing hole. All those are intermediate ends to the ultimate end of sitting around relaxed in the pleasant sun holding the fishing pole and waiting for a bite.
What Mises was saying is that someone might say that your means were irrational, meaning that, say, waving your magic wand to get the gas tank filled was irrational. He might even say that some of your intermediate goals were irrational, say if you had a goal of buying a net with big holes in it [to later catch your fish]. And he can say that because there was a better way to get to your ultimate goal than waving magic wands and buying nets that won’t hold fish.
But if someone would say you are irrational for wanting to go fishing, because it is much more fun watching football and drinking beer with the guys, then Mises would say he is making a big mistake. You want what you want because you want it, and that’s the final word. There is no way of judging and thus deciding that watching football is rational and fishing is irrational.
Now even if the next day you no longer want to go fishing, but want something else instead, that does not change the fatc that fishing was your ultimate goal [the way Mises was using that phrase] at the time you wanted it, even though now you want something else.
Ok, so the end is not irrational if we view it in a vacuum with the means used to attain it? Let’s say that my ultimate goal is to live a pleasurable life, and I believing fishing all day is a good means to achieve that end. To go fishing, I believe that I need to buy a net with large holes in it and nothing else. So I use means (shitty fishing net) to achieve end (fishing) and then means (fishing) to achieve end (pleasurable life). So, fishing is, in this case, both a means and an end.
Given this situation, could one then say that fishing is an irrational means towards achieving the end of a pleasurable life, while, at the same time, being unable to claim that fishing is a bad end in itself? In other words, must the observer only view buying the shitty net in a vacuum with the act of fishing, and view the act of fishing in a vacuum with achieving a pleasurable life?
Everyone’s ultimate goal is a pleasurable life, at least according to Mises in the first chapters of HA—maybe this is where the confusion stems from. Who can even begin to ‘judge’ the means to a pleasurable life in the first place? Because “pleasurable life”, as an abstract idea, is itself sitting in a vacuum if it doesn’t have any qualifying statements i.e. a means to achieve that so very abstract end. Any one end could have dozens of ends within it as life is a never ending series of means and goals(actions). In order to go fishing all day you will still have to have goals and paths to those goals within that higher goal. Unless you live on the water with the net in your hand(and even then) you still have to go through a series of actions by assigning smaller goals (arrive at the fishing spot) and their corresponding means(drive/walk/hitch-hike). Unless you will never dehydrate you will still have to drink water in order to fish all day.
First post, lets hope I am not a dumbass.
How does that quote make an argument that ends are always rational? He says rational/irrational can only apply to means. Ends are determined by values established prior to rational consideration.
It would seem that rationality has nothing to say about ends.
I’m not sure it does. I certainly didn’t say it did.
I think you’re overstating the importance of mathematics to the underlying justification for the use of game theory. Formalization is simply a way to ensure a consistent use of concepts and assumptions throughout the argument and good at revealing previously unnoticed implications and conclusions.
You could make a game theoretic argument using only words, but this would be tedious (especially after you understand the shorthand that the math represents) and allow for the imprecision. For example, Hobbes account of the social contract in Leviathan is essentially game theory.
You said “So while he makes a good case that human ends are always rational…”
And it’s fine that Mises has something to say about ends, they’re one of the more talked about topics in the social sciences so he should have his swing at it, the concept of rationality can only assume ends not explain or justify them. So saying ends are always rational doesn’t make too much sense.
Just some general points of clarification to help the discussion along.
Game theory in no way depends upon quantification. You do not need to quantify variables in order to subject them to game theoretical analysis. The key to game theory is the reduction of multi-agent decision-making scenarios to a standard set of “games” that vary on things like whether there exist winning/losing conditions, whether there are payouts or payins and how much and for what, whether information can be shared, must be shared or must be kept secret, and so on. Looked at in this way, game theory is really a set of formalisms that create standardized Gedankenexperiment shemes and establish certain basic facts that must obtain within those frameworks.
Because game theory does not require quantification of variables, and given that the internal state of “agents” (actors) within game theory is completely neglected for the sake of analyzing a game and strategies within that game and given that the Austrian method employs the Gedankenexperiment in its own way (e.g. the Evenly Rotating Economy), there is no hostility between the Austrian method and game theory.
However, I think much of game theory is simply not useful for catallactics; only games that stipulate that agents are acting voluntarily at all times could qualify to fall under the umbrella of catallactics. Game theory - or, at least, some of the less abstruse tools of game theory - may be useful for mapping out regions of praxeology that fall outside of the umbrella of catallactics.
And while much of game theory imputes to agents the same kind of omniscience that mainstream economists attribute to Homo Economicus, there is nothing barring the imposition of realistic conditions of human knowledge, reasoning - even irrationality and emotion - to game-theoretic agents. In fact, this sheds light on one way that omniscience arguments can be useful. If you begin your analysis by assuming that one or more agents are omniscient, then establish some best-case condition that must obtain within the game even for omniscient agent(s), then you can re-impose human limits of knowledge and reason and safely conclude that the same conditions must at least hold for non-omniscient agents who cannot possibly hope to choose as well as omniscient agents.
Clayton -
I think any theory that provides explanatory power about social phenomena can make central planning more viable. That’s actually one of the criticisms that Feyerabend made of Popper, that the logic of Popper’s philosophy of social science would, ironically, lead to a type of totalitarianism. If social science were to actually succeed it what it attempts to do, then obviously central planning would become easier.
Something for the more conspiratorial posters here to think about, what if someone already has figured out the social sciences?
Well I think that’s what the ruling elite are, they are the elites of social science. Based on the long experience of ruling other human beings, they have an intimate empirical knowledge - inaccessible to anyone else not in the business of ruling - of human nature and the laws of social order, including how to bend or break those laws. Whether they have a theoretical knowledge matching their empirical knowledge is an open question but it doesn’t really matter. For them, theoretical knowledge is a luxury, a nice-to-have. For us, theoretical knowledge is a necessity… without it, we know precious little about human nature beyond the horizons of our own personal, anecdotal experience.
Take Austrian business cycle theory, for example. This theory is a momentous achievement of human thought, worked out over many lifespans. But the ruling elite have known the basic outline of ABCT for centuries, whether they understood its full theoretical import or not. They have been debasing coins for more than a thousand years and have been the pioneers in banknotes, fiat money, fractional-reserve banking and central-banking. They’ve inflated currencies, collapsed them, crashed economies, instigated economic depressions and all the rest. So, they have a practical knowledge of human nature and social science that equals or exceeds the theoretical knowledge that can be derived from academic study.
Clayton -
That doesn’t mean I quoted the case. See this is an Internet forum, which is comprised of “threads” in which a conversation between multiple people takes place.
My post was in response to someone else who quoted a passage in which Mises did make a case about ends being always rational (which is expound upon further in the full context of the quote provided in that post I was responding to.) Notice my post begins with “Well, bear in mind Mises also stated: […]”
The word “well” that begins the post offers extra evidence (as if it were even necessary) that it is meant as a direct response (if not continuation) of a post before it. The word “also” indicates that what is about to follow is an example of something that Mises stated in addition to something else he stated. As that is the first sentence of my post, obviously the “something else” Mises stated that makes the “also” necessary is located in a previous post.
I’m kind of surprised I have to explain this to someone who can read.
Great. Mises disagrees with you.
I found this to be a very interesting article from Murphy, in which he critiques Game Theory when it is applied to repeated events (not just a single “game”).
John, you’re not nearly as smart as you think you are, so you might want to slow your pedantic roll just a bit. That entire first section was completely unnecessary and what possessed you to believe that it was is beyond me. Rather than lashing out in an immature fit when someone disagrees with you, perhaps you could try to understand and engage the point they’re making.
You said that Mises made a good case for the rationality of ends. Neither in the section you quoted nor in the wider selection you took the quote from (I’m assuming its the Chapter 1. Acting Man. 4. Rationality and Irrationality; Subjectivism and Objectivity of Praxeological Research link) does he make a case that ends are always rational. In fact, he explicitly agrees with me, that ends can only be assumed by rationality as ultimate givens. That analysis through praxeology can say nothing of ends, much less that they are always rational as you claim Mises posits.
So… like a big boy this time, why don’t you go through that link and point out to me where Mises makes the “good case that human ends are always rational”.
I don’t believe I ever quoted from that book, (let alone that section), nor did I even link to it. But I’m happy to be proven wrong. Go ahead and show me where I did that.
In any case, let’s say I shouldn’t have used the work “rational” in that context. The point there was to illustrate that one can’t argue that one’s ends are irrational, which was stated in a passage I actually did quote here.
Ha!
You’re gonna post that after the junk you just pulled? Please…
I guess you didn’t quote from that section. The link you gave me looked like you were linking to the one in the middle (it was quite appropriate given the subject) but apparently you wanted me to read the link below that. Oh, well. Mises still agrees with the point I was making (contra your brusque response) and he doesn’t make a good case for the rationality of all ends. If you wanted to say that ends can’t be judged to be irrational that’s fine, but that’s a very different statement from saying that all ends are rational, and it’s not beyond the pale that someone would want clarification as to how you get one of those statements out of the other.
So, for future reference how about you fight your natural response to be an ass and just get to the substance of a post. Hopefully next time you’ll be able to avoid that unfortunate little episode you had there just now.