Today's Random News

[Fe 26]

I don't think that's very important. Who is less important than what, IMO. Nash being schizophrenic is obviously alarming, but the argument being made is what need scrutinizing else you throw out the baby with the bath water. All scientific claims should always be scrutinized regardless of person. It's why peer reviewing is blind. Nietzche was put in to an insane asylum at a young age as well — and well as many of our most prominent artists. Maybe there is an insanity to going in to the void and discovering new territory? I don't know. I'm not that kind of genius.

The general purpose theories in the first place is predictive validity. If the theory a nut job puts forth can predict then the nutjob was probably on to something.

I'm sorry if I attacked your husbando. The truth is that we've governed some of the most powerful economies in the world for the past 50 years with math, that when tested with real people, does not pan out. We've got enough nukes on this earth to destroy ourselves a 100 times over because of Nash equilibrium equations.

We even pretested it before bringing it to the English speaking world. The US assassinated Salvador Allende Gossens and used Chile as a testbed for all these Randian Nash wet dreams and we ultimately destroyed that country with it.

[Diff-chan]

Chile has the best economy in South America by a decent margin.

[Fe 26]

Chile has the best economy in South America by a decent margin.

The cause is debatable. Some would say it was because the US finally left the country alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Boys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvad...US_involvement

[Diff-chan]

I'm not saying the US did good in Chile. But if Allende's policies took hold the country was far more likely to become a basket case like Bolivia or Venezuela. Maybe that's what should have happened - it's what the people voted for. But I can't peer into the multiverse.

[Satsuki]

Drew - you're still operating under the assumption that all societies are inherently based in capitalism, which just isn't true. I mean you can argue this stuff for the western world all you want, but you're discounting a decent group of people worldwide. I'm not arguing for or against communism on a large scale, I'm just saying that there are small scale societies (often indigenous) that operate in entirely non-capitalistic means, successfully, for centuries. By discounting them you're being purposefully ignorant of societies outside of the first world. However, many people make this mistake in philosophy by equating economic theory to humanity, and it simply cannot work on a global scale. It can apply to a Western, or first world, but not every society on earth. Again, that's why Nash's (and many other economists) theories will stress "in the marketplace," because their theories simply do not hold up on a global scale.

Here's an paper that basically puts it straight, and puts holes in the "every man reacts the same in society" argument:

"We found, first, that the canonical selfishness-based model fails in all of the societies studied."
http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camer...rviewpaper.pdf

[Drewbacca]

I'm not saying the US did good in Chile. But if Allende's policies took hold the country was far more likely to become a basket case like Bolivia or Venezuela. Maybe that's what should have happened - it's what the people voted for. But I can't peer into the multiverse.

Maybe this game just hasn't played out long enough.

Also Nash was ABSOLUTELY wrong about a lot of the game theory stuff. But he knew this, because most people didn't fuck over the other person. But it was still a helpful theory in understanding the dynamics and frame social interactions as games. Because mainly they are games.

[Satsuki]

hahah wait wait wait

This isn't my quote but, "Game Theory isn't a claim or hypothesis that can be proven right or wrong, it's a field of inquiry concerned with studying the mathematical principles that underly strategy."

[Satsuki]

I would say 99% of people I meet misunderstand game theory because of the "theory" moniker. It's not a theory exactly, it's just saying "a system of moves you can make." there is no right or wrong with it, it just simply has to do with a system of possible outcomes.

[Drewbacca]

Drew - you're still operating under the assumption that all societies are inherently based in capitalism, which just isn't true. I mean you can argue this stuff for the western world all you want, but you're discounting a decent group of people worldwide. I'm not arguing for or against communism on a large scale, I'm just saying that there are small scale societies (often indigenous) that operate in entirely non-capitalistic means, successfully, for centuries. By discounting them you're being purposefully ignorant of societies outside of the first world. However, many people make this mistake in philosophy by equating economic theory to humanity, and it simply cannot work on a global scale. It can apply to a Western, or first world, but not every society on earth. Again, that's why Nash's (and many other economists) theories will stress "in the marketplace," because their theories simply do not hold up on a global scale.

Here's an paper that basically puts it straight, and puts holes in the "every man reacts the same in society" argument:

"We found, first, that the canonical selfishness-based model fails in all of the societies studied."
http://people.hss.caltech.edu/~camer...rviewpaper.pdf

I think I'm misunderstanding your argument (I'll read this paper). People can act in a social structure in a multitude of different ways. There will always be bounds to this, however, based on what laws we erect and social constructs we agree to. There are indigenous leaders and hierarchies, after all. This is not the same as game theory. It's not saying that people are inherently selfish or should be self motivated. It's that regardless of all the social variability and way humans behave, the distribution of productivity seems to follow the general rule that 50% ends up going to the square root of the total contributors paradigm (the 10%, and then the 1% on that). People don't think this is a natural law, but if it's showing up at multiple levels of social order then how could you argue it isn't?

I don't think someone making a lot of money is inherently self motivated. I don't think the artist painting 100's of pictures in their lifetime when most everyone else is painting near 0 is malevolent by any means. Most of these people are contributing earnestly to their own self improvement, and then therefore the group at large, because game theory falls a part terribly once you realize that people aren't just playing one game, but a series of many games over a long period of time.

Sure, there may indeed be localized societies that don't adhere to this general pattern. But to me this kind of like finding outliers (or even going out of your way to look for them) and using them to jump to the conclusion the general principles aren't valid.

[Satsuki]

But that's my issue, if we're equating economic theory to philosophy, it falls apart on a global scale. Many, many people make this mistake, and you're not the first or the last to do it. It's a problem with the inherent discussion (again, equating economics to philosophy,) because there is no "general" on a global scale. If we are to properly dissect *all* human behavior and reasoning, we can't just eliminate smaller things because we don't feel like dealing with the data. It would be disingenuous and skewed.