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mtaran comments on Rationality quotes: October 2010 - Less Wrong
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From a hacker news thread on the difficulty of finding or making food that's fast, cheap and healthy.
"Former poet laureate of the US, Charles Simic says, the secret to happiness begins with learning how to cook." -- pfarrell
Reply: "Well, I'm sure there's some economics laureate out there who says that the secret to efficiency begins with comparative advantage." -- Eliezer Yudkowsky
I don't understand this one. A poetry guy says something practical (and completely unrelated to poetry) is a valuable thing, and Eliezer replies that an economics guy would say something about economics?
The message eludes me.
My take: Comparative advantage as I understand it is about specializing and being better off for it (in simplistic terms).
So Eliezer is hinting that you should become good at thing X where X isn't cooking and pay for someone who has specialized in cooking to cook for you, and you'll both be better off.
Edit: I think he phrased it in the way (Economics laureate etc) as parody and to highlight the appeal to authority in the original (why should a poet laureate, no more than a normal poet or any other person what the secret to happiness was).
</ humour destruction through explanation>
That seems possible... but I don't like the disconnect between the poetry guy talking about increasing happiness and the economics guy talking about increasing efficiency, with no connection given. They aren't the same thing at all, and I'm sure Eliezer understands that better than either of us.
I just saw this. I figured out a food with said qualities: chicken.
1) cheap and healthy 2) fast to prepare if you do it my way: buy chicken hips. wash them and put them into a pan with water, cook for 18 minutes. Eat.
They don't taste that good but you can't beat the price and convenience.
thanks, but no quoting LWers in this post
But the quote is from a hacker news thread, isn't it? Would we want to stop quoting Dennett's books if he became a regular here?
Probably not, but you wouldn't (need to) quote what he wrote here.
EDIT: Or rather, what he's writing since he's here, unless it's still novel to LW.