Will_Sawin comments on Mapping our maps: types of knowledge - Less Wrong

4 Post author: Swimmer963 27 April 2011 02:16AM

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Comment author: Will_Sawin 27 April 2011 03:37:58PM 1 point [-]

Objection: Economics is more powerful than you give it credit for.

Microeconomics is useful in anywhere or anyplace that has sufficiently strong optimization processes, with abilities and goals closely linked enough to create markets, and when there is enough stability to justify its simplifying assumptions.

Comment author: Swimmer963 27 April 2011 09:02:18PM 0 points [-]

Noted. About all I know about microeconomics is that it exists and makes predictions (my knowledge of it is on a purely descriptive level!) and that it's not as fundamental as general relativity. Suffice to say that it would be useful in an environment enough like Earth, in whatever relevant sense, that you could get optimization processes, abilities and goals linked, and stability. But not, for example, in an interstellar dust cloud.