= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
RobinHanson comments on Mechanics without wrenches - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (75)
I doubt understanding differential equations would help Congressfolk make better decisions. It is the economic concepts that would be useful for them, not so much the math.
Also, our basic ideology of democracy says that ordinary people can make wise decisions about policy without expert knowledge. So it is hard for voters to say politicians are unqualified without such knowledge without admitting that voters are also unqualified.
Regarding your first point, this quote by Gian-Carlo Rota perhaps says what I want to say best:
"Most people, even some scientists, think that mathematics applies because you learn Theorem Three and Theorem Three somehow explains the laws of nature. This does not happen even in science fiction novels; it is pure fantasy. The results of mathematics are seldom directly applied; it is the definitions that are really useful. Once you learn the concept of a differential equation, you see differential equations all over, no matter what you do. This you cannot see unless you take a course in abstract differential equations. What applies is the cultural background you get from a course in differential equation, not the specific theorems. If you want to learn French, you have to live the life of France, not just memorize thousands of words. If you want to apply differential equations, you have to live the life of differential equations. When you live this life, you can go back to molecular biology with a new set of eyes that will see things you could not otherwise see."
Regarding your second point, I think one of the principles behind democracy is that even if each individual voter is not an expert, their collective decisions (ideally) will be similar to those of 'experts'. Think of Boosting in AI - you can often combine many weak learners to form a strong learner. So it is reasonable to expect politicians to be more qualified (restricted to policy making, of course) than the voters.
Yes the concepts are the main thing useful you learn when you learn math. But not all math is equally useful in all areas. Economists hardly ever use differential equations; that is not a math that helps much there. So in learning econ Congressfolks should learn some math, yes, but probably not differential equations.
That's an unfortunate example: to the extent which economics is quantifiable, it's all differential equations... heck, marginal utility is a differential equation!
Maybe they weren't explicitly stated as differential equations but:
so it can't be helped.
Speaking of differential equations in economics, a friend of mine has had an idea that there should be an economics textbook for mathematicians, because it annoyed him so much that they seem to dance around mathematical concepts--for example, marginal anything is clearly a derivative, although normal econ textbooks never call it that.
Not in the discrete case.
That's odd -- if anything, econ usually gets accused of being way too much about mathematical formalism. This, for example, might as well be "an economics textbook for mathematicians"; maybe your friend will find it helpful.
Do you mean a math text for economists?
But we have a representative democracy for a reason. The voters can ensure that the politicians advance their values while still deferring to those politicians the responsibility of obtaining the expert knowledge necessary to do so.
ETA: I'm speaking of ideals here, not of execution.
I really like this -- gender neutral without sounding strained.
I've often heard the slightly less respectful version, "Congresscritter".
That's the common serious libertarian term. Some of the more extreme libertarians have downgraded them even more, now refering to them as "Congressthings".
Illuminati University simply replaces "man" with "thing" in general, i.e., Congressthing, freshthing, postthing, policething, etc.
Oy, so distracting. (Congressional) representative, 1st year (student), mail carrier/postal worker, police officer, chair, fire fighter, business executive, council member.
I've often used "congresscritter" :)
I'm not sure whether to vote you up for making a true statement about the declared intent of representative democracy, or vote you down for seeming to imply that representative democracy actually achieves anything of the sort.
I was speaking entirely of ideals -- we fail hard at the execution.
There are 2 basic theories of representative democracy. One is what MBlume described. The other is that representatives should do whatever their constituents tell them to do. Most representatives in the US follow the latter, I think.
Math is so powerful in so many domains that it is embarrassing that out of 300,000,000 people, we can't find 500 to represent us who are well-educated in math. I second emeritusl: It's a way of thinking.
Excellent point about the ideology of democracy.
I thought that representitive democracy meant that we could make wise decisions about who would be able to make wise decisions, and that part of what we are voting on is how they will make those decisions. Will they listen to our ideas of execution, or only our values, or their own values? Will they rely on our beliefs, their own or experts?
Even at that level, there is no need to believe that democracies make wise decisions to believe in them; you need only believe that the alternatives are worse. At least one of our major parties campaigns reguarly on the idea that we are incapable of making wise decisions in government, yet its rhetoric is still very much pro-Democracy.
I think it should be at least possible to have an ideology of democracy that didn't depend on this supposition; it should be enough to be able to know whose expert knowledge to trust in evaluating policy.
Curious that you say that economics, which should be quantitative, doesn't involve a lot of math. That strikes me as a flaw. Why isn't it math-heavy? What use is it when it isn't quantitative? If I can't plug numbers in and get numbers out, am I left with anything other than a collection of just-so stories with no ability to judge which is more applicable in any given situation?
The most valuable part for politicians is understanding that incentives matter, and the ideas of public choice theory, the concept of regulatory capture and the like. These don't require any facility with numbers. They inform decision making and direct the design of institutions.
Could this be an opportunity to "pull the rope sideways" (as you say)? Perhaps the assumption is too deeply ingrained, but it seems easier to convince someone to accept that experts might often know best than to challenge a specific policy preference.