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thomblake comments on How I Became More Ambitious - Less Wrong
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Comments (48)
Surely advantages can also be comparative advantages. If you're trading beauty for attention, then presumably you have a comparative advantage in beauty.
The modifier "comparative" is used to highlight things that are, in isolation, disadvantages, but which are advantages when all things are taken into account. The classic example is a lawyer who can type much more quickly than her secretary, but who hires a secretary to type because of the relative price of lawyering and typing.
That's just false. If A can make wool for $2 and coffee for $3, and B can make wool for $6 and coffee for $5, then B has a comparative advantage in coffee (which is in isolation a disadvantage) and A has a comparative advantage in wool (which in isolation is an advantage). Being a disadvantage just isn't necessary for a comparative advantage.
The critical piece necessary for trade to be profitable is that each party can produce a good at lower marginal and opportunity cost than the other party. I was thinking of just the absolute advantage case (like the example you gave and the example I gave) where one party's disadvantage becomes an advantage in the presence of trade, but I believe it's correct to refer to two parties which each have an absolute advantage as comparative advantage. I'm not sure about that, though.
Well, there are two things wrong with that. For one thing, you do not lose beauty when you use it to your advantage, so it is not an opportunity cost. The second and more important point is that you should write to communicate as effectively as possible: This means using jargon ONLY when it is actually appropriate, not whenever you feel like you can sort of fit it in.
I suspect that the tendency of people here to overuse jargon is a large part of what makes people consider Less Wrong cultish. Honestly, I feel someone should compile a list of Less Wrong "DOs and DON'Ts", which includes rules like "Don't use the word rationality as synonym for smart or good or other more specific words."
(The above should not be taken as further criticism of Swimmer specifically)
I made this a while back as a joke, and shortly thereafter lsparrish wrote a serious post about avoiding inflationary use of terms.
Trading would imply that Swimmer963 is giving up some of her attractiveness in exchange for attention, by treating 'beauty' as a resource that can be depleted. However, her attractiveness in your example of the trade (beauty
attention) isn't depleted significantly.
Perhaps you meant something like trading her spatio-temporal presence (in which the subject gets to admire her visage in a non-awkward social situation for a prolonged period of time) in exchange for the subject's attention; or more succinctly, trading face time with attention?
I agree with you that some advantages can indeed be comparative advantages, but beauty (in this context) is simply an advantage.