tristanhaze comments on Rationality Quotes May 2014 - Less Wrong

4 Post author: elharo 01 May 2014 09:45AM

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Comment author: tristanhaze 04 May 2014 01:37:28AM 18 points [-]

For my part, I've found the economic notions of opportunity cost and marginal utility to be like this.

Comment author: johnlawrenceaspden 05 May 2014 05:48:33PM -2 points [-]

That's maths too.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 06 May 2014 09:10:39AM *  5 points [-]

The specific application of the math does add value.

Most obviously for the opportunity costs, on the math side you only have to understand the "minus" symbol, which pretty much everyone already does. With marginal utility you have to understand the "derivative", but you still have to apply it in a situation ouside of math class.

Comment author: TobyBartels 12 May 2014 04:04:37AM 2 points [-]

It's applied math, not the pure math that the OP was talking about. Furthermore, these can be useful ideas even when used purely qualitatively; then it's not even applied math (except in a sense that everything is math, if we make the math sufficiently imprecise).