Brian_Macker comments on Cynicism in Ev-Psych (and Econ?) - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 11 February 2009 03:06PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (39)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Brian_Macker 13 February 2009 03:00:54AM 0 points [-]

Nobody,

"Seemingly irrational action is rational, that is, has an aim. To appraise it as irrational, the appraiser merely imposes some other external source of value."-Michael Rozeff

If and individual spends their life hunting for Bigfoot they are acting rationally as far as economics goes. The are taking action with a goal in mind.

Economics can't and shouldn't make value judgments about goal directed actions.

Economics (even particular schools of economic) have specialized terms that do NOT mean the same thing as common usage.

There's nothing charming about quarks and yet the term "charm" is used in physics.

" We want the simplest explanation that accounts for the data." We want the best theory in a Popperian sense. One measure is simplicity but another measure of that is the theory that explains the most. Austrian business cycle theory explains many aspects of the business cycle that other theories do not. It can explain stagflation for instance whereas Keynesian theory cannot. It explains why commodity prices rise more than average price increases. Etc.