asr comments on Open thread for December 9 - 16, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I suspect all economics is inhuman. I suspect that any complex economy that connects millions or billions of people is going to be incomprehensible and inhuman. By far the best explanation I've heard of this thought is by Cosma Shalizi.
The key bit here is the conclusion:
This is a great way to express it. I was thinking about something similar, but could not express it like this.
The essence of the problem is, all "systems of human interaction" are not humans. A market is not a human. An election is not a human. An organization is not a human. Etc. Complaining that we are governed by non-humans is essentially complaining that there is more than one human, and that the interaction between humans is not itself a human. Yes, it is true. Yes, it can (and probably will) have horrible consequences. It just does not depend on any specific school of economics, or anything like this.
I suspect this sub-thread implicitly defined "human" as "generating warm fuzzies". There are, um, problems with this definition.