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Clarity comments on Open Thread Feb 22 - Feb 28, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: Elo 21 February 2016 09:14PM

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Comment author: gjm 24 February 2016 02:37:13PM 0 points [-]

"Your statement is technically true but I disagree with the connotations if you're suggesting that ...", I guess. I'm hampered by not being sure whether you're objecting connotationally to (1) the idea that having an economics PhD is a guarantee of understanding the fundamentals of economics, or (2) the analogy between markets / command economies and unguided evolution / intelligent design, or (3) something else.

"... that economics is why evolution wins in the actual world"?

Comment author: Clarity 24 February 2016 03:26:51PM 0 points [-]

Even if 'markets with decentralized decision making often beat intelligent design', that doesn't mean decentralised decision making dominates centralised planning (what I assume he means by intelligent design)

Comment author: gjm 24 February 2016 04:05:27PM 0 points [-]

But ChristianKI is neither claiming nor implying that (so far as I can see); his point is that Eric is arguing "look at these amazing things; they're far too amazing to have been done without a guiding intelligence" but his experience in economics should show him that actually often (and "often" is all that's needed here) distributed systems of fairly stupid agents can do better than centralized guiding intelligences.

(I don't find that convincing, but for what I think are different reasons from yours. Eric's hypothetical centralized guiding intelligence is much, much smarter than (e.g.) the Soviet central planners.)