Huh? The reference set Ω is the set of possible world histories, out of which one element is the actual world history. I don't see what's wrong with this.

The main problem I have always had with this is that the reference set is "actual world history" when in fact that is the exact thing that observers are trying to decipher.

We all realize that there is in fact an "actual world history" however if it was known then this wouldn't be an issue. Using it as a reference set then, seems spurious in all practicality.

The most obvious way to achieve it is for the two agents to simply tell each other I(w) and J(w), after which they share a new, common information partition.

I think that summation is a good way to interpret the problem I addressed in as practical a manner as is currently available; I would note however that most people arbitrarily weight observational inference, so there is a skewing of the data.

The sad part about the whole thing is that both or all observers exchanging information may be the same deviation away from w such that their combined probabilities of l(w)are further away from w than either individually.

Thanks for posting this. I'm reminded of the Politics as Mind-killer phenomenon. I attempt to generalize it as:

"Once the question of resource allocation starts to hinge on certain facts, people have a huge impetus to argue for the facts being in whatever way serves them, no matter how logically independent those facts are from their values."

So if some issue of public debate hinged on whether 1+1=2, you would find amazingly good arguments for why it's wrong, if people stood to gain from an implication of it being wrong.

The two important lessons to draw are:

1) In the pursuit of truth, you must always be on the lookout for the motive force of the resource-seeking that hinges on not finding the truth.

2) As in the link above, human thought does not naturally and neatly divide into beliefs and values: the values can yank beliefs "along for the ride", so speak.

There is a fantastic 24 part CBC podcast called How to think about science mp3 format here. It interviews 24 different research scientists and philosophy of science experts on the history and different views of both the scientific process, historical trends and the role of science in society. It is beyond well worth the time to listen to.

I have found that the series confirms what scientists have known already: Researchers rarely behave differently as a group than any other profession, yet they are presented as a non biased objective homogeneous group by most (Of course there are always outliers). Indeed the sciences are much more social than most would indicate and I think as you point out peer review indicates "social networking" best.

This is nothing new, after all, theories and their acceptance have meant nothing without a strong group of well respected researchers around it.

In no way do I think that the parapsychologists have good hypotheses or reasonable claims. I also am a firm adherent to the ethos: Extraordinary claims must have extraordinary proofs. However to state the following:

one in which the null hypothesis is always true.

is making a bold statement about your level of knowledge. You are going so far as to say that there is no possible way that there are hypotheses which have yet to be described which could be understood through the methodology of this particular subgroup. This exercise seems to me to be rejecting these studies intuitively,(without study) just from the ad hominem approach to rejection - well they are parapsychologists therefore they are wrong. If they are wrong, then proper analysis would indicate that, would it not?

I have never seen a parapsychology study, so I will go look for one. However does every single study have massive flaws in it?

That is really immaterial though and computationally moot. Ok so his "utility function" is negative. Is that it, is that the difference? Besides, I would argue that reevaluating it on those terms does a poor job of actually describing motivation in a coherent set.

No. His utility from murder is greater than his utility from not-murder. Cops describe this as 'motive'.

One cannot successfully separate economics from ethics ( I would argue for all but the explicitly classifying sciences (Chemistry, Cladistics etc...) this holds true).

Yes one can. It is much like chemistry. We can say "GDP should be increased" just was we can say "electricity should be produced". But it is better to just let chemistry say "if you put a plate of lead peroxide and a plate of lead metal in sulfuric acid you can generate electricity" and much the same for economics.

If we are simply talking about mathematical notation, then feel free to slap a negative sign on the expected utility portion for terrorists in the "aggregate worldwide utility" formula.

If you want to. But if your intention is to understand or predict the behaviours of terrorists you don't want to consider that 'aggregate worldwide utility formula'. That's useless. You want to consider the utility of the terrorists, at the appropriate level of detail.

It still won't make any sense in practice.

Huh? Yes it will. You mean "you will still find it undesirable and or hard for you to understand".

However interesting the question of origins in economics is, I was under the impression that we were talking about how it currently works, not how it was conceptualized decades and centuries ago.

I'd be fascinated to hear why you thought it doubtful that I've read those books (most happen to be included in the University of Chicago's core reading requirement, and Friedman and Rothbard are obviously connected to the school); perhaps I'm insufficiently aware of the quality of economics education elsewhere. It's just that none of those are being used in modern research, with the exception of Friedman's technical papers--and the modern foundations of economics do not depend on them in the slightest. See e.g. Gary Becker's 1962 paper which discusses how even the normal assumption of rationality on the part of consumers is unnecessary to the basic functioning of markets.

As an important note, the efficient functioning of markets, while often spoken of as a terminal value, has never in my experience actually been other than instrumental: efficient markets quite by definition are allowing greater progress along individual value scales than inefficient markets, though not necessarily as much progress as some further refinement (like regulation).

I suspect, however, that we are just using different definitions of the subject. It seems that you are primarily interested in the economics of public policy and in the value judgments that drive it. Indeed, you define out the very kind of economics that is most prevalent in modern departments (Berkeley perhaps excepted): mathematical models that seek to understand and predict how humans will act.

In short, I, and much of the modern profession of economics, hold little attachment to the origins of economic theory (though I am surprised that you didn't include Smith's Wealth of Nations in your list, being more directly foundational for economics through the 19th century). If you really wanted to get into it, economics goes back to Xenophon's Oeconomicus, but surely we aren't to believe that modern economics bears any similarity to ancient Greek household management theory. Economics, to match your phrasing, is statistics plus insights about how humans actually behave.

Finally, my thoughts on the dichotomy were expressed in a previous article here.

I did separate undergrad degrees in Economics and Philosophy precisely because they speak to different questions.

Economics tell us what is possible; philosophy tells us which outcome we should choose.

I think you were closer to the mark when you said

At it's heart economics is both descriptive, prescriptive and normative

I would simply drop the normative part. Economics certainly attempts to describe the world, and in so doing it offers conclusions such as wedrifid's: to get X, do Y.

The lack of the normative part can be seen in e.g. Steve Levitt's finding that the availability of abortion caused a lagged decrease in crime. Is Levitt arguing that abortion should be more extensive? No--just describing the relationship.

In the same way, the actual science of economics doesn't say X is good, whether X is the natural rate of (un)employment, free trade, public goods, whatever. Individual economists certainly do espouse these positions, for a variety of reasons. The actual claims of the science, however, take the form "X will allow people to move higher on their individual value scales."

Whether these individual scales are "right" or even whether they are the only consideration in moral decision-making is the concern of philosophy, not economics.

Economics without normative conclusions is just statistics.

No it isn't. It is just economics that is less irritating. Economics can conclude "If you want X then you should do Y". This is obviously most useful for people who have consequentialist ethics and happen to desire Y but these preferences are best considered to be attributes (probably) held by the economists and not by economics itself.

A trap I have noticed some economists falling into is reasoning "Z is something that probably will happen therefore Z is something that should happen". This tends to invoke my contempt, particularly since it is seldom applied consistently.

Note that allowing a murderer to, well, murder, improves his economic welfare - it increases his economic utility. Yet murdering is a net negative in the ethicist's utility function.

Economics makes normative claims because economists typically have some relatively uncontroversial normative assumptions - like maximizing economic welfare is a good thing. This is by and large true, but see my counter example above. Also, economists aren't trying to prove that the values they assume are the correct ones. They are assuming certain ethical values and proposing policies that maximize these values.

The two types of utility functions look very similar - the math is the same, both describe goal seeking behavior, etc., but the difference is the preference sets that each describe. Murder can increase utility in the economist's utility function, but not in the ethicist's (under normal circumstances).