'Tell me one last thing,' said Harry. 'Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?'

Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and strong in Harry's ears even though the bright mist was descending again, obscuring his figure.

'Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?'

― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Seeing how individual decisions are rational within the bounds of the information available does not provide an excuse for narrow-minded behavior. It provides an understanding of why that behavior arises. Within the bounds of what a person in that part of the system can see and know, the behavior is reasonable. Taking out one individual from a position of bounded rationality and putting in another person is not likely to make much difference. Blaming the individual rarely helps create a more desirable outcome. – Donella H Meadows

Factually false. The Openness personality trait, and creativity in general, is linked with mental issues like schizophrenia (see also Spent 2011), while the only investigation I currently am aware of for mathematicians does not find any noticeable increase for 48 prominent modern logicians (including Godel): http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2011/07/disproofing-myth-that-many-early.html

(I will note I am not surprised in the least that the quote comes from Chesterton.)

I honestly have some pretty bad associations for that metaphor. The parable makes sense, but I find that it's almost invariably (indeed, even in its original incarnations) presented with the implication "if we could pool our knowledge and experiences, we would come away with an understanding that resembles what I already believe."

That's not the sort of planning and prediction that gwern thinks is doomed, since it's "local."

Hm. Thanks for the link; I'd somehow missed that post. It's a very clear analysis of what it means for a market to be 'efficient.'

Even given that markets are anti-inductive, though, I disagree with you that economics shouldn't be able to make many good predictions. Perhaps finance shouldn't be able to make many good predictions. But, in principle, it should be possible to delve past people's financial expectations and reason about how changes in the supply of fundamental economic inputs -- land, labor, capital, technology, the rule of law, risk-tolerance, patience, etc. -- will affect fundamental economic outputs -- goods, services, credit, information, etc. For example, if the population grows by 10% over the next 2 years, and everything else stays constant, how much more or less will it cost me (in PPP-adjusted dollars) to hire a plumber to fix my toilet? The answer shouldn't depend on what everyone thinks it will cost; it should depend on how real changes in the real economy affect people's real behavior, i.e., whether they are willing to come over and muck about in my pipes in exchange for a given amount of resources.

You might think that making predictions of this sort is, as a practical matter, too challenging -- but it's not clear why it should be naturally or definitionally unlikely.

Finally, I object to your characterization of the belief that we can improve on the normal workings of the economy as "delusional." Certainly, there are some extreme examples of top-down social planning that have failed catastrophically, but reversed stupidity is not intelligence, and I have not seen any evidence that the economic solutions that have been evolved by small groups over long periods of time are always or even usually better than those that are developed by modern experts over short periods of time. I will understand if you don't want to debate this issue on Less Wrong; it seems political enough to be a mind-killer. However, "delusions" seems to me to be a strong word, which should not be used lightly.

I think the presentation needs to include how to tailor the information for your own personal situation. A person with a mineral deficiency can receive enormous benefits from supplements but a person who does not have such a deficiency may receive no benefit or worse. You don’t need to be a Bayesian to understand that just because a mineral supplement will help a specific individual with a specific individual condition, it does not follow that more of that mineral will provide any benefit for a generic human without that condition or deficiency.

A place to start research might be with the minerals that are generally accepted as being important to maintaining bodily functions and the generally accepted minimum daily requirements of those minerals. In an ideal world, where would we get those minerals? Is that source available to me specifically in my current place and time? Is the availability of that mineral in my body impacted by medication? other foods? levels of physical activity? environmental degradation? my own health status? It seems to me that specific personal circumstances will be a major factor in determining whether supplements are needed. So I would like to read about how to evaluate my personal circumstances relative to my mineral needs as a generic human. That will help me determine whether to supplement specific minerals in my diet. Then I can determine the best way for me, in my circumstances, to ingest more of those minerals.

Being healthy is the goal. If one is healthy, I am not sure that one can become healthier in any abstract sense. I am, fortunately, healthy. In order to maintain my current favorable health status, common sense (not necessarily wrong) tells me to continue my current nutritional regimen – which includes a basic (non-mega) multi-vitamin/mineral supplement taken as a form of insurance since I can’t be certain that it provides any benefit. If I have to take medication for some reason, or if I engage in unusual physical activity or experience unusual life conditions, I try to understand how this will affect my normal balance and I try to compensate for the effect – possibly with nutritional supplements. How can I best compensate? The research described above would be really helpful.

Hello. I found this place as a result of reading Yudkowski's intuitive explanation of Bayes Theorem. I think we are like a very large group of blind people each trying to describe the elephant on the basis of the small part we touch. However, if I can aggregate the tactile observations of a large number of us blind people, I might end up with a pretty good idea of what that elephant looks like. That's my goal - to build a coherent and consistent mental picture of that elephant.