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>If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act

>If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way. I think it's pretty silly to accept homo economicus as an actual definition of rational behavior, since nobody really wants to live like such a creature.

freshhawk 10y ago
Really? I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Also, I'm not sure how the quoted part relates, that was my facetious description of how Homo Sapiens act, in contrast with Homo Economicus.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Quite the opposite, actually. Homo Economicus has two things homo sapiens does not, and cannot: * A fixed-a-priori "utility function". Things it wants before it has experienced life at all, with those "things" being linearly convertible into money. * Model certainty about the transactions it enters: risk is accounted for using probability, but the model structure is, again, known a priori. When you weaken these two restrictions in econometric and psychological experiments, you recover useful descriptions of actual human behavior. But those restrictions were ridiculous and unrealistic in the first place, unless you pull an economist's typical move and assume that a person operates like an investment bank with a fixed charter (ie: the fixed goal of accumulating capital) and a fixed set of actions (ie: available equity investments).
  - freshhawk 10y ago
    Yup, although that seems to be a very specific version of the general Homo Economicus term. Do you think I find the idea of Homo Economicus convincing or valid? I was arguing the opposite.

freshhawk 10y ago

Really? I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Also, I'm not sure how the quoted part relates, that was my facetious description of how Homo Sapiens act, in contrast with Homo Economicus.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Quite the opposite, actually. Homo Economicus has two things homo sapiens does not, and cannot: * A fixed-a-priori "utility function". Things it wants before it has experienced life at all, with those "things" being linearly convertible into money. * Model certainty about the transactions it enters: risk is accounted for using probability, but the model structure is, again, known a priori. When you weaken these two restrictions in econometric and psychological experiments, you recover useful descriptions of actual human behavior. But those restrictions were ridiculous and unrealistic in the first place, unless you pull an economist's typical move and assume that a person operates like an investment bank with a fixed charter (ie: the fixed goal of accumulating capital) and a fixed set of actions (ie: available equity investments).
- freshhawk 10y ago
  Yup, although that seems to be a very specific version of the general Homo Economicus term. Do you think I find the idea of Homo Economicus convincing or valid? I was arguing the opposite.