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I think there's some questions to be asked about this, but the main one is this claim: > Abstraction is something you do to things so that you don't have to co

I think there's some questions to be asked about this, but the main one is this claim: > Abstraction is something you do to things so that you don't have to cognitively deal with them, they're predictable. The word "predictable". What does it mean to be predictable? Are periodic trends with micro-variations considered to be predictable? In that sense, might it not be possible to Fourier-decompose some time-series into a sufficiently-"predictable" set of frequencies? But actually, I'm not even sure if this qualification is needed. If an abstraction is basically just a way to treat a bunch of events as a single idea, then what if the abstraction isn't something telling you how you should act, but instead something telling you how you should react? Another assumption, I think, is that the market is human, i.e. because there are affective dimensions and bounded rationalities in the economy that make it unpredictable. This is true right now, but is that inherent to the market? You can argue that even an automated agent has "humanity", in the sense that it is essentially imprinted with their creator, but how much longer will this hold? It's asymptotic, but won't there be a threshold at which the humanity of machines made by machines, with many steps removed, becomes negligible? http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/30/ascended-economy/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/30/ascended-economy/

vinceguidry 8y ago
If any other kind of agent can make market moves, then that agent has to supplant humans at the 'top'. For example, the pet market is absurdly large. What drives this market? The actual needs of animals? Of course not. It's the wishes of humans that make that market as big as it is. It doesn't even have to be that humans are smart enough to control the new market-playing agents. It can also be that human desire can so vastly dwarf whatever external agency has a wish to be in the market that the whole industry ends up catering the wishes of the humans. Right now, human desire drives the market for robots. Can you even imagine a point at which robots could develop enough agency to even come close to supplanting the human desire for more and better robots? When does the tail stop wagging the dog here? People sometimes forget the sheer scale of human economies. Sure, maybe your pet non-human agent might be able to command a few hundred thousand in market activity. Is it even going to be notable over all the other existing types of non-human agency already on the market, like pets and HFT?
krotton 8y ago
> abstraction isn't something telling you how you should act, but instead something telling you how you should react? A little bit OT: I don't think acting and reacting are separate things in the real world. We're always only reacting.

vinceguidry 8y ago

If any other kind of agent can make market moves, then that agent has to supplant humans at the 'top'. For example, the pet market is absurdly large. What drives this market? The actual needs of animals? Of course not. It's the wishes of humans that make that market as big as it is. It doesn't even have to be that humans are smart enough to control the new market-playing agents. It can also be that human desire can so vastly dwarf whatever external agency has a wish to be in the market that the whole industry ends up catering the wishes of the humans. Right now, human desire drives the market for robots. Can you even imagine a point at which robots could develop enough agency to even come close to supplanting the human desire for more and better robots? When does the tail stop wagging the dog here? People sometimes forget the sheer scale of human economies. Sure, maybe your pet non-human agent might be able to command a few hundred thousand in market activity. Is it even going to be notable over all the other existing types of non-human agency already on the market, like pets and HFT?

krotton 8y ago

> abstraction isn't something telling you how you should act, but instead something telling you how you should react? A little bit OT: I don't think acting and reacting are separate things in the real world. We're always only reacting.