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Nobody pays attention to Goodman's problem of induction [1]. The truth is that nobody really knows how we ought to arrange society, and which arrangement is li

by ukj 7y ago

Nobody pays attention to Goodman's problem of induction [1]. The truth is that nobody really knows how we ought to arrange society, and which arrangement is likely to work. Everybody is guessing! The moment you arrange the system one way, people game it and your economic model no longer applies. What worked in 1999 needs not work in 2019. Blaming the people you chose to listen to is just another form of avoiding the elephant in the room - that you don't know how to decide who to listen to. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_riddle_of_induction

naasking 7y ago
That's why game theory is so important. We definitely need more progress here.
gbacon 7y ago
Related: To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm. In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident because their experiments may after all produce some new insights. But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority. Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims. We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based – a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hayek/lecture/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay...
- ukj 7y ago
  "Iatrogenics" is a handy metaphor to capture the sentiment above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis

by ukj 7y ago

naasking 7y ago

That's why game theory is so important. We definitely need more progress here.

gbacon 7y ago

Related: To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm. In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident because their experiments may after all produce some new insights. But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority. Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims. We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based – a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hayek/lecture/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/1974/hay...

ukj 7y ago
"Iatrogenics" is a handy metaphor to capture the sentiment above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis