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Well actually it's pretty easy. I know the difference between Ensemble average and Time average. I can see that EUT is using Ensemble average in place of Time a

Well actually it's pretty easy. I know the difference between Ensemble average and Time average. I can see that EUT is using Ensemble average in place of Time average and is therefore wrong. If you want to determine who is right that is all you need to know. To simplify this for you, if you saw someone who in their maths equations swapped mean and median averages and told you that their maths usually gives the right answer. What would you think? "how can you possibly so sure of yourself because the maths looks good to you?" Because I know for certain. "Especially when experts are saying" A nobel prize winning physicist has signed their name on it (Previous paper in the line). Now do you really think the nobel prize winning physicist is wrong or some annoyed economists on twitter are wrong?

sweezyjeezy 6y ago
Well I work in machine learning, where quite often mathematical 'fudge factors' are used over something more rigorous - because they just work better on real world data. So I'd be pretty sympathetic actually, and I have a PhD in maths. I barely know any economics but: "Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" This suggests to me like the maths may not be all you need to know about who is right and wrong. Secondly, you've appealed to the authority of one advocate's Nobel prize IN PHYSICS to assert that this paper in economics is correct. I believe the bunch of salty critics on Twitter (and Reddit, this thread, also in official rebuttals published in Nature), from people who actually work in the domain - should at least make you entertain the possibility that you are wrong about the correctness/importance/applicability of this paper.
- ReflectedImage 6y ago
  "Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" The answer is that the person prefers A not B. The physical interpretation of that is that you have a 99.9% chance of getting $10,000,000 and 0.01% of being killed where you stand. People naturally avoid sudden losses of resources as it usually means death. [If you want me to explain to you, why it's totally irrational to choose B, I'm happy to do so] You are using maths without understanding what that maths actually means. You could argue that you should be calculating the effect of making a decision a very large number of times rather than infinity times. But that would be a minor tiny issue rather than a reasonable refute. I have read the paper of refutes and they are no good. @sweezykeezy At the end of the day, Ergodicity Economics is a revolutionary idea for economics and like with most revolutionary ideas it has a lot of people who don't want the status quo to be upset. In this case an outside's unbias opinion is more valid than an insider's heavy bias opinion. The other incredibility telling thing is that all the detractors can't agree on what actually their disagreement is with Ole Peters work. They can't attack the maths, they can't attack that it applies to the real world, so they are all over the place. "Nobel prize IN PHYSICS" I think there is a big hint here that Economics is in the scientific dark ages where people are more interested in advancing their pet theories then are actually concerned about the real world or what is correct. If economics didn't want people from other fields coming in, then they shouldn't of let their field fall into a state of disrepair. In your next reply to this, explain to me what an ensemble average and an time average are and why they are different. At least show me you understand at least a little of what you are talking about. There are certainly no comments on this article that successfully refute Ole Peters, I have read them all.
  - sweezyjeezy 6y ago
    What I was really interested in talking about was how you're displaying a lack of humility in a field that you aren't an expert in - https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/ to quote a previous poster. Time will tell whether you are right or not, not us arguing on HN.
    - ReflectedImage 6y ago
      I've been trained in interdisciplinary research. As part of the training, common issues in problem research fields were covered. The economists here are behaving actually how researchers from problem search fields typically behave. One typically problem behaviour is argument by example, two different research groups have their own theory and then they use research papers and more recently social media to send each other ridicious examples of where their theory works and the other research group's does not. An example of argument by example is: "Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" from the rebuttal paper. Along with all the other ones in the rebuttal paper. That's a telltale sign of poor quality researchers. They didn't even bother spend any time to work out what Ole Peters was even saying and since they didn't know what Ole Peters was saying, they failed to refute it. Good researchers, who's opinions are worth listening to, don't behave in that manner.

sweezyjeezy 6y ago

Well I work in machine learning, where quite often mathematical 'fudge factors' are used over something more rigorous - because they just work better on real world data. So I'd be pretty sympathetic actually, and I have a PhD in maths. I barely know any economics but: "Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" This suggests to me like the maths may not be all you need to know about who is right and wrong. Secondly, you've appealed to the authority of one advocate's Nobel prize IN PHYSICS to assert that this paper in economics is correct. I believe the bunch of salty critics on Twitter (and Reddit, this thread, also in official rebuttals published in Nature), from people who actually work in the domain - should at least make you entertain the possibility that you are wrong about the correctness/importance/applicability of this paper.

ReflectedImage 6y ago
"Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" The answer is that the person prefers A not B. The physical interpretation of that is that you have a 99.9% chance of getting $10,000,000 and 0.01% of being killed where you stand. People naturally avoid sudden losses of resources as it usually means death. [If you want me to explain to you, why it's totally irrational to choose B, I'm happy to do so] You are using maths without understanding what that maths actually means. You could argue that you should be calculating the effect of making a decision a very large number of times rather than infinity times. But that would be a minor tiny issue rather than a reasonable refute. I have read the paper of refutes and they are no good. @sweezykeezy At the end of the day, Ergodicity Economics is a revolutionary idea for economics and like with most revolutionary ideas it has a lot of people who don't want the status quo to be upset. In this case an outside's unbias opinion is more valid than an insider's heavy bias opinion. The other incredibility telling thing is that all the detractors can't agree on what actually their disagreement is with Ole Peters work. They can't attack the maths, they can't attack that it applies to the real world, so they are all over the place. "Nobel prize IN PHYSICS" I think there is a big hint here that Economics is in the scientific dark ages where people are more interested in advancing their pet theories then are actually concerned about the real world or what is correct. If economics didn't want people from other fields coming in, then they shouldn't of let their field fall into a state of disrepair. In your next reply to this, explain to me what an ensemble average and an time average are and why they are different. At least show me you understand at least a little of what you are talking about. There are certainly no comments on this article that successfully refute Ole Peters, I have read them all.
- sweezyjeezy 6y ago
  What I was really interested in talking about was how you're displaying a lack of humility in a field that you aren't an expert in - https://xkcd.com/793/ https://xkcd.com/793/ to quote a previous poster. Time will tell whether you are right or not, not us arguing on HN.
  - ReflectedImage 6y ago
    I've been trained in interdisciplinary research. As part of the training, common issues in problem research fields were covered. The economists here are behaving actually how researchers from problem search fields typically behave. One typically problem behaviour is argument by example, two different research groups have their own theory and then they use research papers and more recently social media to send each other ridicious examples of where their theory works and the other research group's does not. An example of argument by example is: "Would a person ever prefer a process [A] that, after three rounds, diminishes wealth from US$10,000 to 0.5 cents over one [B] that yields a 99.9% chance of US$10,000,000 and otherwise US$0? Ergodic theory predicts [A] [... but] [v]irtually everyone will prefer B" from the rebuttal paper. Along with all the other ones in the rebuttal paper. That's a telltale sign of poor quality researchers. They didn't even bother spend any time to work out what Ole Peters was even saying and since they didn't know what Ole Peters was saying, they failed to refute it. Good researchers, who's opinions are worth listening to, don't behave in that manner.