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Do you have an example of an NP hard problem a person would have to solve on the process of optimizing for self interest? A market optimizes for whatever the p

Do you have an example of an NP hard problem a person would have to solve on the process of optimizing for self interest? A market optimizes for whatever the participant wants, profit is simply a mechanism by which the overall market performs price discovery. You always have a choice to not optimize for profit, I make trades all the time where profit is not my goal. Just choosing a job and being kindly allowed a small local marketplace is not agency. Hayek's point would obviously violate the church-turing hypothesis (unless there's some hitherto unknown quantum-esque computation process going on in the human brain which I doubt, or you're mischaracterizing his point, I'm reading his book as we speak) but I believe that a sufficiently advanced machine capable of outperforming the market given equatable conditions (same information availability and processing) would probably perform those functions with less resource efficiency, not to mention the resources to build a redundant machine we don't need. If you build one that is better by using more energy and resources to scale its capabilities up, well now you're not optimizing resources on the whole because you're dedicating some for this machine to exist and operate, the resources to build the machine and maintain operation are then distributed suboptimally. If a machine that uses the same net resources for this task and with equal capabilities could outperform the marketplace at efficiently distributing resources, and there are NP hard problems in personal finance, wouldn't that mean P=NP?

sudosysgen 5y ago
I'm on my phone right now, but there is a paper on the exact P=NP efficient market question. I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently. As for resources, us as a society already dedicate trillions of dollars a year to market planning - its called profits and capital gains, as well as the entire finance and real estate industry. As long as the planning system requires less than a trillion dollars a year to run even without being more efficient than the market at whichever cost function we choose it will be more efficient overall.
- betwixthewires 5y ago
  > I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently. That sounds to me like an ideological position, which is fine of course. But the question arises, if solving distribution problems requires a participant to solve NP hard problems as you've said (I'd appreciate a link to that paper whenever you can get around to it, I seriously do want to read it and am not just shouting "source", same goes for the distributed planning in anarchist planned economies we were discussing in another thread) then how would that not be true for a machine? Either the problem is NP hard or it isn't, regardless of what entity is trying to solve it.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    It's not an ideological position - I don't think that P=NP and I don't think that the Church-Turing hypothesis is false so I don't think that markets can solve NP problems efficiently and thus I don't think markets are efficient. NP-hard problems can be approximated. You get the machine to approximate a solution that is better than what the market could do or thereabouts.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      Why can't the market approximate NP problems at least as good as a central planning entity?
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. I don't think we can know without real world trials. But planning, whether central or not, has the crucial advantage that it is much more flexible. Beyond that, we don't even need to go fully into one extreme. The fact that it has to aproximate at all however completely invalidates Hayek's argument, which is why it is worthless - his assumptions beg the question. That being said, given the ability of incredibly rudimentary paper-and-pen, low tech planning systems where planning is basically a very difficult computer science problem to get within a third to a half of what markets can do, I think there is a solid shot that planning can outperform markets in the majority of industries, though perhaps for smaller industries a flexible hybrid will be more useful.

sudosysgen 5y ago

I'm on my phone right now, but there is a paper on the exact P=NP efficient market question. I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently. As for resources, us as a society already dedicate trillions of dollars a year to market planning - its called profits and capital gains, as well as the entire finance and real estate industry. As long as the planning system requires less than a trillion dollars a year to run even without being more efficient than the market at whichever cost function we choose it will be more efficient overall.

betwixthewires 5y ago
> I don't assume that planning an economy would require solving NP-hard problems to outperform the market because I am certain that the market itself cannot solve them efficiently. That sounds to me like an ideological position, which is fine of course. But the question arises, if solving distribution problems requires a participant to solve NP hard problems as you've said (I'd appreciate a link to that paper whenever you can get around to it, I seriously do want to read it and am not just shouting "source", same goes for the distributed planning in anarchist planned economies we were discussing in another thread) then how would that not be true for a machine? Either the problem is NP hard or it isn't, regardless of what entity is trying to solve it.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  It's not an ideological position - I don't think that P=NP and I don't think that the Church-Turing hypothesis is false so I don't think that markets can solve NP problems efficiently and thus I don't think markets are efficient. NP-hard problems can be approximated. You get the machine to approximate a solution that is better than what the market could do or thereabouts.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    Why can't the market approximate NP problems at least as good as a central planning entity?
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      Perhaps it can, perhaps it can't. I don't think we can know without real world trials. But planning, whether central or not, has the crucial advantage that it is much more flexible. Beyond that, we don't even need to go fully into one extreme. The fact that it has to aproximate at all however completely invalidates Hayek's argument, which is why it is worthless - his assumptions beg the question. That being said, given the ability of incredibly rudimentary paper-and-pen, low tech planning systems where planning is basically a very difficult computer science problem to get within a third to a half of what markets can do, I think there is a solid shot that planning can outperform markets in the majority of industries, though perhaps for smaller industries a flexible hybrid will be more useful.