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I'm not encouraged by statements like this: "There is nothing inherently more scientific about using an ordinal rather than a cardinal quantity to describe an e

I'm not encouraged by statements like this: "There is nothing inherently more scientific about using an ordinal rather than a cardinal quantity to describe an economic construct. Chemists' free energy, or the force required to maintain the pressure differential of a vacuum, are cardinal measures of constructs as invisible as utility and with a much stronger claim to validity as 'science'." Utility is ordinal not out of some deep desire on the part of economists to "appear scientific" but because it reflects a simple empirical fact about humans. "Utility" is a measure of value to someone, and human values are ordinal: I value my children more than my cats, and no number of cats will ever equal the value of my children. It would be incoherent and wrong to say I value my children ten times more than my cats, and no cardinal relationship between them could possibly represent reality. This is not mysterious or esoteric. The ordinality of human values is what makes rational choice under uncertainty such a difficult problem, because we can't compute expected values from ordinals (unless there happens to be a market in the things we value, in which case we can get cardinality through prices... but there is no market in children or many other things we value.) By making it sound like economist's interest in publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference--which is what the discipline of science actually is--is some kind of inexplicable fetish instead of a perfectly reasonable goal for anyone who wants to say anything meaningful or interesting about the world, the author does everyone a great disservice.

RockyMcNuts 11y ago
I believe Von Neumann showed that any consistent ordinal utility can be mapped to a cardinal utility. As long as you can rank your preferences, for cats, children, or whatever, you can come up with an equivalent cardinal utility. So I think Waldman's statement is technically correct, the two are equivalent, and one isn't more scientific than the other. There is this notion that it's bad form to say, a rich person gets less marginal utility out of a dollar than a poor person, or sum up utilities across people. And it's bad form to quantify the value of a human life for instance. You can, however, say the rich person values leisure at more dollars than the poor person. If you could sum up utilities across people I'm sure it would lead one to very bad conclusions, unlike some of the other simplifications economists make, which only lead to useful conclusions. <cough> Actually, I'm not really certain what it would change, if anything. In any event it would appear that humans aren't very consistent with their preferences, c.f. behavioral economics, hence the notion of utility may lead one astray whether one views it as an ordinal ranking or cardinal quantity.
crdoconnor 11y ago
>Utility is ordinal not out of some deep desire on the part of economists to "appear scientific" but because it reflects a simple empirical fact about humans. "Utility" is a measure of value to someone, and human values are ordinal: I value my children more than my cats, and no number of cats will ever equal the value of my children. Utility is a bullshit non-measurement that is defined self-referentially. It's not better than phlogiston.

RockyMcNuts 11y ago

I believe Von Neumann showed that any consistent ordinal utility can be mapped to a cardinal utility. As long as you can rank your preferences, for cats, children, or whatever, you can come up with an equivalent cardinal utility. So I think Waldman's statement is technically correct, the two are equivalent, and one isn't more scientific than the other. There is this notion that it's bad form to say, a rich person gets less marginal utility out of a dollar than a poor person, or sum up utilities across people. And it's bad form to quantify the value of a human life for instance. You can, however, say the rich person values leisure at more dollars than the poor person. If you could sum up utilities across people I'm sure it would lead one to very bad conclusions, unlike some of the other simplifications economists make, which only lead to useful conclusions. <cough> Actually, I'm not really certain what it would change, if anything. In any event it would appear that humans aren't very consistent with their preferences, c.f. behavioral economics, hence the notion of utility may lead one astray whether one views it as an ordinal ranking or cardinal quantity.

crdoconnor 11y ago

>Utility is ordinal not out of some deep desire on the part of economists to "appear scientific" but because it reflects a simple empirical fact about humans. "Utility" is a measure of value to someone, and human values are ordinal: I value my children more than my cats, and no number of cats will ever equal the value of my children. Utility is a bullshit non-measurement that is defined self-referentially. It's not better than phlogiston.