Dakryn's Batshit Theory of the Week

[Dak]

Why can't it be natural/universal as well as emergent?

On a different topic:

I've argued in several places about the modern nature of warfare and that the key tactical concern is Air Defense/Air Supremacy. That the US (and by extension, NATO) cannot afford to go into places with anything close to a robust air defense. Looks like Russia agrees:



http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-28/syria-goes-hot-russia-deliver-weapons-deploys-air-defense-israel-warns-russia-obama-

Russia said on Tuesday that it would supply one of its most advanced anti-aircraft missiles to the Syrian government hours after the EU ended its arms embargo on the country's rebels, raising the prospect of a rapidly escalating proxy war in the region if peace talks fail in Geneva next month.

Israel quickly issued a thinly veiled warning that it would bomb the Russian S-300s if they were deployed in Syria as such a move would bring the advanced guided missiles within range of civilian and military planes in Israeli air space.

Russia's deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, argued that the delivery of the S-300 system had been previously agreed with the Syrian government in Damascus and would be a "stabilising factor" that could dissuade "some hotheads" from entering the conflict. That appeared to be a reference to the UK and France, who pushed through the lifting of the EU embargo on Monday night and are the only European countries currently considering arming the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The move by Moscow was criticised by the White House, which said arming the Syrian government did "not bring the country closer to the desired political transition" that it deserved.

 

[Einherjar86]

Emergent phenomena are contingent; the opposite of universal.

 

[Dak]

Economics is contingent on human action, which is contingent on humans.

 

[Einherjar86]

Which are contingent on other animals, microbes, inanimate matter, and the list goes on. Are you suggesting that humans are somehow universal?

 

[Dak]

That's not what I meant by universal. Everything in the universe is contingent on other things to some degree or another. Universal within context. Economic law is universal as it concerns economics.

 

[Einherjar86]

Then you can't universalize it. You're being hypocritical.

You claim that humans aren't universal, but the way in which humans interact with the world around them is. But that's universalizing; it claims that all humans will interact in the same way, always. This isn't the case.

"Economic law is universal as it concerns economics."

That's tautological, and says nothing about universality. You're taking specifics and extending them to generalities by universalizing them.

 

[Dak]

Tautology! That word has been eluding my memory recently.

Anyway, I think I see the issue. Humans do act the same in general ways. It is these generalities that concern economics. The individual details get into subjective valuations, which do not concern economic law in themselves.

Humans consume and produce. If two or more are together, they can exchange. They can also subjugate or otherwise defraud. These are the general terms which encompass economics that come to mind at the moment. Regardless of culture, time, and place, these are human constants, most especially consumption.

Economics doesn't predict individual human interaction so much as it predicts eventual, generalized outcomes.

 

[Dak]

This is kind of sort of relevant, in explaining subjective value and the role it plays.

Murphy: Austrian SVT

 

[Einherjar86]

Anyway, I think I see the issue. Humans do act the same in general ways. It is these generalities that concern economics. The individual details get into subjective valuations, which do not concern economic law in themselves.

Humans consume and produce. If two or more are together, they can exchange. They can also subjugate or otherwise defraud. These are the general terms which encompass economics that come to mind at the moment. Regardless of culture, time, and place, these are human constants, most especially consumption.

Economics doesn't predict individual human interaction so much as it predicts eventual, generalized outcomes.

You're right, economics concerns areas where humans act in similar general ways. The problem is that it then proceeds to universalize these generalities, an act which qualifies as all the following: restrictive, evaluative, and absolutist. This is where I can't wrap my mind around how economists can claim that the market is value-free. It is one of the most value-laden apparatuses in our culture today.

 

[Dak]

Not all economists are the same. There is quite a bit of difference between Austrians and the rest, and then lesser degrees of difference between Keynesians, Neo-Keynesians, Monaterists, and then Marxists, Neo-Marxists, etc.

Explaining action and outcomes does not necessitate assigning values. This is what is meant by value free. That those doing the describing and explaining have their own valuations of those outcomes is unavoidable. We understand to some degree what (C)ommunism looks like at it's "high point" (economic explanations deal in this), and have passed a valuating judgement on it. Someone else might find this outcome good even as others abhor it. Like Stalin for instance. Or for contrast, we know what modern day American Fascism looks like. There are plenty to defend it's "value", even as it simultaneously crushes and decays. Some find this crushing good, and cannot see the decay.

 

[Einherjar86]

Explaining action and outcomes does not necessitate assigning values. This is what is meant by value free. That those doing the describing and explaining have their own valuations of those outcomes is unavoidable.

This gives me pause.

It's as though you're trying to separate the action from the actor: "The act of explaining is value free, but the actor isn't." That's conceiving of a false dichotomy because without the actor there is no act (and the actor need not be human).

To me, it looks like any act of explanation or description is always laden with values, whether we detect them or not. We like to think of our very senses, our empirical instruments, as being value-free; but this isn't true either. Our senses, despite being the way we interact with the world, are bound up with the way we evaluate the world.

This really becomes evident when we look at how different cultures perceive the world differently. What this exposes is not some naïve plea for relativism, but the fact that our senses actively impact our value-judgments. Furthermore, and perhaps most startling, we're not even always in control of what our body can sense. Peter Watts writes:

The Human sensorium is remarkably easy to hack. Our eyes acquire such fragmentary input that the brain doesn't so much see the world as make an educated guess about it. "Improbable" stimuli, therefore, tend to go unprocessed at the conscious level. We simply ignore things that don't fit with our worldview.

Watts isn't even talking about subtle interpretive variations. He means that, in some cases, the brain actually erases certain physical objects from our sensory datastream if they don't fit with the expectations of the organism. Essentially, studies have shown that the very act of observing or describing cannot be separated from an evaluative starting point. See Yarbus's work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_L._Yarbus

The problem with conceiving of a "value-free" system like you do is that it requires us to be able to reduce everything to a pristine individual self that thereby has unlimited empirical access to the world around it. This simply isn't the case.

 

[Dak]

That sounds like an "imperfect information" critique. We never have all the information even if we didn't develop "blind spots". There is no morality assigned to the material desires, and none assigned to the materials themselves beyond what those respectively interested provide. An example, I think, of what you are talking about would be the argument over money "velocity". There's some truth to both sides but the ideology for the polemicist is too blinding.

 

[Einherjar86]

No, it's not really an imperfect information critique. There's no such thing as "all the information."

The point is that people always-already decide what's important to them, and thus can never describe a situation in a non-evaluative way. Take even two instances where, within a given context, the information is the same (or as controlled as possible): the portraits of Te Pehi Kupe.

Western portrait:

Self-portrait:

It has less to do with the given information and more to do with how different people, even different humans, choose to evaluate that information. The act of describing and explaining cannot be separated from the process of evaluation.

Finally, if it is partially an imperfect information critique, then who cares? I read theories of economics, especially human-action economics like praxeology as being dependent upon centered selves with uninhibited access to the world around them, and the ability to successfully judge that world. None of that settles well with me.

 

[Dak]

No, it's not really an imperfect information critique. There's no such thing as "all the information."

The point is that people always-already decide what's important to them, and thus can never describe a situation in a non-evaluative way. Take even two instances where, within a given context, the information is the same (or as controlled as possible): the portraits of Te Pehi Kupe.

Western portrait:

Self-portrait:

It has less to do with the given information and more to do with how different people, even different humans, choose to evaluate that information. The act of describing and explaining cannot be separated from the process of evaluation.

Correct, there is no such thing as "all the information", so any such critique is empty, unless it is of a claim that one does have all the information.

As far as the portrait: Economics is not art. The subjective valuation of what an artist wishes to see, or wishes his audience to see, is not the same thing. Whether or not any given economist is correct or incorrect about any given phenomenon, doesn't alter them anymore so than a portrait alters the thing.

Here's where value plays a part separately from the critique of "what will happen". It's generally agreed that increasing the money supply, ceteris paribus, will inflate prices. Austrians have a value judgement on this as bad. Keynesians and Monetarists see this as good and necessary, so long as it is "controlled". The reasonings behind these value judgements are obviously divergent past the basic principle, as well as what exactly constitutes inflating the money supply.

Finally, if it is partially an imperfect information critique, then who cares? I read theories of economics, especially human-action economics like praxeology as being dependent upon centered selves with uninhibited access to the world around them, and the ability to successfully judge that world. None of that settles well with me.

What does "successfully judging the world" and "uninhibited access" mean? Praxeology describes behavior both individually and interacting with others, it does not prescribe it. Prescriptions are value, or ethics based. IE "This is how people behave (descriptive) - If you want to prevent problems A/B/C, don't do X,Y,Z."(prescriptive).

If those problems aren't of concern, or you don't believe the prescription, you don't have to follow it. If it is true though, that won't make it any less potent.

 

[Einherjar86]

Correct, there is no such thing as "all the information", so any such critique is empty, unless it is of a claim that one does have all the information.

No, it's not empty. This goes back to the argument we just had on cognitive tricks. You need to stop turning arguments around back on themselves because this is misleading and fallacious.

My argument is that the information is not only never entirely given (imperfect information), but that the information that is given is always-already influenced by an actor's expectations and task-at-hand coming into a situation. Furthermore, the reason for making the imperfect information argument in the first place is that, as I said already, a methodology like praxeology relies on the possibility of a centrally acting self being able to successfully acquire all the information in a given scenario. Then, you proceeded to simply ignore what I'd already said. I'll address this below.

As far as the portrait: Economics is not art. The subjective valuation of what an artist wishes to see, or wishes his audience to see, is not the same thing. Whether or not any given economist is correct or incorrect about any given phenomenon, doesn't alter them anymore so than a portrait alters the thing.

Here's where value plays a part separately from the critique of "what will happen". It's generally agreed that increasing the money supply, ceteris paribus, will inflate prices. Austrians have a value judgement on this as bad. Keynesians and Monetarists see this as good and necessary, so long as it is "controlled". The reasonings behind these value judgements are obviously divergent past the basic principle, as well as what exactly constitutes inflating the money supply.

You make analogies all the time. Analogies are never the same as the thing we're talking about. That's why they're analogies.

Economics isn't art, but all I'm saying is that the descriptive approach, as you conceive it, is prior to any value judgments. You're wrong about that, and I'm using art in order to demonstrate that you can't separate description from prescription (to use your terms). Any observational act is automatically evaluative and prescriptive.

What does "successfully judging the world" and "uninhibited access" mean? Praxeology describes behavior both individually and interacting with others, it does not prescribe it. Prescriptions are value, or ethics based. IE "This is how people behave (descriptive) - If you want to prevent problems A/B/C, don't do X,Y,Z."(prescriptive).

If those problems aren't of concern, or you don't believe the prescription, you don't have to follow it. If it is true though, that won't make it any less potent.

The descriptive action is evaluative in and of itself. That's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't somehow evade evaluative judgment. You cannot separate them.

You obviously ignored what I've said because you're still trying to separate two things that are inseparable.

 

[Dak]

No, it's not empty. This goes back to the argument we just had on cognitive tricks. You need to stop turning arguments around back on themselves because this is misleading and fallacious.

I'm saying the argument doesn't apply except where it does. And that is not here. If I said "I have all the information about X", you could rightly respond that no one ever has all the information. But the "imperfect information" critique otherwise manifests as a handwave of the information that is in hand.

My argument is that the information is not only never entirely given (imperfect information), but that the information that is given is always-already influenced by an actor's expectations and task-at-hand coming into a situation. Furthermore, the reason for making the imperfect information argument in the first place is that, as I said already, a methodology like praxeology relies on the possibility of a centrally acting self being able to successfully acquire all the information in a given scenario. Then, you proceeded to simply ignore what I'd already said. I'll address this below.

It, or the actor(s) described, does/do not require perfect information, since it's descriptive of behavior acting always-already-under imperfect information. Even more to the point about the constant of imperfect information as it regards economic calculation, I do not "know what tomorrow may bring". I do not fully understand cause and effect. I am making more or less educated guesses about what will bring about my desired end. Conditions constantly change, both externally and internally. This is not a weakness of praxeology but a strength.

You make analogies all the time. Analogies are never the same as the thing we're talking about. That's why they're analogies.

Economics isn't art, but all I'm saying is that the descriptive approach, as you conceive it, is prior to any value judgments. You're wrong about that, and I'm using art in order to demonstrate that you can't separate description from prescription (to use your terms). Any observational act is automatically evaluative and prescriptive.

An observation is also prescriptive?

The descriptive action is evaluative in and of itself. That's what I'm trying to say. It doesn't somehow evade evaluative judgment. You cannot separate them.

You obviously ignored what I've said because you're still trying to separate two things that are inseparable.

There is a difference in "this is the color blue" vs "I like/don't like the color blue", although we might call them both evaluative. I don't know what would be a satisfactory distinction between these to you.

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm saying the argument doesn't apply except where it does. And that is not here. If I said "I have all the information about X", you could rightly respond that no one ever has all the information. But the "imperfect information" critique otherwise manifests as a handwave of the information that is in hand.

It, or the actor(s) described, does/do not require perfect information, since it's descriptive of behavior acting always-already-under imperfect information. Even more to the point about the constant of imperfect information as it regards economic calculation, I do not "know what tomorrow may bring". I do not fully understand cause and effect. I am making more or less educated guesses about what will bring about my desired end. Conditions constantly change, both externally and internally. This is not a weakness of praxeology but a strength.

I find this to be a misinterpretation of praxeology. But since you've read more on this than me, I'll take your word for it that it doesn't ask perfect information (or assume perfect information, and perfect empirical abilities) of its actors. Furthermore, I'll assume that praxeology can apply to non-human actors.

An observation is also prescriptive?

There is a difference in "this is the color blue" vs "I like/don't like the color blue", although we might call them both evaluative. I don't know what would be a satisfactory distinction between these to you.

Again, you're deploying misapplications and false dichotomies.

An observation is also prescriptive yes; because an observation does not entail that one must speak it. Observations and evaluations take place simultaneously; there is no separating them from each other. As soon as you notice that something is blue, you also have an awareness of whether you like blue or not.

Now, an evaluative statement such as "This is blue" is still evaluative because it relies on the very empirical instruments that formulate the way we evaluate the world. Our values derive from the perceptive senses that allow us to interpret the world around us. That these are inherently bound up with the way we automatically evaluate the world doesn't strike me as obscure and sketchy, but as obvious. Blue is an English word, it has an etymological history, it carries connotations (sad, boy, etc.) and denotations (sky, ocean, etc.), and none of these can be separated from the act of observation. For other cultures, maybe entirely different associations prevail. Either way, you can't viably make the claim that an act of observation is purely observational and non-evaluative.

 

[Dak]

I find this to be a misinterpretation of praxeology. But since you've read more on this than me, I'll take your word for it that it doesn't ask perfect information (or assume perfect information, and perfect empirical abilities) of its actors. Furthermore, I'll assume that praxeology can apply to non-human actors.

I suppose it could apply to non-human actions, but non-humans haven't really been much if at all in focus given the predicament of humans. Economics is quite anthropocentric.

The "knowledge problem" is the key problem facing monopolists, whether in business or government. It's also the problem getting the most money thrown at it, IE the surveillance state/economy. Whether it's the NSA, Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc, everything is getting filed away. Massive computers are also filtering and crunching data through algorithms to try and provide an ever closer reality to the owners of "perfect information". While perfect information itself might be quixotic, it's always possible to draw closer.

Again, you're deploying misapplications and false dichotomies.

An observation is also prescriptive yes; because an observation does not entail that one must speak it. Observations and evaluations take place simultaneously; there is no separating them from each other. As soon as you notice that something is blue, you also have an awareness of whether you like blue or not.

Now, an evaluative statement such as "This is blue" is still evaluative because it relies on the very empirical instruments that formulate the way we evaluate the world. Our values derive from the perceptive senses that allow us to interpret the world around us. That these are inherently bound up with the way we automatically evaluate the world doesn't strike me as obscure and sketchy, but as obvious. Blue is an English word, it has an etymological history, it carries connotations (sad, boy, etc.) and denotations (sky, ocean, etc.), and none of these can be separated from the act of observation. For other cultures, maybe entirely different associations prevail. Either way, you can't viably make the claim that an act of observation is purely observational and non-evaluative.

Even though they may happen simultaneously, can we not distinguish them? If I ask you if you would like a blue shirt and you tell me "it's a blue shirt", you didn't answer the question. We do separate these things as we act and interact.

 

[Einherjar86]

For argumentative purposes, I think we can distinguish them.

In practical human existence, I don't think we can; certain critical methodologies like deconstruction maintain the distinction, but only so that they can expose the ephemeral nature of these concepts. Language is bound up with human organisms, so using examples of linguistic expressions doesn't make the point. In order for those statements to actually make your point, you would need to successfully separate them from any human participation or action whatsoever.

While it may be possible to separate such statements from human iteration, you're still presenting them as linguistic statements. That, in and of itself, constitutes an excess of value purely in their etymological structures and histories.

 

[Jimmy... Dead.]

I agree with a lot of what you said. There is a good amount of anthropocentrism of an almost teleological nature in his article. It's a dangerous middle ground he treads, in my opinion; I like to see more skepticism. In truth, consciousness isn't all that evolutionarily valuable. It's more convincing, in my opinion, that consciousness performs logical "cognitive tricks" in order to virtually appropriate the world to our senses. An extreme argument might even put forth that consciousness involves an intense form of fetishism of its own relation to the natural world (which, in turn, would partially explain concepts such as "god."

I think the author would agree with you. Now, consciousness as a form of fetishism... that's a REALLY interesting idea. Do you have any goodies you can share on that?