Pragmatarian Discussion Thread

[Auze]

All I found on Pragmatarianism was a blog and a few posts by Xero on other sites
https://medium.com/@Amplify/ok-maybe-pragmatarianism-is-a-terrible-idea-aeafbadac3ac
http://pragmatarianism.blogspot.com/
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/jQogtd4TJAqX4cNRm/is-pragmatarianism-tax-choice-less-wrong
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?474048-Tax-Choice-Pragmatarianism-Calling-Xerographica

[Astrolinium]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?474048-Tax-Choice-Pragmatarianism-Calling-Xerographica

Good god, he's been doing this to other people too?

[Alvecia]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?474048-Tax-Choice-Pragmatarianism-Calling-Xerographica

Good god, he's been doing this to other people too?

With just as little success if that thread is anything to go by.

[Auze]

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?474048-Tax-Choice-Pragmatarianism-Calling-Xerographica

Good god, he's been doing this to other people too?

The medium.com link is an entire article written by him.
It is terrifying.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Good god, he's been doing this to other people too?

The medium.com link is an entire article written by him.
It is terrifying.

It basically reads "Okay, I am wrong, but you see guys I'm actually right because by you sabotaging my system is essentially means you are following my system!"

At that point you aren't even trying, you're just believing in a delusion.

[San Macalin]

Strange as it might seem, right now I'm the only person preaching the benefits of DV. Does this mean that I'm the only person in the world who truly understands what markets are good for? I guess. I'm the only person in this boat. Either I'm in the wrong boat, or everybody else is. I'd really hate to be in the wrong boat so please, if you think that I am, then I'm all ears. Make the case that some producers, such as pro-market bloggers, should be exempt from receiving specific and substantial feedback from consumers. Or make the case that cheap signals are just as credible as costly signals.

[Infected Mushroom]

So under this pragmatarian system... can I spend money to fuck over people who have screwed with me in the past?

Yes?

No?

[Galloism]

So under this pragmatarian system... can I spend money to fuck over people who have screwed with me in the past?

Yes?

No?

Yes.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

So under this pragmatarian system... can I spend money to fuck over people who have screwed with me in the past?

Yes?

No?

Yes.

Great, now we have to pragmatarians. Thanks Gallo.

[Galloism]

Yes.

Great, now we have to pragmatarians. Thanks Gallo.

/shrug

His threads demonstrate that people behave in an economically irrational manner just to fuck over peoples' experiments. It's a true statement.

EDIT: I should say, rational to them, which may have nothing to do with the result of the experiment except to the extent it breaks it.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Strange as it might seem, right now I'm the only person preaching the benefits of DV. Does this mean that I'm the only person in the world who truly understands what markets are good for? I guess. I'm the only person in this boat. Either I'm in the wrong boat, or everybody else is. I'd really hate to be in the wrong boat so please, if you think that I am, then I'm all ears. Make the case that some producers, such as pro-market bloggers, should be exempt from receiving specific and substantial feedback from consumers. Or make the case that cheap signals are just as credible as costly signals.

The fact that we did just that and he cannot grasp it is hilarious.

[Trumptonium1]

To anyone with any idea of public policy or public economics, tax choice is literally cancer.

Even small cases of tax choice (Italian otto per mille) are an utter fucking disaster.

[Kubra]

I have something for you. Here, polish my spear.

The spear's from an actual myth, The Iliad by Homer.

and it's quite big, polishing it would take all night.

[Infected Mushroom]

So under this pragmatarian system... can I spend money to fuck over people who have screwed with me in the past?

Yes?

No?

Yes.

Really?

Then sign me up

[Galloism]

https://medium.com/@Amplify/ok-maybe-pragmatarianism-is-a-terrible-idea-aeafbadac3ac

As a matter of economics, this completely blew me away:

Should you have the freedom to boycott bad ideas? If you don’t think that you should have this freedom… then prove it by spending $100 dollars to promote the tax choice page on facebook. If you do so, then I will believe that you really do not want the freedom to boycott bad ideas. If you don’t do so, then I will believe that you really enjoy and appreciate and respect the freedom to boycott bad ideas.

I'm going to prove something is a bad idea by promoting it? That's not how any of this works.

[Galloism]

Yes.

Really?

Then sign me up

Well it happened already. Two "experiments" of Xero's blew up because people were fucking with the experiment.

Or put another way, they put their money where their mouth is to prove that Xero's pragmatarianism idea is fucking stupid. If you REALLY believe the idea, then you should discard it based on the amount of money people spent to prove it stupid. This is doubly so since Xero didn't spend the money to prove it good.

[Infected Mushroom]

Really?

Then sign me up

Well it happened already. Two "experiments" of Xero's blew up because people were fucking with the experiment.

Or put another way, they put their money where their mouth is to prove that Xero's pragmatarianism idea is fucking stupid. If you REALLY believe the idea, then you should discard it based on the amount of money people spent to prove it stupid. This is doubly so since Xero didn't spend the money to prove it good.

But didn’t he donate in some least 2 of the experiments?

[Galloism]

Well it happened already. Two "experiments" of Xero's blew up because people were fucking with the experiment.

Or put another way, they put their money where their mouth is to prove that Xero's pragmatarianism idea is fucking stupid. If you REALLY believe the idea, then you should discard it based on the amount of money people spent to prove it stupid. This is doubly so since Xero didn't spend the money to prove it good.

But didn’t he donate in some least 2 of the experiments?

Yep, but he didn't donate enough to actually win, which means, by his own claim, he should cede the field.

He refuses to do so, even based on his own word, of course. It's a very dishonorable course of action.

[Vectrova]

so how long before these threads go on autolock for spam

[Soldati Senza Confini]

But didn’t he donate in some least 2 of the experiments?

Yep, but he didn't donate enough to actually win, which means, by his own claim, he should cede the field.

He refuses to do so, even based on his own word, of course. It's a very dishonorable course of action.

I love his questioning as to whether or not I would put my money on a political theory I don't value to fuck with him.

I decided to rebuff him as I know what he's going to do to me, the same thing he tried to do to me in the last thread. He was going to force me to vote for pragmatarianism with that money, because after all I am just in to fuck with his test so why not just throw my money away into Pragmatarianism since I don't value the ideology I am going to choose anyways?

And that's a slimy way to get what you want. He's fucking desperate and I can tell as much.

[Xerographica]

Today on Andrew Gelman's blog I found this... When does the quest for beauty lead science astray? Thanks to that entry, I found this...

I am not tenured and I do not have a tenure-track position, so not like someone threatened me. I presently have a temporary contract which will run out next year. What I should be doing right now is applying for faculty positions. Now imagine you work at some institution which has a group in my research area. Everyone is happily producing papers in record numbers, but I go around and say this is a waste of money. Would you give me a job? You probably wouldn’t. I probably wouldn’t give me a job either. - Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math: Out Now

I have never been an easy fit to academia. I guess I was hoping I’d grow into it, but with time my fit has only become more uneasy. At some point I simply concluded I have had enough of this nonsense. I don’t want to be associated with a community which wastes tax-money because its practitioners think they are morally and intellectually so superior that they cannot possibly be affected by cognitive biases. You only have to read the comments on this blog to witness the origin of the problem, as with commenters who work in the field laughing off the idea that their objectivity can possibly be affected by working in echo-chambers. - Sabine Hossenfelder, Lost in Math: Out Now

I sent her an e-mail...

Thanks to Andrew Gelman's blog, I learned of and read your blog entry about the release of your new book. The relative importance of books is determined by buyers. The relative importance of scholarly papers is determined by voters. The relative importance of non-profits is determined by donors.

Is it possible that buyers, voters and donors are equally effective at ranking things by usefulness? The crazy thing is, the relative effectiveness of different ranking systems has never been formally tested by science. What makes this even crazier is that it's not like such a test would be very expensive. It definitely wouldn't be necessary to spend $5 billion dollars to build a particle accelerator.

Here are some cat photos ranked by donors. How differently would voters rank the photos?

Last year the libertarian party gave donors the opportunity to rank potential convention themes...

$6,327.00 — I’m That Libertarian!
$5,200.00 — Building Bridges, Not Walls
$1,620.00 — Pro Choice on Everything
$1,377.77 — Empowering the Individual
$395.00 — The Power of Principle
$150.00 — Future of Freedom
$135.00 — Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness
$105.00 — Rise of the Libertarians
$75.00 — Free Lives Matter
$42.00 — Be Me, Be Free
$17.76 — Make Taxation Theft Again
$15.42 — Taxation is Theft
$15.00 — Jazzed About Liberty
$15.00 — All of Your Freedoms, All of the Time
$5.00 — Am I Being Detained!
$5.00 — Liberty Here and Now

How differently would voters have ranked the themes?

Your blog has 1744 entries. That's a lot of entries! They definitely aren't equally useful. Naturally it would be very useful for your entries to be ranked by usefulness. How differently would donors and voters rank your entries? Is a crowd of voters wiser than a crowd of donors?

Personally, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to physics. I'm far more knowledgeable about economics. But did you know that Adam Smith wrote a 100 page essay about the history of astronomy? I read and enjoyed the entire thing. Smith's work on economics was heavily influenced by Newton. Newton wrote something about a divine hand helping to order heavenly bodies, while Smith wrote about an invisible hand helping to order human bodies. The order of things must be very fundamental.

So why don't we currently know whether voters or donors are better at ordering things? It's because economics was led astray by math. The primary perpetrator was Paul Samuelson. He was like a drunk guy searching for his keys under a street light. His focus on mathematical models resulted in his failure to see the big picture.

The reason why it's so easy to overlook important things is because all our perspectives are very limited. However, our perspectives aren't equally limited, which is why it's so incredibly useful to have access to the group's perspective. But it's a basic fact that voting and donating aren't equally effective at accurately revealing the group's perspective.

My hypothesis is that donating is much better than voting at revealing the group's perspective. If this is correct, it means that donors are better than voters at ranking things. All that's needed is a real scientist willing to test my hypothesis. Are you willing to conduct this experiment? If so, it would easily be the most important experiment ever conducted. It would either creatively destroy markets or democracy.

A couple months ago I read this article and made this comment...

If demand isn't revealed, for example by restricted contributions, then how do we ensure that what academia supplies is truly relevant to the public's needs? Academia is currently based on the premise that the relevance of the supply doesn't directly depend on the demand actually being seen and known. This premise of academia blatantly contradicts the very premise of markets. In theory, this incredible incoherence won't continue to exist indefinitely. Big and blatant double standards seriously irritate the best and brightest minds.

Have you heard of Bryan Caplan? He's an economist who recently wrote a book (an educational product) making the case that most educational products are useless...

Cutting fat from the curriculum. Anyone who scrutinizes modern schools with a mildly cynical eye witnesses piles of material students are laughably unlikely to use in adulthood. The fat emerges in kindergarten: history, social studies, art, music, foreign language. By high school, as we've seen, students spend at least half their time on fat. In college, many majors are made of fat: think history, communications, or "interdisciplinary studies." About 40% of graduates earn degrees in comically - or tragicomically - useless subjects. Even the hardest majors burn ample time on high theory and breadth requirements. - Bryan Caplan, The Case against Education

I agree with him that most educational products are useless, but I strongly disagree that it should be solely up to him to decide for everyone which products are useless. In theory, donors and/or taxpayers should have the opportunity to use their money to help rank educational products by usefulness.

Caplan recently interviewed Nassim Taleb who said...

In other words, the carpenter has feedback from his clients, or her clients, whereas a macroeconomist only has feedback from Paul Krugman...

A while back I ran across this relevant passage...

Economists are free from the market forces they study. They're shielded by the tenure system and general lack of "pay for performance" in academia. Worse, when performance is recognized, it's based on publication in journals targeted only at others in their profession... economists inhabit a separate world with its own language, hierarchy, rules, and customs. In their insular environment, bureaucracies, not markets, determine winners and losers. Schools continue to teach theories even after they're proven wrong, and there's nothing to stop them. - Daniel Nevins, Economics for Independent Thinkers

Nobody should be exempt from feedback. It's just a matter of determining the optimal feedback mechanism. Here's the most useful passage from the most useful book...

It is thus that the private interests and passions of individuals naturally dispose them to turn their stocks towards the employments which in ordinary cases are most advantageous to the society. But if from this natural preference they should turn too much of it towards those employments, the fall of profit in them and the rise of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution. Without any intervention of law, therefore, the private interests and passions of men naturally lead them to divide and distribute the stock of every society among all the different employments carried on in it as nearly as possible in the proportion which is most agreeable to the interest of the whole society.  — Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations

Getting the balance right depends on everyone's spending signals. At least in theory. Like I said, the fact that this theory hasn't been formally tested is crazy. Hopefully you agree!

[Soldati Senza Confini]

You know, it's sad to see that Andrew actually has a good point and Xero is the prime example of it outside of academia.

[Galloism]

Personally, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to physics. I'm far more knowledgeable about economics.

Dear sweet merciful God.

My hypothesis is that donating is much better than voting at revealing the group's perspective.

How has that worked out so far on the experiments you've run? Come on Xero, you can admit the truth. How well have your experiments worked in revealing the group's perspective for best book?

All that's needed is a real scientist willing to test my hypothesis. Are you willing to conduct this experiment? If so, it would easily be the most important experiment ever conducted. It would either creatively destroy markets or democracy.

That's a patently silly conclusion, but at least you're on the right track trying to get someone to actually study it.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Xero, your knowledge about economics extends only so far as it involves twisted parodies of economic concepts.

You sound worse than a high school student who has taken economics.

[Xerographica]

I don't think you know all the benefits of the postmaster general badge...

- Remove ads
- Trophy for your nation page
- Lasts forever
- Permanently reserve nation name
- Gain warm, fuzzy feeling of supporting NationStates
- Create custom folders
- Hold an unlimited number of Telegrams
- Includes 500 Telegram Stamps

All of this for $10 dollars?! But wait! If you order now...

What more could you want? Seriously. Would you want a signed digital copy of one of Max Barry's books? Would you want a forum just for postmaster generals? Would you want your username to be a cool different color? I know that red means moderator. What does green mean? What if postmaster generals had blue usernames?

Here are a couple members...

maqo
neanderthaland

Did you even notice that they weren't around?

Neanderthaland is still around.

If you click the link, the page says, "The nation "neanderthaland" does not exist." Shouldn't somebody e-mail him and tell him to come back? If he doesn't want to, then shouldn't we have some sort of virtual ceremony to mourn our loss?