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It means, in this context, "the first word of the technical term 'ideal money' which Flinter has been using, and which I am hoping at some point he will give us his actual definition of".
Ideal, the standard definition, means implies that it is conceptual.
You began by saying this:
I would like to suggest, as a blanket observation and proposal, that most of these difficult problems described, especially on a site like this, are easily solvable with the introduction of an objective and ultra-stable metric for valuation.
which, as I said at the time, looks at least as much like "There is such a metric" as like "Let's explore the consequences of having such a metric". Then later you said "It converges on money" (not, e.g., "it and money converge on a single coherent metric of value"). Then when asked whether you were saying that Nash has actually found an incorruptible measure of value, you said yes.
Yes he did and he explains it perfectly. And its a device, I introduced into the dialogue and showed how it is to be properly used.
I appreciate that when asked explicitly whether such a thing exists you say no. But you don't seem to be taking any steps to avoid giving the impression that it's already around.
It's conceptual in nature.
Nope. But you introduced this whole business in the context of AI value alignment, and the possible relevance of your (interpretation of Nash's) proposal to the Less Wrong community rests partly on its applicability to that sort of problem.
Yup we'll get to that.
I'm here discussing this stuff with you. I am not (so far as I am aware) ignoring anything you say. What exactly is your objection? That I didn't, as soon as you mentioned John Nash, go off and spend a week studying his thoughts on this matter before responding to you? I have read the Nash lecture you linked, and also his earlier paper on Ideal Money published in the Southern Economic Journal. What do you think I am ignoring, and why do you think I am ignoring it?
Nope, those are past sentiments, my new ones are I appreciate the dialogue.
But your question is an odd one. It seems to be asking, more or less, "How dare you have interests and priorities that differ from mine?". I hope it's clear that that question isn't actually the sort that deserves an answer.
Yes but its a product of never actual entering sincere dialogue with intelligent players on the topic of Ideal Money so I have to be sharp when we are not addressing it and instead addressing complex subject, AI, in relation to Ideal Money but before understanding Ideal Money (which is FAR more difficult to understand than AI).
I think I understand the nature of money OK, but I'm not sure I understand what you are saying about it. "A money"? Do you mean a currency, or do you mean a monetary valuation of a good, or something else? What is "the general market", in a world where there are lots and lots of different markets, many of which use different currencies? In the language I speak, "propriety" mostly means "the quality of being proper" which seems obviously not to be your meaning. It also (much less commonly) means "ownership", which seems a more likely meaning, but I'm not sure what it actually means to say "money is ownership". Would you care to clarify?
Why aren't you using generally accepted definitions?
the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals. the details or rules of behavior conventionally considered to be correct. the condition of being right, appropriate, or fitting.
Yes money can mean many things, but if we thing of the purpose of it and how and why it exists it is effectively that thing which we all generally agree on. If one or two people play a different game that doesn't invalidate the money. Money serves a purpose that involves all of us supporting it through unwritten social contract. There is nothing else that serves that purpose better. It is the nature of money.
It seems to me entirely different from your earlier statements to which I was replying. Perhaps everything will become clearer when you explain more carefully what you mean by "A money is chosen by the general market, it is propriety".
Money is the general accepted form of exchange. There is nothing here to investigate, its a simple statement.
Clearly our difficulties of communication run both ways. I have told you neither of those things. I like money a great deal, and while indeed not everyone uses it (there are, I think, some societies around that don't use money) it's close enough to universally used for most purposes. (Though not everyone uses the same money, of course.)
Yes.
I genuinely don't see how to get from anything I have said to "you don't like money therefore not everyone uses it".
Money has the quality that it is levated by our collective need for an objective value metric. But if I say "our" and someone says "well you are wrong because not EVERYONE uses money" then I won't engage with them because they are being dumb.
I think, again, some clarification is called for. When you spoke of "converging on money", you surely didn't just mean that (almost) everyone uses money. The claim I thought you were making, in context, was something like this: "If we imagine people getting smarter and more rational without limit, their value systems will necessarily converge to a particular limit, and that limit is money." (Which, in turn, I take to mean something like this: to decide which of X and Y is better, compute their prices and compare numerically.) It wasn't clear at the time what sort of "money" you meant, but you said explicitly that the results are knowable and had been found by John Nash. All of this goes much, much further than saying that we all use money, and further than saying that we have (or might in the future hope to have) a consistent set of prices for tradeable goods.
We all converge to money and to use a single money, it is the nature of the universe. It is obvious money will bridge us with AI and help us interact. And yes this convergence will be such that we will solve all complex problems with it, but we need it to be stable to begin to do that.
So in the future, you will do what money tells you. You won't say, I'm going to do something that doesn't procure much money, because it will be the irrational thing to do.
It would be very helpful if you would say clearly and explicitly what you mean by saying that values "converge on money".
Does everyone believe in Christianity? Does everyone converge on it? Does everyone converge on their beliefs in the after life?
No but the nature of money is such that its the one thing we all agree on. Again telling me no we don't just shows you are stupid. This is an obvious point, it is the purpose of money, and I'm not continuing on this path of dialogue because its asinine.
I mentioned my own attitudes not in order to say "I am a counterexample, therefore your universal generalization is false" but to say "I am a counterexample, and I see no reason to think I am vastly atypical, therefore your universal generalization is probably badly false". I apologize if that wasn't clear enough.
Yes you live in a reality in which you don't acknowledge money, and I am supposed to believe that. You don't use money, you don't get paid in money, you don't buy things with money, you don't save money. And I am supposed to think you are intelligent for pretending this?
We all agree on money, it is the thing we all converge on. Here is the accepted definition of converge:
tend to meet at a point. approximate in the sum of its terms toward a definite limit.
Because it leaves the market participants with no basis for valuation. Every time they find one there is pressure for self interested actors to corrupt it. And also it doesn't matter, if I don't give an argument then the suggestion is still that competition will tend the currencies towards ideal.
Gold money means that the VALUE is relatively stable (relative to other options) in comparison to Ideal Money (which is money comparable to an optimally chosen basket of stable global commodity prices). We have never had that option, other than gold that Nash explains failed for reasons, and is not a good idea to re-instate for reasons.
Also the governments heavily restrict our ability seek better alternatives.
As general feed back: On Less Wrong we actually tend to have pretty thick skins, so it doesn't bother me too much when you call me stupid. It only makes you look bad.
Calling you stupid is a short cut. I know it doesn't hurt you, and I don't care if I look bad. I bring content that is truth.
Despite Isaac Newton's obviously superior intellect, I see no reason to drop what I'm doing and become an occultist.
I know but the thing is that Newton was an alchemist too, and their famous endeavor is to effectively turn math into gold, which I am claiming has been achieved now. Also in Ideal Money Nash notes Newton pegged the pound to gold as/when he was master of the mint.
Likewise, I will defer to Nash on the particulars of abstract Game Theory, but see no strong reason to accept claims beyond his domain of expertise. I suggest you stop insulting people and stop ostentatiously worshiping John Nash, and I make this suggestion because it's inhibiting your ability to communicate in general, not because it particularly effects me one way or the other.
People are insulting us, and I am not worshiping him just because I am pointing out his logic here is obviously infallible. And it is not intelligent to say you defer to him on game theory and not Ideal Money. His discovery was Ideal Money all along. The others proofs and insights are artifacts of him trying to express Ideal Money. Ideal Money is what he spent his whole life on. Its the big problem he solved and all his works is related and an expression of that.
If the currency defines what is economically correct, and but does not perfectly capture human value, then human value will not be preserved when the AI tries to optimize for the parameter defined by the currency.
I don't know what you mean to say. In the future humans will get paid the most for contributing the most value to society (and at the same time pursing their own selfish interests). AI will do the same. The prices will tell us what to do. AI won't corrupt that because its obviously optimal and it is smarter than us.
If there is any way of manipulating an objective function, an AI will try to do that in order to conserve resources while still maximizing its objectives. If there is any way of manipulating the currency -- for example, hacking into whatever global database defines the value of the currency and literally changing the numbers -- the AI will do that. This will almost always be easier for the AI, and the AI will have no inclination to follow the "spirit rather than the letter" of its programming.
No you cannot manipulate ideal money because its conceptual. You are being silly. Also when Nash was a kid he sent a letter to the NSA explaining a conjecture for unbreakeable encryption. AI can't hack bitcoin. The encryptor always wins.
Its not my proposal.
The answer to your questions is too big. There is an intrinsic problem with our gobal financial system. Essentially the triffin dilemma. Governments, because self interested, cannot act for the good of the citizens. It is the nature of the problem.
Nash proposes the introduction of a "good" money, but it is good not in the conventional sense, but rather the "gold" sense (which again he defines because not many understand).
With the introduction of this international "gold money", there is now a new stage set or game created. Governments now have to respond to the fact that citizens can CHOOSE, and so the markets start to (let's say) "hyper-reflect the quality of our money.
The ultimate result is a limit towards what Nash calls Ideal Money, which is money comparable to an optimally chosen and adjusted basket of industrial commodity prices.
…although that scheme for arranging for a system of money with ideal qualities would work well…it would be politically difficult to arrive at the implementation of such a system.
…for the government of a state, acting on its own independently of other states, to rationally contemplate the evolution of the inflation rate for its currency towards zero there are clearly some very relevant considerations relating to tax revenue expectations.
I think of the possibility that a good sort of international currency might EVOLVE before the time when an official establishment might occur.
To be quite respectable, in a Gresham-advised sense, money needs only to be AS GOOD as other material commod-ities that might be hoarded. Starting with the idea of value stabilization in relation to a domestic price index associated with the territory of one state, beyond that there is the natural and logical concept of internationally based comparisons.
The currencies being compared, like now the euro, the dollar, the yen, the pound, the swiss franc, the swedish kronor, etc. can be viewed with critical eyes by their users and by those who maybe have the option of whether or not or how to use one of them. This can lead to pressure for good quality and consequently for a lessened rate of inflationary deprecation in value.
And so the various currencies managed with “inflation targeting” would be comparable by users or observers who would be able to form opinions about the quality of the currencies. And what I want to suggest is that “the public” or the users, those for whom a medium of exchange functions as a basic utility, may develop opinions that are critical of currencies of lower “value quality”. That is, the public may learn to demand better quality of that which CAN be managed to be of better quality or which can be manged to be lof the lower quality observed in so many of the various national currencies in the 20th century.
“Keynesian” players in this game have natural opponents (or co-players, beyond zero-sum perspectives) who are interested in not being themselves “outsmarted” by those who control the options that determine, say, the quantity supplied of the national currency.
"Depending on how things were fundamentally arranged" is doing an implausible amount of work in that quote. Depending on how the atoms in my desk are fundamentally arranged, my desk may be a fully general nanoassembler, but the scientific and engineering work needed to turn my desk into a nanoassembler hasn't been done.
Firstly you are calling Nash dumb, which is stupid and ignorant. Do you think maybe you don't understand what he is saying and especially WHY he is saying?
2ndly you are not using the standard accepted definition of the word Ideal: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_defintion_for_the_word_ideal/
Also, why do you think it is so unlikely that the value of the standard kilogram could be corrupted by the actions of politicians? It is improbable but not impossible. In fact, the definition of the "standard units" has evolved over time.
Are you seriously addressing me as if I wrote Nash's Ideal Money? Listen, Nash isn't dumb, he explains how the standard units evolved over time and he is making fun of your for not considering a unit of value could do the same. He also explains how the standard unit of value needs to be adjusted over time.
economists figure out a way of defining a standard portfolio of commodities that is inherently resilient against technological change, global disasters, market fluctuations, Soros-esque currency manipulation, and
Nash perfectly defined it, don't be silly.
some entity implements this scheme in such a way that the standard is perfectly immune to institutional corruption, and
Yes Ideal Money is immune (so is bitcoin I might add)
assuming the prior two (extremely difficult and maybe impossible) objectives have been accomplished, we further assume that, at the moment we turn on an AI, all knowledge potentially relevant to human value has already been in some sense encoded in this magical currency,
Your assumption AI won't also evolve into existence is asinine.
... then this might have a shot of working.
Would you dare say that to Nash, that his idea MIGHT work? I don't believe you, because no one had the guts to say when he was alive. You don't look tough here, you look like a coward for this.
However, if there is any chance at all of the system that defines the currency being manipulated in any way, shape, or form, it's pretty likely that a superintelligent AI will just manipulate the currency such that the most "economically correct" actions happen to coincide with the actions that are simplest and most certain, and in about three steps you have a paperclip maximizer.
No this is silly and irrational. If Nash showed that the levation of ideal money is the intelligent thing to do, then why would and AI corrupt the process considering its smarter than us? You are afraid of technological advance. Any intelligent life form, knows AI is the first goal of a level 1 civilization.
AI will just manipulate the currency such that the most "economically correct"
The currency itself defines what is economically correct. You are misunderstanding the nature of money and the problem it solves. The AI cannot do what you are saying because its not logical.
The problem happens when we approach the economy from the question of "how do we design the best money" Money arose NATURALLY to solve a problem mankind couldn't solve with design and intuition. The (most significant) problem it solves is provided and objective basis for value, but it doesn't perfectly solve it, there are still intrinsic problems, paradoxes, and dilemmas.
The problem is how to optimize our economy, not how to create an ideal money.
What we are looking for is a stable metric, not an optimized money, it is simply that some people feel money and provide this metric. However, over our history money of any form has never remained stable.
Only ideal money, or money comparable to it, can be stable and properly solve this problem
Keynesian money doesn't even attempt to address the problem, it doesn't understand the problem.
Yes it is isn't it. It is also widely criticized. What Nash explains is that Keynesianism is simply an advance opaque form of bolshevik communism. It's an excuse to sell the public bad money under the label "good" money". Nash explains that we can view it as it has a missing axiom:
I think there is a good analogy to mathematical theories like, for example, “class field theory”. In mathematics a set of axioms can be taken as a foundation and then an area for theoretical study is brought into being. For example, if one set of axioms is specified and accepted we have the theory of rings while if another set of axioms is the foundation we have the theory of Moufang loops.
So, from a critical point of view, the theory of macro-economics of the Keynesians is like the theory of plane geometry without the axiom of Euclid that was classically called the “parallel postulate”. (It is an interesting fact in the history of science that there was a time, before the nineteenth century, when mathematicians were speculating that this axiom or postulate was not necessary, that it should be derivable from the others.
So I feel that the macroeconomics of the Keynesians is comparable to a scientific study of a mathematical area which is carried out with an insufficient set of axioms. And the result is analogous to the situation in plane geometry, the plane does not need to be really flat and the area within a circle can expand hyperbolically as a function of the radius rather than merely with the square of the radius. (This picture suggests the pattern of inflation that can result in a country, over extended time periods, when there is continually a certain amount of gradual inflation.)
The axiom is effectively that our currency system should be arranged for a different result:
The missing axiom is simply an accepted axiom that the money being put into circulation by the central authorities should be so handled as to maintain, over long terms of time, a stable value.
People (these days) are trying to postulate and theorize about how we can idealize our money, or in other words, how can we design the perfect money. Nash (and Hayek) points out that perfect money is FREE from such design, and so its actually an logical absurd pursuit.
This is what Keynesians are doing with the argument "There is no better way but clear and admitted sanity".
Nash proposes a money: " …intrinsically free of “inflationary decadence”..a true “gold standard”, but the proposed basis for that was not the proposal of a linkage to gold"
But it is not by design per se.
He says everyone is Keynesians even post-Keynesians, can we understand that?
Also James Miller. I got in trouble from the community for saying that its silly that a game theory professor could never have heard of 20 years of Nash's works, especially his lifes passion, that is wholly and perfectly related to game theory. Do you think thats wrong of me to suggest?
OK. Would you care to help me understand correctly, or are you more interested in telling me how stupid I am?
There is no possible modification I could make to my definition of "ideal" that would make any difference to my understanding of your use of the phrase "ideal money". I have already explained this twice.
Existing merely as an image in the mind:
An ideal is a concept or standard of perfection, existing merely as an image in the mind, or based upon a person or upon conduct: We admire the high ideals of a religious person
I think you erred saying there is no possible modification.
Er, what? No, I haven't (more accurately, hadn't) heard of it because no one mentioned it to me before. Is that difficult to understand?
Yes and you are going to suggest we are not ignoring Nash, but we are.
Nash is not being ignored here. "Ideal money" has not been a topic of conversation here before, so far as I can recall. If your evidence that Nash is "ignored" here is that we have not been talking about "ideal money", you should consider two other hypotheses: (1) that the LW community is interested in Nash but not in "ideal money" and (2) that the LW community is interested in Nash but happens not to have come across "ideal money" before. I think #2 is probably the actual explanation, however preposterous you may find it that anyone would read anything about Nash and not know about your pet topic.
Yes and in the future everyone is going to laugh at you all for claiming and pretending to be smart, and pretending to honor Nash, when the reality is, Nash spanked you all.
(I think I already mentioned that Nasar's book about Nash doesn't see fit to mention "ideal money" in its index. It's a popular biography rather than an academic study, and the index may not perfectly reflect the text, but I think this is sufficient to show that it's possible for a reasonable person to look quite deeply at Nash's life and not come to the conclusion that "ideal money" is "the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life".)
Yup she ignored his life's work, his greatest passion, and if you watch his interviews he thinks its hilarious.
The person who removed your earlier post has already explained that what he was actually saying about Hayek was not "Hayek is better than Nash" but "please don't think I'm removing this because I dislike the ideas; I am a fan of Hayek and these ideas of Nash's resemble Hayek's". This is more or less the exact opposite of your characterization of what happened.
No, it will be shown they thought it was an inconsequential move because they felt Nash's Ideal Money was insignificant. It was a subjective play.
Its too difficult to cut to, because the nature of this problem is such that we all have incredibly cognitive bias towards not understanding it or seeing it.
After painting the picture of what Ideal Money, Nash explains the intrinsic difficulties of bringing it about. Then he comes up with the concept of "asymptotically ideal money":
The idea seems paradoxical, but by speaking of “inflation targeting” these responsible official are effectively CONFESSING…that it is indeed after all possible to control inflation by controlling the supply of money (as if by limiting the amount of individual “prints” that could be made of a work of art being produced as “prints).~Ideal Money
M. Friedman acquired fame through teaching the linkage between the supply of money and, effectively, its value. In retrospect it seems as if elementary, but Friedman was as if a teacher who re-taught to American economists the classical concept of the “law of supply and demand”, this in connection with money.
Nash explains the parameters of gold in regard to why we have historically valued it, he is methodical, and he also explains golds weaknesses in this context.
Ideal Money is an enthymeme. But Nash speak FAR beyond the advent of an international e-currency with a stably issued supply.
You think Nash didn't think of "political uncertainty" and "political corruptibility"?
While you rad these quotes:
I think of the possibility that a good sort of international currency might EVOLVE before the time when an official establishment might occur.
…my personal view is that a practical global money might most favorably evolve through the development first of a few regional currencies of truly good quality. And then the “integration” or “coordination” of those into a global currency would become just a technical problem. (Here I am thinking of a politically neutral form of a technological utility rather than of a money which might, for example, be used to exert pressures in a conflict situation comparable to “the cold war”.)
Here, evidently, politicians in control of the authority behind standards could corrupt the continuity of a good standard, but depending on how things were fundamentally arranged, the probabilities of serious damage through political corruption might becomes as small as the probabilities that the values of the standard meter and kilogram will be corrupted through the actions of politicians.~Ideal Money
We have to seek to understand him.
This is a cool idea but far from perfect.
Do you think that because you haven't wholly understood Nash that it is appropriate to tell him that he is wrong and his idea has a flaw? I think you judged it and made your conclusion too fast.
You figure that is the extent of John Nash's argument he spent 20 years defining for us? And you just defeat it in a sentence:
But don't we already have a global currency market?
Do you know who John Nash is? He is the guy that it took 40 years for us to recognize the significance of his works. Do you think maybe the significance has simply gone over your head?
You know what, your cynical attitude is telling of your intelligence. There is an intro thread and the mod that did it admits it publicly. Its not my word, its the mods and it would be strange to me if you didn't believe them.
No you don't.
I wonder what my failure in communicating my idea is in this case. Let me rephrase my argument in favor of filtering and see if I can get my point across: if we eliminated the filter, the site would be inundated with spam and fake accounts posts. By having a filter we block all this, and people willing to pass a small threshold will not be denied to post their contributions.
Let me communicate to you what I am saying. I bring the most important writing ever known to mankind. Who is the mod that moderated Nash? Where is the intelligence in that? Let's not call that intelligence and try and defend it. Let's call it an error.
In due time, I will.
Cheers! :)
That is unfortunate, but you must be prepared to make these discussions on the lon run. There are people that come here only once a week or only once every three months. A day can be enough to filter out the most visceral reactions, but here discussions can span days, weeks or years.
Do you think I am not prepared? I have been at this for about 4 years I think. I have writing 100's maybe thousands of related articles and been on many many forums and sites discussing it and "arguing" with many many people.
I am reading it right now, and exactly because it's Nash I'm reading as careful as I can.
Ah, sincerity!!!!!!!
But what won't fly here is insulting. Frustration for not being able to communicate your idea is something that we all felt, after all communicating clearly is hard. But if you let yourself below a certain standard of respect, you will be moderated and possibly even banned. That would allow you to communicate your idea even less.
I have been insulted by nearly every poster that has responded. The mod insulted me, and Nash. I have never been more insulted so quick so much on any other site.
But if you let yourself below a certain standard of respect, you will be moderated and possibly even banned. That would allow you to communicate your idea even less.
Yup ban the messenger and ignore the message. Why would these people remain ignorant to Nash? How did Nash go 20 years without anyone giving his lectures serious thought?
Right but you subtly back handedly agree its a necessary component of AI. If you come back to say "Sure but its not necessarily the ONLY missing component" I will think of you dumb.
He was also running around saying that he was Pope John XXIII because 23 was his favourite prime number. And refusing academic positions which would have given him a much better platform for advocating currency reform (had he wanted to do that) on the basis that he was already scheduled to start working as Emperor of Antarctica. And saying he was communicating with aliens from outer space.
No you aren't going to tell Nash how he could have brought about Ideal Money. In regard to, for example, communicating with aliens, again you are being wholly ignorant. Consider this (from Ideal Money):
We of Terra could be taught how to have ideal monetary systems if wise and benevolent extraterrestrials were to take us in hand and administer our national money systems analogously to how the British recently administered the currency of Hong Kong.~Ideal Money
See? He has been "communicating" with aliens. He was using his brain to think beyond not just nations and continents but worlds. "What would it be like for outside observers?" Is he not allowed to ask these questions? Do we not find it useful to think about how extraterrestrials would have an effect on a certain problem like our currency systems? And you call this "crazy"? Why can't Nash make theories based on civilizations external to ours without you calling him crazy?
See, he was being logical, but people like you can't understand him.
Of course that doesn't mean that everything he did was done for crazy reasons. But it does mean that the fact that he said or did something at this time is not any sort of evidence that it makes sense.
This is the most sick (ill) paragraph I have traversed in a long time. You have said "Nash was saying crazy things, so he was sick, therefore the things he was saying were crazy, and so we have to talk them with a grain of salt.
Nash birthed modern complexity theory at that time and did many other amazing things when he was "sick". He also recovered from his mental illness not because of medication but by willing himself so. These are accepted points in his bio. He says he started to reject politically orientated thinking and return to a more logical basis (in other words he realized running around telling everyone he is a god isn't helping any argument).
Could you point me to more information about the reasons he gave for leaving the US and trying to renounce his citizenship? I had a look in Nasar's book, which is the only thing about Nash I have on my shelves, and (1) there is no index entry for "ideal money" (the concept may crop up but not be indexed, of course) and (2) its account of Nash's time in Geneva and Paris is rather vague about why he wanted to renounce his citizenship (and indeed about why he was brought back to the US).
"I emerged from a time of mental illness, or what is generally called mental illness..."
"...you could say I grew out of it."
Those are relevant quotes otherwise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zb6_PZxxA0 12:40 it starts but he explains about the francs at 13:27 "When I did become disturbed I changed my money into swiss francs.
There is another interview he explains that the us navy took him back in chains, can't recall the video.
Let me then repeat my question. What do you expect to happen to the values of those "global commodities" in the presence of an AI whose capabilities are superhuman enough to make value alignment an urgent issue? Suppose the commodities include (say) gold, Intel CPUs and cars, and the AI finds an energy-efficient way to make gold, designs some novel kind of quantum computing device that does what the Intel chips do but a million times faster, and figures out quantum gravity and uses it to invent a teleportation machine that works via wormholes? How are prices based on a basket of gold, CPUs and cars going to remain stable in that kind of situation?
You are messing up (badly) the accepted definition of ideal. Nonetheless Nash deals with your concerns:
We can see that times could change, especially if a “miracle energy source” were found, and thus if a good ICPI is constructed, it should not be expected to be valid as initially defined for all eternity. It would instead be appropriate for it to be regularly readjusted depending on how the patterns of international trade would actually evolve.
Here, evidently, politicians in control of the authority behind standards could corrupt the continuity of a good standard, but depending on how things were fundamentally arranged, the probabilities of serious damage through political corruption might becomes as small as the probabilities that the values of the standard meter and kilogram will be corrupted through the actions of politicians.~Ideal Money
.
[EDITED to add:] Having read a bit more about Nash's proposal, it looks as if he had in mind minerals rather than manufactured goods; so gold might be on the list but probably not CPUs or cars. The point stands, and indeed Nash explicitly said that gold on its own wasn't a good choice because of possible fluctuations in availability. I suggest that if we are talking about scenarios of rapid technological change, anything may change availability rapidly; and if we're talking about scenarios of rapid technological change driven by a super-capable AI, that availability change may be under the AI's control. None of this is good if we're trying to use "ideal money" thus defined as a basis for the AI's values.
No he gets more explicate tho and so something like cpu's etc. would be sort of reasonable (but I think probably better to look at the underlying commodities used for these things). For example:
Moreover, commodities with easily and reliably calculable prices are most suitable, and relatively stable prices are very desirable. Another basic cost that could be used would be a standard transportation cost, the cost of shipping a unit quantity of something over long international distances.
(Of course it may be that no such drastic thing ever happens, either because fundamental physical laws prevent it or because we aren't able to make an AI smart enough. But this is one of the situations people worried about AI value alignment are worried about, and the history of science and technology isn't exactly short of new technologies that would have looked miraculous before the relevant discoveries were made.)
Yes, we are simultaneously saying the super smart thing to do would be to have ideal money (ie money comparable to an optimally chosen basket of industrial commodity prices), while also worry a super smart entity wouldn't support the smart action. It's clear fud.
Or: suppose instead that the AI is superhumanly good at predicting and manipulating markets. (This strikes me as an extremely likely thing for people to try to make AIs do, and also a rather likely early step for a superintelligent but not yet superpowered AI trying to increase its influence.) How confident are you that the easiest way to achieve some goal expressed in terms of values cashed out in "ideal money" won't be to manipulate the markets to change the correspondence between "ideal money" and other things in the world?
Ideal money is not corruptible. Your definition of ideal is not accepted as standard.
But what you quoted him as saying he wanted was not (so far as I can tell) the same thing as you are now saying he wanted. We are agreed that Nash thought "ideal money" could be a universal means of valuing oil and bricks and computers. (With the caveat that I haven't read anything like everything he said and wrote about this, and what I have read isn't perfectly clear; so to some extent I'm taking your word for it.) But what I haven't yet seen any sign of is that Nash thought "ideal money" could also be a universal means of valuing internal subjective things (e.g., contentment) or interpersonal things not readily turned into liquid markets (e.g., sincere declarations of love) or, in short, anything not readily traded on zero-overhead negligible-latency infinitely-liquid markets.
I might ask if you think such things could be quantified WITHOUT a standard basis for value? I mean its strawmany. Nash has an incredible proposal with a very long and intricate argument, but you are stuck arguing MY extrapolation, without understanding the underlying base argument by Nash. Gotta walk first, "What IS Ideal Money?"
I have (quite deliberately) not been assuming any particular definition of "ideal"; I have been taking "ideal money" as a term of art whose meaning I have attempted to infer from what you've said about it and what I've seen of Nash's words. Of course I may have misunderstood, but not by using the wrong definition of "ideal" because I have not been assuming that "ideal money" = "money that is ideal in any more general sense".
Yes this is a mistake, and its an amazing one to see from everyone. Thank you for at least partially addressing his work.
As I have just said elsewhere in our discussion, I am not using any definition of the word "ideal". I may of course have misunderstood what you mean by "ideal money", but if so it is not because I am assuming it means "money which is ideal" according to any more general meaning of "ideal".
Ya you misunderstood. And you still haven't double checked your definition of ideal. Are you sure its correct?
I have so far seen nothing that convinces me that he intended any such implication. In any case, of course the relevant question is not what Nash thought about it but what's actually true; even someone as clever as Nash can be wrong (as e.g. he probably was when he thought he was the Pope) so we could do with some actual arguments and evidence on this score rather than just an appeal to authority.
Ya you are a smart person that can completely ignore the argument posed by Nash but can still kinda sorta backhandedly show that he is wrong, without risking your persona....you are a clever arguer aren't you?
That depends on what you omitted. For instance, if the person who removed your post gave you a cogent explanation of why and it ended with some jokey remark that "personally I always preferred Hayek anyway", it would be grossly misleading to say what you did (which gives the impression that "Hayek > Nash" was the mod's reason for removing your post).
It is the reason, and you would call it grossly misleading. Let's find the significance of Nash's work, and then it will be obvious the mod moderated me because of their own (admitted) ignorance.
I do not know who removed your post (for that matter I have only your word that anything was removed, though for the avoidance of doubt I would bet heavily that you aren't lying about that) but my impression is that on the whole the LW community is more favourably disposed towards Nash than towards Hayek. Not that that should matter. In any case: I'm sorry if this is too blunt, but I flatly disbelieve your implication that your post was removed because a moderator prefers Hayek to Nash, and I gravely doubt that it was removed with a given reason that a reasonable person other than you would interpret as being because the moderator prefers Hayek to Nash.
So are stuck in trying to win arguments which is the root reason why you haven't even heard of the main body of work that Nash was working on nearly his whole life. You are ignorant to the entire purpose of his career and thesis to his works. It's an advanced straw man to continue to suggest a mod wouldn't mod me the way I said, and not to address Nash's works.
Nash is not favored over Hayek, Nash is being ignored here, the most significance work he has produced nobody here even knows existed (if you find one person that heard of it hear, do you think that would prove me wrong?).
Ignorance towards Nash, is the reason the mod moved my thread, unsurprisingly they came to the public thread to say Hayek > Nash...You don't know, but that is a theme among many players in regard to their theories on economics and money...but the Hayek's are simply ignorant and wrong. And they haven't traversed Nash's works.
To the first set of paragraphs...ie:
But if you try to start the same discussion by saying or implying that there is such a currency
If I start by saying there IS such a currency? What does "ideal" mean to you? I think you aren't using the standard definition: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_defintion_for_the_word_ideal/
But it looks to me as if something like the stronger claim I treated you as making is actually needed for "ideal money" to be any kind of solution to AI value alignment problems.
I did not come here to specifically make claims in regard to AI. What does it mean to ignore Nash's works, his argument, and the general concept of what Ideal Money is...and then to say that my delivery and argument is weak in regard to AI?
And what you said before was definitely that we do all agree on money, but now you seem to have retreated to the weaker claim that we will or we might or we would in a suitably abstracted world or something.
No you have not understood the nature of money. A money is chosen by the general market, it is propriety. This is what I mean to say in this regard, no more, no less. To tell me you don't like money therefore not "everyone" uses it is petty and simply perpetuating conflict.
There is nothing to argue about in regard to pointing out that we converge on it, in the sense that we all socially agree to it. If you want to show that I am wrong by saying that you specifically don't, or one , or two people, then you are not interesting in dialogue you are being petty and silly.
Yup thx! There are a few lectures by him that have varying points. There are also MANY versions of "Ideal Money", some slight different, others that are wholly different.
How is it going to calculate such things with out a metric for valuation?
If that's what we would have available, then I think FAI would be mostly solved.
Yes so you are seeing the significance of Nash's proposal, but you don't believe he is that smart, who is that on?
Well, since it's an automated process, it filters anything, be it spam, Nash' argument or the words of Omega itself. As I said, it's a compromise. The best we could come up, so far. If you have a better solution, spell it out.
You are defending irrationality. It filters out the one thing it needs to not filter out. A better solution would be to eliminate it.
No, mine was just a suggestion for a way that would allow you to lubricate the social friction I think you're experiencing here. On the other side, I am reading your posts carefully and reply when done thinking about.
Sigh, I guess we never will address Ideal Money will we. I've already spent all day with like 10 posters, that refuse to do anything but attack my character. Not surprising since the subject was insta-mod'd anyways.
Well, as a last hail mary, I just want to say I think you are dumb for purposefully trolling me like this and refusing to address Nash's proposal. Its John Nash, and he spent his life on this proposal, ya'll won't even read it.
There is no intelligence here, just pompous robots avoiding real truth.
Do you know who Nash is? It took 40 years the first time to acknowledge what he did with his equilibrium work. Its been 20 in regard to Ideal Money...
The context is "Ideal Money". When I am asking if we have a shared meaning, I am asking if we agree on what the standard definition for the word is. For someone to say "Ideal Money doesn't exist" is to not use the standard definition of the word Ideal.
I have already discussed Ideal Money with people on this forum that have made this error.
That is the context of this thread. But this thread was a sub point to the main thread, the main thread was moderated away, so no one saw it and so this thread doesn't make sense, because the context was taken from me.
Thank you. No see. Ideal means "conceptual". But you are probably unaware of the importance of pointing this out because the mod took away my ability to put it all together.
Ideal, example, model refer to something considered as a standard to strive toward or something considered worthy of imitation. An ideal is a concept or standard of perfection, existing merely as an image in the mind, or based upon a person or upon conduct: We admire the high ideals of a religious person.
People are arguing Nash Ideal Money can't exist; they don't understand the meaning of ideal. Might you quickly skim through this thread to understand exactly what I am saying: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/ogp/a_proposal_for_a_simpler_solution_to_all_these/
Its a quick skim, you'll figure it out.
If it filters out Nash's argument, Ideal Money, then it makes no sense and is completely irrational for it.
Think about what you are saying, its ridiculous.
Are you also unwilling to discuss the content, and simply are stuck on my posting methods, writing, and character?
Yup but that ruins my first post cause I wanted it to be something specific. So what you are effectively saying is I have to make a sh!t post first, and I think that is irrational. I came here to bring value not be filtered from doing so.
Cheers!
You are not using the standard accepted definition of the word ideal, please look it up, and or create a shared meaning with me.
"Nothing in the lecture you linked to a transcript of makes the extremely strong claim you are making, that we should use "ideal money" as a measure for literally all human values."
This is a founded extrapolation of mine and an implication of his.
Yes the mod said Hayek > Nash and its not a joke its a prevailing ignorant attitude, by those that read Hayek but won't read and address Nash.
It's not significant if I omitted something, I was told it was effectively petty (my words) but it isn't. It's significant because John Nash said so.
First of all, we will all do better without the hectoring tone. But yes, I was ignorant of this. There is scarcely any limit to the things I don't know about. However, nothing I have read about Nash suggests to me that it's correct to describe "ideal money" as "his life's work".
He lectured and wrote on the topic for the last 20 years of his life, and it is something he had been developing in his 30's
You are not helping your case here. He was, at this point, suffering pretty badly from schizophrenia. And so far as I can tell, the reasons he himself gave for leaving the US were nothing to do with the quality of US and Swiss money.
Yes he was running around saying the governments are colluding against the people and he was going to be their savior. In Ideal Money he explains how the Keyneisan view of economics is comparable to bolshevik communism. These are facts and they show that he never abandoned his views when he was "schizophrenic", and that they are in fact based on rational thinking. And yes it is his own admission that this is why he fled the US and denounced his citizenship.
Let me see if I've understood this right. You want a currency pegged to some basket of goods ("global commodities", as you put it), which you will call "ideal money". You then want to convert everything to money according to the prices set by a perfectly efficient infinitely liquid market, even though no such market has ever existed and no market at all is ever likely to exist for many of the things people actually care about. And you think this is a suitable foundation for the values of an AI, as a response to people who worry about the values of an AI whose vastly superhuman intellect will enable it to transform our world beyond all recognition.
What exactly do you expect to happen to the values of those "global commodities" in the presence of such an AI?
Yup exactly, and we are to create AI that basis its decisions on optimizing value in relation to procuring what would effectively be "ideal money"
But nothing in what you quote does any such thing.
I don't need to do anything to show Nash made such a proposal of a unit of value expect quote him saying it is his intention. I don't need to put the unit in your hand.
It may be important to you that I do so, but right now I have other priorities. Maybe tomorrow.
It's simply and quick, your definition of ideal is not inline with the standard definition. Google it.
Here are two summaries one long one short:
https://thewealthofchips.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/the-totality-of-the-proposal-ideal-money/
The quickest way to understand Nash's proposal is through these two threads:
This first link introduces the concept of a stable metric for value and starts to show how it could be used to solve many complex problems (especially ones discussed on this forum):
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogp/a_proposal_for_a_simpler_solution_to_all_these/
This thread questions our shared meaning of ideal, if we have one, and if we can have one:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_definition_for_the_word_ideal/
Given time, markets reach equilibria related to the wants of the participants. Sure. So far as I know, there are no guarantees on how long they will take to do so (and, e.g., if you're comparing finding market equilibria with solving chess, the sort of market setup you'd need to contrive to get something equivalent to solving chess surely will take a long time to converge, precisely because finding the optimum would be equivalent to solving chess; in the real world, what would presumably actually happen is that the market would settle down to something very much not equivalent to actually solving chess, and maybe a few hedge funds with superpowered computers and rooms full of PhDs would extract a little extra money from it every now and then); and there are any number of possible equilibria related to the wants of the participants.
Thats where poker is relevant. Firstly I am not speaking to reality, that is your implication. I spoke about a hypothetical future from an asymptotic limit. In regard to poker I have redesigned the industry to foster a future environment in which the players act like a market that brute force solve the game. The missing element from chess, or axiom in regard to poker, is that it should be arranged so players can accurately asses who the skilled players are. So we are saying theoretically it COULD be solved this way, and not speaking to how reality will unfold (yet).
Well, we could cut out anything from the dialogue. But you can't make bits of human values go away just by not talking about them, and the fact is that lots of things humans value are not practically reducible to money, and probably never will be.
I will show this isn't wholly true but I cannot do it before understanding Nash's proposal together, therefore I cannot speak to it atm.
That ... isn't quite how human relationships generally work. But, be that as it may, I'm still not seeing a market here that's capable of assigning meaningful prices to love or even to concrete manifestations of love. I mean, when something is both a monopoly and a monopsony, you haven't really got much of a market.
Some as the above, I can't speak to this intelligibly yet.
I don't know why you aren't. I'm not because I have only a hazy idea what it is (and in fact I am skeptical that what he was trying to do was such a metric),
Yes it was:
The metric system does not work because french chefs de cuisine are constantly cooking up new and delicious culinary creations which the rest of the world then follows imitatively. Rather, it works because it is something invented on a scientific basis…Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.~Ideal Money
Its exactly his proposal.
and because it's only after much conversation that you've made it explicit that your proposal is intended to be exactly Nash's proposal (if indeed it is). Was I supposed to read your mind? Regrettably, that is not among my abilities
Perhaps there is some history here of which I'm unaware; I have no idea what you're referring to. I haven't generally found that the moderators here zap things just out of spite, and if something you posted got "buried" I'm guessing there was a reason.
Yes exactly the mod messed up our dialogue, you weren't properly introduced, but the introduction was written, and moderated away. The mod said Hayek > Nash
It was irrational.
I'm not sure what your objection actually is. If someone comes along and says "I have a solution to the problems in the Middle East. Let us first of all suppose that Israel is located in Western Europe and that all Jews and Arabs have converted to Christianity" then it is perfectly in order to say no, those things aren't actually true, and there's little point discussing what would follow if they were. If you are seriously claiming that money provides a solution to what previously looked like difficult value-alignment problems because everyone agrees on how much money everything is worth, then this is about as obviously untrue as our hypothetical diplomat's premise. I expect you aren't actually saying quite that; perhaps at some point you will clarify just what you are saying.
Yes exactly. You want to say because the premise is silly or not reality then it cannot be useful. That is wholly untrue and I think I recall reading an article here about this. Can we not use premises that lead to useful conclusions that don't rely on the premise? You have no basis for denying that we can. I know this. Can I ask you if we share the definition of ideal: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_definition_for_the_word_ideal/
I don't see much sign that humanity is "evolving rationally", at least not if that's meant to mean that we're somehow approaching perfect rationality. (It's not even clear what that means without infinite computational resources, which there's also no reason to think we're approaching; in fact, there are fundamental physical reasons to think we can't be.)
Yes because you don't know that our rationality is tied to the quality of our money in the Nashian sense, or in other words if our money is stable in relation to an objective metric for value then we become (by definition of some objective truth) more rational. I can't make this point though, without Nash's works.
If you are not interested in explaining how you reach your conclusions, then I am not interested in talking to you. Please let me know whether you are or not, and if not then I can stop wasting my time.
Yes I am in the process of it, and you might likely be near understanding, but it takes a moment to present and the mod took my legs out.
You are doing a good job of giving the impression that you are. There is certainly nothing resembling a consensus across "society" that money answers all questions of value.
No that is not what I said or how I said it. Money exists because we need to all agree on the value of something in order to have efficiency in the markets. To say "I don't agree with the American dollar" doesn't change that.
Yup. Firstly you fully admit that you are, previous to my entry, ignorant to Nash's lifes work. What he spoke of and wrote of for 20 years country to country. It is what he fled the US about when he was younger, to exchange his USD for the Swiss franc because it was of superior quality, and in which the US navy tracked him down and took him back in chains (this is accepted not conspiracy).
Nash absolutely defined an incorruptible basis for valuation and most people have it labeled as an "icpi" industrial price consumption index. It is effectively an aggregate of stable prices across the global commodities, and it can be said if our money were pegged to it then it would be effectively perfectly stable over time. And of course it would need to be adjusted which means it is politically corruptible, but Nash's actual proposal solves for this too:
…my personal view is that a practical global money might most favorably evolve through the development first of a few regional currencies of truly good quality. And then the “integration” or “coordination” of those into a global currency would become just a technical problem. (Here I am thinking of a politically neutral form of a technological utility rather than of a money which might, for example, be used to exert pressures in a conflict situation comparable to “the cold war”.)
Our view is that if it is viewed scientifically and rationally (which is psychologically difficult!) that money should have the function of a standard of measurement and thus that it should become comparable to the watt or the hour or a degree of temperature.~All quotes are from Ideal Money
Ideal Money is an incorruptible basis for value.
Now it is important you attend to this thread, its quick, very quick: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ogt/do_we_share_a_definition_for_the_word_ideal/
I haven't had a chance yet, but it's now on my list. I am digging into Keynesian Economics and Revealed preference theory at the moment.
Nash explains how Keynesian is just another form of failed communism. He explains even post-Keynesians are just Keynesians (alluding to the fact that he is thinking FAR beyond anyone even just emerging crypto currencies. He explains how a revolution will end the Keynesian ero of central banking.
More importantly you said we aren't being ignorant to Nash, and I showed that you are and still assert we all are. He did something significant with his whole life and stored it in 8 pages. I read more than 8 pages of links from you alone I think ;)
I hope so, but just to be clear it's best to state your premises. Especially when presenting your information.
My premise is well stated. The introduction of an objective stable unit of value. But the mod moderated my presentation out of existence.
Nash was a mathematician, I would love to see the easiest explanation to understand that you have.
He was much more than that, and the mod removed the explanation! It involves two thread that still exist that I made today though, one on how to solve every problem on this forum, and another that discusses the shared meaning of ideal. Read those and that is the best explanation ever.
Main is currently closed. As a matter of retirement, it's mostly inactive. And is reserved for posts that both excel in ideas and clear presentation of those ideas to a wide audience. If I were to drop a link to the homepage of wikipedia and suggest all folks need to read it, that would be of little help to anyone, and would not make it to main.
Nash's works Ideal Money obviously belongs there. Don't be irrational.
Yes its related. But I come from a wildly different perspective in which you are unknowingly making assumptions that I don't subscribe too.
What does it mean to you, if instead of creating goals that might (likely) be desires that are eventually contradicted as such by our actions, we create goals that are inline with our actions?
So we change our desires to match our actions rather than our actions to match our desires.
The link was broken, and I don't mind them, I expected it, and I think they are useful, I certainly skim them and re-read them if I don't feel I got the point.
You are underestimating the time and effort I have put into all this. Years. And I really appreciate it but you see its such a difficult concept and so deep to traverse that it needs to be presented in a certain way. And its not rational for you to make the assumption that your help would taint the presentation (especially cause it would)
Nash was a brilliant gift to humanity.
You have no idea what he did, no clue. You don't know anything about him. No one does. He spent his whole life on this problem of Ideal Money and 20 years explaining the solution.
Why will no one read and address his works?
Cheers!
Thank you. Yes I expected it did. But these days tapping out in martial arts implies win/loss. I am happy to see the definition here doesn't imply that, but at the same time there seems to be a need to imply "im not saying you won but I am tapping", which is still different than I teach.
My students look for equilibrium positions and so there is never a purposeful ends. They don't seek ends through conflict they seek re-solution through inquiry.
I have read many posts from here and look forward to reading more. But I will be sad if I can't engage because we all lose a lot of value, and on my first real post I was warned I would be banned if I continue and I'm not sure what I am to avoid (or why we can't have a thread/discussion about 20 years of Nash's works that no one is talking about).
K I skimmed that and I think I can speak to us in a re-solving manner. System 1 yes, that is easy to see relates. But system 2, does this involve projection of the future? I don't think it is necessary, even for complex tasks. I think projection gets in the way of efficiency of the action.
This speaks to goals as well. So I might not prove goals are wrong and bad, but I can suggest that there can be friction such as "Oh no, I'm not achieving my goals" and this friction is "bad".
Now of course if you are thinking of achievement X (which is a clear projection of a future event btw), then not setting a goal and missing X might seem "bad".
But how is it, one has claimed they want X, but then they do something else, and somehow still state they wanted X?
I am suggesting wanting X is a fallacy. There is no substance to it, and so setting goals for these arbitrary ends (x )creates a friction with what actually happens.
But I am also suggesting that people that are free from such friction live incredibly efficient existences.
John Nash won a nobel prize for game theory. No one ignored him. He's a great mathematician and economist, they made a movie about his life. The whole community mourned when he died in a car accident. No one is ignoring him.
He spoke for 20 years and wrote for that time on the subject Ideal Money that he had been developing his whole life. He toured country to country proposing his idea. Have you head of it, because you just stated you aren't ignoring him and neither is the community. Do you understand his argument/proposal and what are you doing about the significance of it?
edit: (also btw what he was given prizes for was just components and sub-solutions contained within his bigger proposal Ideal Money)
Battles over definitions are interesting, and I would encourage you to become familiar with 37 ways that words can be wrong before challenging definitions.
There is nothing to battle over. I will be using all commonly accepted definitions. But I am particularly interested in whether or not we share the same definition for "ideal", which is not a challenge or battle.
This is a very bold claim, and would require very confident evidence to back it up. I am certainly not saying no, but the burden of proof is on you to explain why it matters so greatly to be world changing. Please feel free to put together a thesis which describes that.
I have such a thesis' but why would you ask for mine and not attend to Nash's in order to judge the truth of it? That is irrational.
Again a bold claim, no one is censoring any body of work and if we did it would still be on Wikipedia, or free to talk about it elsewhere (as with the general avoidance of politics)
Yes my thread on it was removed and the mod explained they favor Hayek over Nash which is a clear indication of such bias. If they thought Nash's proposal had merit and was rational then we would be having dialogue in the main forum like it belongs or AT LEAST in the discussion section.
Thanks, cheers!
Perfect thanks. I teach Ju Jitsu (which people ascribe to an integral part of mma) with no tapouts: https://steemit.com/mma/@jokerpravis/extending-bjj-with-no-tap-outs-the-end-of-conflict-and-competition
It is similar to what you linked, that its not that I won and Tiff conceited defeat, but there that is a risk of exhaustion or injury or some certain discomfort they wish to avoid.
I think though they weren't at all speaking to me or my argument or my situation and they tired themselves out and also were to scared to actually address the topic of Nash's Ideal Money.
This happens in Ju Jitus too even with "no tap outs" when the person is not conserving energy properly (and therefore not utilizing it efficiently).
Nope you spoke perfect, and a great introduction too (cheers). But there is an argument that goals are wholly irrational. So how I would make a counterpoint to you would be to suggest that you don't have to think and plan to catch a baseball that someone unexpectedly but lightly tossed to you.
So there is still function without such pre planning, and I am suggesting that type of function I describe is rational and pre planning (aka goals) is not, because it presupposes we can control our own fate (by psychologically projecting a future) which is unfounded.
If, in fact, no objective metric for value exists, then there is something false about it
I doubt it is accepted logic to suggest a premise is intrinsically false.
.>If, less dramatically, your preferred candidate for an objective metric doesn't exist (or, perhaps better, exists but doesn't have the properties required of such a metric) and we have no good way of telling whether some other objective metric exists, then there's something unsatisfactory about it even if not quite "false" (though in that case, indeed, it might be reasonable to say "let's suppose there is, and see what follows").
Yes this. I will make it satisfactory, in a jiffy.
Ah, now that's a different claim altogether. Our most objective versus actually objective. Unfortunately, the latter is what we need.
No we need both. They are both useful, and I present both, in the context of what is useful (and therefore wanted).
The first part, kinda but only kinda. The second, not so much. Markets can deviate from ideality in ways other than not being "free". For instance, they can have transaction costs. Not only because of taxation, bid-offer spreads, and the like, but also (and I think unavoidably) because doing things takes effort. They can have granularity problems. (If I have a bunch of books, there is no mechanism by which I can sell half of one of them.) They can simply not exist. Hence, "only kinda". And I see no reason whatever to expect markets to move inexorably towards perfect freedom, perfect liquidity, zero transaction costs, infinitely fine granularity, etc., etc., etc. Hence "not so much".
Yes all these things I mean to say, as friction and inefficiency, would suggest it is not free, and you speak to all Szabo's articles and Nash's works which I am familiar with. But I also say this in a manner such "provided we continue to evolve rationally" or "provided technology continues to evolve". I don't need to prove we WILL evolve rationally and our tech will not take a step back. I don't need to prove that to show in this thought experiment what the end game is.
I don't understand your last paragraph at all. "The market values it at a constant in relation with this theoretical notion" -- what theoretical notion? what does it mean to "value it at a constant"? It sounds as if you are saying that I may be wrong about how much I care how much my wife loves me, if "the market" disagrees; that sounds pretty ridiculous but I can't tell how ridiculous until I understand how the market is supposedly valuing it, which at present I don't.
You aren't expected to understand how we get to the conclusion, just that there is a basis for value, a unit of it, that everyone accepts. It doesn't matter if a person disagrees, they still have to use it because the general society has deemed it "that thing". And "that thing" that we all generally accept is actually called money. I am not saying anything that isn't completely accepted by society.
Go to a store and try to pay with something other than money. Go try to pay your taxes in a random good. They aren't accepted. Its silly to argue you could do this.
Yes. And why do we ignore him?
I don't think that its founded in economics or any money theory to suggest that it is something that we don't collectively agree on. It also goes against market theory and the efficient market hypothesis to suggest that the price of a good is not an equilibrium related to the wants of the market is it not?
" (1) while there's a sense in which that measures how much "the market" values the good at that time, there's no reason why that has to match up with how any individual feels about it"
Yup you have perfectly highlighted the useful point and also (the end of the quote) shown the perspective that you could continue to argue for no reason against.
"What I said is that my values are not reducible to money"
I can't find it. It was about your wifes love. I think we could simply cut out things not reducible to money from the dialogue, but I also suspect that you would put a value on your wife's love.
But if its in relation to USD that doesn't make sense because its not stable over time. But you could do it in relation to a stable value metric, for example, would you pay for a movie if she expressed her love to you for it.
Nope. I mean that what you're saying about money seems to require extending the principle from one agent to all agents.
I'm not sure what the problem here is, but you aren't speaking to any of my argument. A metric for value is super useful for humans, and solves the problem of how to keep AI on the correct track. Why aren't we speaking to Nash's proposal for such a metric?
You are fighting a strawman by arguing versus me.
And I still think its bs that the mod buried Nash's works and any dialogue on it. And that we aren't attending to it in this dialogue speaks to that.
Yes Nash will get the medals for Ideal Money, this is what I am suggesting.
I am not proposing something "false" as a premise. I am saying, assume an objective metric for value exists (and then lets tend to the ramifications/implications). There is nothing false about that....
What I am saying about money, that you want to suggest is false, is that it is our most objective valuation metric. There is no more objective device for measuring value, in this world.
The rest you are suggesting is a way of saying we don't have free markets now, but if we continue to improve we will asymptotically approach it at the limits. Then you might agree at the limits our money will be stable in the valuation sense and COULD be such a metric (but its value isn't stable at present time!)
In regard to your wifes love the market value's it at a constant in relation to this theoretical notion, that your subjective valuation disagrees with the ultimate objective metric (remember its a premise that doesn't necessarily exist) doesn't break the standard.
Nash speaks to the crisis of 2008 and explains how it is the lack of an uncorruptable standard basis for value that stops us from achieving such a useful market. You can't target optimal spending for optimal caring though, I just want to clear on that.
No you haven't interpreted what I said correctly (and its a normal mistake) so you haven't spoken to it, but you still might take issue. I am more suggesting that by definition we all agree on money. Money is the thing we most agree on, the nature of it is that it takes the place of complex barter and optimizes trade, and it does so as the introduction of a universally accepted transfereable utility. If it doesn't do this it would serve no purpose and cease to be money.
That you don't value it is probably less true than it is irrational, and speaks to the lack of quality of the money we are offered more than anything (which is something I haven't shown to be true yet).
"And at the risk of sounding like a cultist, let me point you at "Money: the unit of caring", suggest that the bit about "within the interior of a [single] agent" is really important, and ask whether you are sure you have good grounds for making the further extension you appear to be making."
I think you mean that I have extended the principle of caring through money to AI and you feel that article objects (or perhaps I don't know what you refer to). It is perfectly inline and reasonable to suggest that AI will be a part of us and that money will evolve to bridge the two "entities" to share values and move forward in an (super) rational manner (one money will allow us to function as a single entity).
"This seems to me like a category error. The things produced by natural evolution are not values. (Though natural evolution produces things -- e.g., us -- that produce values.)"
I am saying, in a newtonian vs Quantum science money naturally evolves as a thing that the collective group wants, and I am suggesting this phenomenon will spread to and drive AI. This is both natural and a rational conclusion and something favorable the re-solves many paradoxes and difficult problems.
But money is not the correct word, it is an objective metric for value that is the key. Because money can also be a poor standard for objective measurement.