Merged A Thread for AlexPontik to Explain his Ideas

[AlexPontik]

Perhaps this will be useful...People have been studying the topics you are discussing for a very long time, and have developed a somewhat standard terminology for such discussions. Discussions are more fruitful when no one is inventing new words which folks then need to understand. (Also, people who want to use their own nonstandard words start to sound like trolls--even when that's not at all the case.)

So...as others have suggested...this might all be more clear if you would use standard terms. For example, by "fun" do you mean the economics term "utility?"

"For example, by "fun" do you mean the economics term "utility"?
[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately no, utility seems to me too constraint a word to describe what humans what.
Humans don't want "utility" they want to have fun, and this means they want to live a life that is fun for them.

The way that you find if something is fun for you is, you try it, and you decide what the experience felt like, was it fun, or not.

According to google "utility=the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial".
Something fun for an individual, can be "not useful, not profitable, not beneficial" for other.
Something fun for an individual, can be "not useful, not profitable, not beneficial" for an individual sometimes, but if it is most times this way, then in the end it becomes not fun for that individual.

If something has utility for a group of people, it is fun for those people on the long run, but if something is fun for a group of people, it isn't guaranteed that it also has utility for that group of people.
People start by looking for fun and end by looking for fun, the knowledge they acquire on their journey can have "utility", but in order for this to be so, this knowledge should help humans have "fun" in their lives .

 

[AlexPontik]

PS Humans didn't evolve to have fun. Humans evolved to pass down DNA. This means eating, fighting, having sex and maybe some fun, if it allows for an evolutionary advantage. Do you know what evolution is?

So humans evolved to do eating, fighting, having sex...which are not fun to human?
And then maybe some fun?
Look around you humans just want to have fun, and they simply don't know how to behave to have some fun is what seems to me to be happening.
How is that so? Don't I sound like with what I am writing about, this is what I mean?

 

[Startz]

"For example, by "fun" do you mean the economics term "utility"?


Unfortunately no, utility seems to me too constraint a word to describe what humans what.
Humans don't want "utility" they want to have fun, and this means they want to live a life that is fun for them.

The way that you find if something is fun for you is, you try it, and you decide what the experience felt like, was it fun, or not.

According to google "utility=the state of being useful, profitable, or beneficial".
Something fun for an individual, can be "not useful, not profitable, not beneficial" for other.
Something fun for an individual, can be "not useful, not profitable, not beneficial" for an individual sometimes, but if it is most times this way, then in the end it becomes not fun for that individual.

If something has utility for a group of people, it is fun for those people on the long run, but if something is fun for a group of people, it isn't guaranteed that it also has utility for that group of people.
People start by looking for fun and end by looking for fun, the knowledge they acquire on their journey can have "utility", but in order for this to be so, this knowledge should help humans have "fun" in their lives .

This is helpful, as it suggests you aren't familiar with what "utility" means in economics.

If there are two goods, consumed in quantities X and Y, then "utility" is a function U(X,Y) such that if U(X1,Y1) > U(X0,Y0) then a person would prefer to consume the bundle (X1,Y1) over the bundle (X0,Y0).

 

[AlexPontik]

I can measure and construct a demand curve with ease. As price increases demand reduces with empirical measurements.

Tell me how you construct you BS "fun" curve?

You can't can you? It is total BS with no use in mathematically calculating and predicting economic behaviour.

I don't think also you can construct a "fun" curve, that would be a bit BS.

But the fact that humans can't construct a "fun" curve, doesn't seem to stop them from wanting to have fun, pretty consistently in human history.

Do they have fun? If they behave they do, if they don't they don't.
How much fun do they have? I don't how much money would you need to allow someone to kill your parents, this is how much.

 

[AlexPontik]

This is helpful, as it suggests you aren't familiar with what "utility" means in economics.

If there are two goods, consumed in quantities X and Y, then "utility" is a function U(X,Y) such that if U(X1,Y1) > U(X0,Y0) then a person would prefer to consume the bundle (X1,Y1) over the bundle (X0,Y0).

Ok, lets assume women as consumers for the below. The two goods for women in our example are spring dresses and autumn dresses.
If I assume I can make a function U(X1,Y1)>U(X0,Y0) which specifies preference in bundle (X1,Y1) over the bundle (X0,Y0), it seems to me for this example we also need to specify when this inequality holds true.
During the spring collection in spring, women usually buy spring dresses, during the fall collection in autumn, women usually buy autumn dresses, and you can have bundles, where even if you play with prices, women still buy according to what is fun for them at that specific time and season, no?

In short, utility does for sure arise in most products as a measurement in the choices human make ( I am not arguing that), but there are products which are a bit more temperamental to the human preferences, because humans in the end are not interested about utility, humans want to have fun (ask humans around you if they would rather have fun or have utility, as long as utility is fun, they have utility, but fun they don't question, because this is what they do by default).

 

[Startz]

In short, utility does for sure arise in most products as a measurement in the choices human make ( I am not arguing that), but there are products which are a bit more temperamental to the human preferences, because humans in the end are not interested about utility, humans want to have fun (ask humans around you if they would rather have fun or have utility, as long as utility is fun, they have utility, but fun they don't question, because this is what they do by default).

The problem is that "utility" has a specific meaning in economics which differs somewhat from usage in everyday parlance. By way of analogy, the term "force" is a perfectly good everyday word, but if I use it in a discussion about physics I'd better use the meaning that physicists attach.

Mostly out of curiosity, have you ever taken a standard economics course?

 

[AlexPontik]

You are right, they don't need it - but they desire it. And then there are those who don't particularly desire more money than they need, but people give it to them anyway. The people who are best at 'making money' actually make other things - and the Capitalist system 'rewards' them with money.

They don't need it they desire it doesn't sound honest to me.
When you are good at something, you can do what you are good at, or else you are not good at it (it seems to me).
If you are good at making money, more money is coming your way regardless of what you or anyone else says.
If you say you are good at making money, you'd better have more money than others who may say something else about you.
And you need to remember, regardless of what you say or think, you will find out next.

Trading is just a job, and like all jobs some people get more 'fun' out of it than others. Trading is useful for setting the prices of stocks and commodities, but traders should realize that they are providing a service. Whether they have fun doing it is no more relevant than whether garbage collectors or doctors are having fun.

Whether they are having fun or not, is actually as relevant as it is for garbage collectors or doctors are having fun, but doesn't have the same consequences.
Bad Garbage collectors can leave the trash out in the open for too long to start becoming a health issue for the rest.
Bad Doctors can make what seemed like a health issue to them , a life or death issue to one.
Bad traders can make what seems like a service to them an economic disaster to the rest of us

Problem is the 'magic' isn't just their skills. A certain amount of luck is usually involved, but that doesn't mean they are 'just' lucky. Most fortunes are made by far more hard work than luck, and keeping it usually requires even more work. That is why capitalists often spend far more time and effort trying to increase their wealth than is healthy - because they are scared of losing it all to some fluke of bad luck.

The result that the richest are also the most paranoid - putting money above everything else and fighting anything that they perceive as threatening their wealth (even though it might actually benefit them). We shouldn't blame them for it though, the capitalist system selected them for that role.

I am not sure who makes the argument that in order for bad luck not to happen to him/her better bad luck take place on others, when luck is luck (if you don't understand what I mean by luck is luck flip a coin to find this out).

"A certain amount of luck is usually involved, but that doesn't mean they are 'just' lucky."
'just' lucky doesn't mean much to me for people who claim they can do something. Because if they can do something, then (you guessed it) they are not just lucky they have skill.
But whether this is so for people who built fortunes, well...history repeats itself and the make sure those who doubt them don't, so people don't doubt them , I don't think I need to write anything further.

 

[bruto]

I think the idea of "fun" is rather silly. Of course you can redefine your words a little, and make it all relative, and it's true, of course, that having a roof over your head and shoes on your feet and a meal is more "fun" than starving to death in the snow, but to classify "fun" as the overall motivator for everything seems...several words come to mind but I would include "shallow," "juvenile," and "obsessive" among them.

It's useful and tempting sometimes to reduce everything to a single idea, and it can be a productive way to look at things, but you need to remember that you're simplifying a complex life.

You can get some sense out of the four temperaments, or the three temperaments, or the Meyers Briggs categories, or this or that - all useful ways to look at what you see, as long as you remember that they're not everything. They're about how you look more than about what you see.

You can look at a car, and divide up its functions by fuel, electrical, braking, exhaust, and so on. Or you can look at the same car and divide it up by the country of origin for its parts, or you can divide it up by what they're made of, or by what jobs can be done without machine tools, and on and on and on. Every one of those ways of looking at things is true in one context and useless in another.

You can write a book about how the Irish saved civilization, and it's true in a sense, but not if you put it into the context of the rest of the world. You can reduce all of life to the persistent battle of genes, and it's interesting but only if you remember that it's not all there is. You can theorize that everything everyone does is a ploy to get into heaven or to get laid, and it's sort of true and sort of funny, but only if you remember that it's not really what everything is about. It's only a way of organizing what you see.

As for the question of whether people would rather have fun than utility, it does, of course, depend again on how you define fun, but I would surmise that not all people regard the question the same, which is why not everyone is a drug addict or an alcoholic, and why some people are better parents than others, why some people are martyrs and some are not, etc. Of course all you have to do is redefine "fun" to mean whatever long term reward a person seeks more than the immediate, and save your theory, but thereby reducing it to useless persiflage.

 

[Leftus]

I am not sure I understand you, if taxes violate once morality and one has a way out taxes, one doesn't pay taxes.
In order for one to be willing to be paying taxes (and not be in constant revolt against the state), taxes should be within ones morality.
Could you explain yourself a bit?

Explain myself? How passé. Morality has nothing to do with taxes. The point here was that YOU defined taxes as a tit-for-tat exchange. There are some people who get a bunch of tat and we don't even get a nip-slip let alone a tit.

If you already thing you are skilled at explain something into rules that normal people can understand, you will need to explain yourself this way.
"I'm going to go with "not even wrong" on trying to convert this nonsense into plain English" is something even an unskilled person in language can do, so that doesn't differentiate you here.

The point I was making, and you could have looked up the phrase "not even wrong" (it was in quotes for a reason) is that your nonsense is nothing more than gibberish. It has all of the conventions of making sense, but anyone with any knowledge of the subject matter it's so badly malformed that nobody can make heads or tails of what you are saying.

Whatever ideas you are trying to express are betrayed by the words you are using.

 

[Fonebone]

Modern economics for grown-up children
the 2017 national debt......
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqUwr-Nkq9g


the 2020 stimulus package.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPHEM4gEqvg



the big picture.....
https://demonocracy.info/infographi...ion_2020/us_stimulus_package_10_trillion.html


Mood music to enhance your viewing experience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Mh-Wj8TK6w

Not even a peep about the national debt, nor the trillion dollar stimulus package graphics in a thread titled "short essay about the economy"
Will nothing awaken the terminally somnambulant masses?

Yes -A cattle prod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

 

[psionl0]

Not even a peep about the national debt, nor the trillion dollar stimulus package graphics in a thread titled "short essay about the economy"
Will nothing awaken the terminally somnambulant masses?

A lot of discussion has been had on these pages in the past about national debt.

If you have something to add then it should be more than just pictures of piles of paper.

 

[AlexPontik]

Explain myself? How passé. Morality has nothing to do with taxes.

if you don't want to explain yourself, what are you doing here? Having fun?
Morality has nothing to do with taxes , is quite a statement.

Explain yourself.

The point I was making, and you could have looked up the phrase "not even wrong" (it was in quotes for a reason) is that your nonsense is nothing more than gibberish. It has all of the conventions of making sense, but anyone with any knowledge of the subject matter it's so badly malformed that nobody can make heads or tails of what you are saying.

Whatever ideas you are trying to express are betrayed by the words you are using.

Well, it could be what you say, or it could be not...still...you will need to explain yourself.

 

[AlexPontik]

The problem is that "utility" has a specific meaning in economics which differs somewhat from usage in everyday parlance. By way of analogy, the term "force" is a perfectly good everyday word, but if I use it in a discussion about physics I'd better use the meaning that physicists attach.

Mostly out of curiosity, have you ever taken a standard economics course?

You will need to explain what the point you are trying to make is, if your point is whether I have studied economics in University the answer is no, I have studied electrical and electronic engineering.

If by this as an assumption, that one who hasn't studied economics cannot say anything about economics, guess what, this is what I also thought.

By now I have doubts, and I am not looking for dudes who have conclusions, I am looking for someone who has explanations.

So I'll keep waiting for you to make an argument on what I wrote, if you have studied economics, or understand economics better, you can easily point the errors in what is written.

Cause going back and forth like this isn't productive, I think. And if you can't help me, don't worry, just ignore me. This shouldn't be too much to ask, is it?

 

[AlexPontik]

Not even a peep about the national debt, nor the trillion dollar stimulus package graphics in a thread titled "short essay about the economy"
Will nothing awaken the terminally somnambulant masses?

Yes -A cattle prod
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM

I am waiting for you to actually write something and explain yourself as well...let's see...

 

[AlexPontik]

I think the idea of "fun" is rather silly.

Be careful, you might be not having fun then, because you think you will be silly.
But this isn't what fun is to you when you have fun is it?
And still you pretend like you don't understand, and yet, you do understand a bit don't you?

And what about me? Well I guess I'm just having fun with you, it is a bit silly, but you try to throw your conclusions here, which are not fun for all...are they, if fun is "silly"? And if you what to try to explain yourself, go ahead (if you think you already did, well you didn't, you need patience to have fun).

 

[Startz]

You will need to explain what the point you are trying to make is, if your point is whether I have studied economics in University the answer is no, I have studied electrical and electronic engineering.

If by this as an assumption, that one who hasn't studied economics cannot say anything about economics, guess what, this is what I also thought.

By now I have doubts, and I am not looking for dudes who have conclusions, I am looking for someone who has explanations.

So I'll keep waiting for you to make an argument on what I wrote, if you have studied economics, or understand economics better, you can easily point the errors in what is written.

Cause going back and forth like this isn't productive, I think. And if you can't help me, don't worry, just ignore me. This shouldn't be too much to ask, is it?

I wonder what you would think of someone who posted here explaining how circuits work...never having studied the material that you have studied while making up completely new terms.

Since you have an engineering background, you will have enough math to have a big head start in learning economics. Here's a first lesson.

The first model is that people maximize utility subject to constraints. For example, is there are two goods that can be bought in amounts X and Z at unit prices p_X and p_Z and if a person has income y, then the person chooses amounts X and Z to maximize

U(X,Z) subject to p_X*X + p_Z*Z = Y.

The usual assumption is that the partial derivatives of U are positive and that the second partials are negative.

The utility function is something like what you have called "fun," but not quite. A slightly more sophisticated model is that people have to work to get income. If a person works L hours a day at wage w and gets pleasure from leisure, 24-L, we can extend the model to say maximize

U(X, Z, 24 - L) subject to p_X*X + p_Z*Z = w*L.

You can see that explicitly including labor/leisure helps understand some of the objections that people have raised to not everything being fun.

 

[bruto]

Be careful, you might be not having fun then, because you think you will be silly.
But this isn't what fun is to you when you have fun is it?
And still you pretend like you don't understand, and yet, you do understand a bit don't you?

And what about me? Well I guess I'm just having fun with you, it is a bit silly, but you try to throw your conclusions here, which are not fun for all...are they, if fun is "silly"? And if you what to try to explain yourself, go ahead (if you think you already did, well you didn't, you need patience to have fun).

You answer the first sentence of a rather long post as if that had been all I said. Who said I don't understand? I didn't. You may not like what I said, but if you claim I don't understand, perhaps it's you who must explain what it is you think I don't understand.

You want people to explain their explanations now. And if they do I presume that next you'll need them to explain the explanations for their explanations.

I think you're approaching the idea of "fun" backwards. You've just decided that whenever you see a motivating factor you'll call it "fun," and then presto change-o, what a revelation, you've discovered that fun is the motivating factor for everything. What new knowledge or revelation comes from a tautological redefinition?

 

[AlexPontik]

I wonder what you would think of someone who posted here explaining how circuits work...never having studied the material that you have studied while making up completely new terms.

Well, you shouldn't wonder, because someone explaining how circuits works, does exactly that, tells you how circuits work.

And guess what? They works pretty closely to how one explained you in reality.

But not exactly. Why? Thermodynamics 2nd law about entropy, this is way.

If you don't understand the above, there is an easier way.

Pick a coin, choose a side and flip it.


Economists set up to do the same thing, but about economics, to explain how the economy works.

But the economy isn't exactly working in reality, is it?

Why am I saying this?

I don't know think about it and you tell me.

 

[AlexPontik]

You answer the first sentence of a rather long post as if that had been all I said. Who said I don't understand? I didn't. You may not like what I said, but if you claim I don't understand, perhaps it's you who must explain what it is you think I don't understand.

I claim I don't understand what you are getting at, apart that you sound upset.

If you want to explain yourself, please do.

If you want to be upset, I don't have any intention to have you upset, and you are wasting your time and effort here, aren't you?

And what about me? I am just having fun here. (<--if you get angry reading this, then you are not having fun, are you? Just don't think this is what my aim is, because it isn't)

You want people to explain their explanations now. And if they do I presume that next you'll need them to explain the explanations for their explanations.

if they are making sense no, if they are not yes.

I suggest you avoid the big thoughts, and focus on simpler things to explain yourself.

I think you're approaching the idea of "fun" backwards. You've just decided that whenever you see a motivating factor you'll call it "fun," and then presto change-o, what a revelation, you've discovered that fun is the motivating factor for everything. What new knowledge or revelation comes from a tautological redefinition?

Fun is the motivating factor for everything for humans, but not everything humans do, is fun for humans.

And in human history, humans who tend to do things which are not fun for other humans, are generally male in gender.

If you can't understand the above , look at history and measure who commits the majority of crimes in history, males or females? In case you missed it, it is males, as it also is in crime in everyday life.

My argument that this happens, is that humans in general don't know what is fun for them for every moment of their lives.

To find that, they need to try things, find what they like, and become skilled in what they like doing, or is fun for them.

Why do they do that? Because other people enjoy interacting with humans who are good at something, it is fun for them.

But there are those who didn't find what is fun for them, apart from having other people tell them they are good.

As you all know in this forum, it is males who have to impress the females, in nature, as is so with humans.

This males do by either by becoming good at something, which women like, or by becomes good at something else.

What else? Something that is not fun for women, but unavoidable by women.

And this males usually do, by getting upset and angry, as when men are not making sense, they get upset and angry, is what I think...



What do you think?

 

[Startz]

Why am I saying this?

I don't know think about it and you tell me.

You don't know why you are saying something? I find that concerning.

PS. I'm happy to talk about economics--for that matter I'm happy to learn about circuits.. I don't have much interest or expertise in explaining to someone why they are saying something.