Hi Mike:
I thought this was a great rebuttal to Harry's assumptions.
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
on 2/1/02 11:05 PM, Mike Spencer at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Gail wrote:
>
> gail> There is, however, so much confusion in this conference between
> gail> work and employment...
>
> And Harry replied:
>
>> Gail,
>>
>> The reason for all production is wages.
>>
>> Sometimes, people seem to forget it.
>
> And you sneer at at Pete for mentioning a "functioning economic
> model"? That assertion is an economic model all by itself. I haven't
> had any wages for -- lessee, maybe 25 years. No salary and I'm not
> independently wealthy. Perhaps lots of folks would say I'm a slacker
> for taking on neither the work ethic in the form of waged employment
> nor the obligations of a good consumer but I've produced lots of
> stuff, both physical and intangiblez, in that time.
>
> For a few of your posts there I began to think you were down a pint
> but now you're even capitalizing the word "Assumption" when you refer
> again and again to your ex cathedra doctrine of the infinitely lazy
> infinite acquisitor: "...come up with a couple of exceptions
> to the Assumptions."
>
> There are, just approximately, an infinite number of observations of
> human behavior that are sufficiently valid to form the basis of
> discussion and I'll grant that status to your two Assumptions (sic)
> but not, by a very long shot, that of laws of human behavior. The
> Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Ameican Psychiatric
> Association is full of sets of usefully valid observations of human
> behavior. Here's an exercise: For each of the entries in the DSM
> under "Personality disorders", assess whether or not persons meeting
> the relevant diagnostic criteria would enthusiastically embrace your
> two "Assumptions" or not.
>
> We'll have a meaningful, scientific grasp of human behavior when we
> establish reproducible correlates between neural activity and
> organization and consciousness -- a detailed explication of what is
> often called the mind-body problem. It will not come soon. Marvin
> Minsky has been quoted as having advised a student interested in the
> subject to forego it on the grounds that the real discoveries were
> sufficiently far in the future that the student's career could not
> possibly be a stellar one. In my only slightly humble opinion, many
> of our contemporary great minds have shingled off into the fog on
> this. Others, such as neurologist Gerald Edelman and mathematician
> Stuart Kauffman have developed intrigueing insights, albeit ones that
> also indicate how far we are from a deep understanding of the matter.
>
> While I find the mind-body problem ("There is no problem: minds are
> what brains do." -- Minsky) one of the most practicaly challenging and
> theoretically interesting questions extant, I don't think I want to
> live in a world where we understand it well enough to make from it an
> applied science in the hands of those powerful enough to pay for the
> R&D. That sounds to me like technology of the ultimate totalitarian
> fiefdom. It is marginally better today, to the extent that the
> powerful manipulators base their efforts on bogus formulations that
> humans everywhere are able to prove false again and again.
>
>> We get our clothes from the tailor - or from Penny's or Marks and Sparks
>>
>> We get our meat from the butcher and our produce from the greengrocer.
>>
>> We get our milk from the milkman.
>>
>> Isn't this more sensible than keeping two cows - one to slaughter - growing
>> 17 different vegetable, running up tee-shirts on the sewing machine, and
>> spending a couple of weeks producing an ill-fitting suit?
>
> Only if you don't know how to grow a tomato or have an earthworm
> phobia; if you think trace hormonal contamination of milk is a
> non-issue or you haven't the skills to to make things you need that
> suit you better than the rubbish most vendors offer. Or if -- well,
> there are *lots* of other ifs. Jeez, Harry, it's more complicated
> than that. *Everything* is more complicated than that, for most
> values of "that".
>
>> What I said was that we don't try to analyze the "single complicated
>> human" ...
>
> Now that's a problem, isn't it? To make the kind of generalizatons
> you do, you have to treat people as simplified economic units and
> construct a model in which they're the components.
>
>> We can see what a person does. As an economic scientist, or as a lay
>> person, I can see how someone behaves.
>
> If all the persons whose behavior you have an opportunity to observe
> behave in accordance with your two "Assumptions", you need a better
> class of friends and you need to get out more.
>
> - Mike
>
>
>
>
>
>
