Thomas Dickerson @elfprince13@mumak.app

@sliminality @samth I think there are two contributing factors:
(a) lots of intro CS curriculum has built up intuitively pleasing metaphors for polymorphism
(b) it’s easier to build “partly working” code when failures happen at runtime than compile time, which feels easier/more productive because humans are bad at evaluating future reward/punishment

@mutual_ayyde @apodoxus also rational choice theory / Bayesian rationalism + reinforcement learning, but those are basically inseparable from game theory. The thing that I consider to be the uniquely Austrian contribution to that worldview is the subjectivity of personal utility functions, and treating economics as study of comparative value judgments, rather than just production/consumption/transfer of (financial) “wealth”

@mutual_ayyde @apodoxus (btw Apodoxus appears to have blocked me so this thread might be fragmented). The computational limits that the Austrians raised as thought experiments (which were largely born at experimentally in all of the centrally planned economies of the 20th century), have been essentially codified in modern algorithmic game theory.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde I try to:
(a) assume that people are intelligent and can reach common conclusions deductively when arguing from an agreed upon set of presuppositions, or inductively when arguing based on an agreed upon notion of uncertainty+confidence
(b) assume that people are engaging in good faith / with the intent of reaching a shared understanding.
(c) avoid assuming that everyone has to have a strongly held opinion on every topic.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde that's a perfectly reasonable category of opinion to hold. If you fill in the blanks s.t. it describes a situation where X old theory has _actually_ been disproved by Y new theory, I would be more offended if you thought I had thought about it and reached the wrong conclusion. If you fill in the blanks s.t. you're describing unrelated X and Y, it doesn't make it more offensive, it just tells me *you* haven't thought about it enough.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde it's not disrespectful, it's just nonsensical because you're talking about unrelated fields.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde Which modern physics results are you referring to, specifically?

(before we go too far down this road, I have a physics degree)

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde I have no idea what you're talking about now. Quantum mechanics has enormous predictive power (if it didn't nobody would have ever believed in it because it's too weird). We wouldn't be able to build semiconductor based computers without it.

And nobody said anything about neoclassical econ - macro-econ in general is just astrology for social scientists. Modern *micro* economics is foundational computer science.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde If I met a Ptolemaic astronomer or Aristotelian physicist in the 20th century, *and they persisted in those views after being presented with modern physics*, I would say they didn't think very hard about it. And if after living for decades in the 20th century they somehow never encountered modern physics, I would have a hard time believing they were thinking about it very hard either, because any sort of inquiry would point them in the right direction.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde Modern-day true Marxists are almost invariably tankies, and I view tankies the same way I view Nazis. Zero sympathy for people who do genocide.

Also recognize that there are a bunch of people who identify as Marxists mostly because they are on the left wing and don't know any better. I don't think it's rude to say they haven't thought very much about it, because the alternative is to believe they are tankies.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde We may disagree on certain issues, but I have enormous respect for left-wing thinkers who have taken aspects of Marx (+other early communists)'s critiques of capitalism and combined them with microeconomic critiques of centrally planned economies, and created something entirely new in the various flavors of LWMA.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde That's the basic premise of a Marxist economic system though.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde no, I'm just saying that expending energy doesn't inherently produce value.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde wasn't really expecting to run into tankies in this comment section. I'm like 95% sure OP agrees with me here https://mastodon.social/@mutual_ayyde/109922767436649768

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde my actual hypothesis is that most Marxists actually didn't think about it very hard, or they wouldn't be Marxists anymore.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde "It is not contested that the workers still do not own the means of production (which would be the result if anyone were successful at that.)"

If I accept your hypothesis, this is all you need to debunk LTV 😉

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde Most Americans *say* they value freedom very highly, but can't articulate a working definition of what that actually entails.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde I'm still talking about intellectual energy here- if you thought about it really hard and didn't produce any new insights, you might have produced intellectual heat, but you didn't produce any intellectual work.

@apodoxus @mutual_ayyde The CCP are basically just state-capitalism fascists now. Hard to think the overall population is *more* communist.