Comments on: Undisputed Knowledge

By: KG

KG — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:08:35 +0000

“People tend to avoid the cheapest wine on a list–using a heuristic of “the cheapest must be bad” rather than due to any other quality indicators.”

Pretty big fan of “Two-Buck Chuck” myself . . .

By: Bo

Bo — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 20:20:08 +0000

What if the unit you consume is knowledge?

By: bobvis

bobvis — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:13:16 +0000

Ah, I didn’t know you meant with respect to any particular individual person. Making that assumption, you may be right.

By: Brian Pitt

Brian Pitt — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 00:28:01 +0000

bobvis,

No, my (and your) total utility decreases with each additional unit of anything that I consume – irrespective of the technology in question.

By: anon

anon — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:36:24 +0000

The assumptions on which social sciences are built aren’t really assumptions in the traditional sense.
TCE, for example, assumes bounded rationality and opportunsim. I appreciate that others have disputed this, but I think these assumptions can be more accurately described as variables. The presence of opportunism and bounded rationality indicates applicability of TCE.

By: bobvis

bobvis — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:01:44 +0000

diminishing marginal returns

What about telephones, fax machines, or operating systems? The more copies you have, the more they are worth.
—
I also considered the law of supply and demand, but do they always hold?

People tend to avoid the cheapest wine on a list–using a heuristic of “the cheapest must be bad” rather than due to any other quality indicators. Also, we have Giffen goods.

The law of supply doesn’t seem to hold either because companies practically speaking produce to forecast rather than to a particular price.

By: Rafe Champion

Rafe Champion — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 09:31:30 +0000

How about Murphy’s Law (if it can go wrong it will)?
A corollary is the law of unintended consequences.

The laws of supply and demand (ceteris paribus)?
The “other things equal” is necessary because laws in the natural sciences are tendencies or propensities which can be masked or frustrated, as when an apple does not fall because it is firmly glued to the tree.

By: srp

srp — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 08:50:26 +0000

Robert Lucas has nominated the relationship between monetary growth and the rate of inflation. If you use the full range of data across countries over time, you get a great fit to a linear relationship. It’s neither trivial (in fact often disbelieved) nor based on a host of assumptions.

By: Rafe Champion

Rafe Champion — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:27:55 +0000

Murphy’s Law (if it can go wrong, it will).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law

The law of unintended consequences (just a corollary of Murphy’s I suppose).

The laws of supply and demand (ceteris paribus). You have to allow the “other things equal” clause because even the best laws that we have in the natural sciences operate as tendencies or propensities and they can be masked or over-ridden by other factors, like the apple that does not fall because it is glued onto the tree.

By: Brian Pitt

Brian Pitt — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:44:27 +0000

How about diminishing marginal returns and Weberian social action.