As a layman, I think Austrian school lacks of quantitive ways to do repetitive applied work for fields and industries compared to the mainstream schools. And many of the tools and information sources were not available at Mises' time. Our society is based on calculation. Economics as a tool for management teams has to provide effective calculation for as many things as possible. People communicate and make decisions based on the calculation framework and the results. The world's economic states are modelled in a more or less approximate way. The school that can offer more "fact-based" and measurable data and results are welcomed by decision makers and the people work for them. Organizations need them. When many of organizations are using similar frameworks, the can communicate with other similar parties. It's easier for parties to make their data and results compatible to their own system. Just some random thoughts from a layman. And yes, I love Mises' work. But the tooling is missing for a lot of applications. There can be very limited actionable decision you can make if you adopt it. I'm probably misinformed, misunderstood and biased. Just some of my observations and thoughts.
You make good points, the main reason these tools don’t exist , however, is that I thought Mises and others felt that economics was about logical deduction from the axioms of human action - Praexology. and thus there was no need for math or empiricism to validate the theories - they were Prima facie correct.
Indeed. And it is a good thing in my layman's point of view because we better explain things in a simpler way and reach conclusions with math only if it is really required. It's like qualitative vs. quantitative.
That said, no one would judge you for doing math. However, the important pieces (axioms) don't require it.
Lack of math doesn't mean anything bad. See Frédéric Bastiat and Gustave de Molinari. Both are amazing and no math required :)
Everything boils down to mathematics one way or another, even logic.
The trouble with praxeology is not the lack of math, though; it is the notion that results need not be validated empirically because they're based on logic. However, your assumptions (i.e. axioms) need not hold in nature and any number of mistakes could had been made in the reasoning process. This is why being based on logic does not make a model magically free of errors.
Marxism took the same approach--attempt to derive absolute truths about the empirical world using pure logic. I don't know if Mises actually applied Hegelian dialectics, but the fundamental approach seems similar. It's all very German--compare Einstein's approach where he generates imaginary paradoxes and then finds higher truths in their resolution.
Problem is, the real world is messy. Some aspects of the world are susceptible to logical reductionism, but not all of it. Enough of it is arbitrary that you very quickly fall off the rails, even when it's not obvious. A theory can often seem superficially more consistent than it really is simply out of coincidence, insufficient precision, or insufficient predictive power. In the real world the proof is in the application.
I believe what they try to achieve is beyond what we currently have. And if Mises was born in this age, he would've probably go to the biology level or even deeper to start his work. The tooling and data to connect the dots in his mind was simply not there. To me, he wanted something that is not approximate. For those purposes, what you mentioned might be the best tools one can have at starting stage. I think some work in micro-economics has something similar to Mises'. They can work on simulations now to have fact-based and measurable discoveries. In the end, most likely what human can do is limited to the tooling, not the understanding and educated imagination.
>I believe what they try to achieve is beyond what we currently have. And if Mises was born in this age, he would've probably go to the biology level or even deeper to start his work.
This isn't really true. When Human Action was written there already was a fair bit of literature on behavioural psychology and other fields, but Mises made a conscious choice to not base his theories on them. In the first part of Human Action Mises does bring this point up but makes a clear distinction between investigations into human behaviour that are rooted in the natural and empirical sciences (i.e. biology) and his own flavour which is rooted in a Kantian-esque introspection. This concept is referred to in Mises' work as well as in the works of his successors as methodological dualism, and is a core tenet of Austrian social analysis.
How would they measure from simulations, if he can't have the exact set of same people on different situations and your results might vary?
Social science isn't "experimentable" as biology or physics... And if you try hard to force it you will end up with what's called social engineering instead...
W. Brian Arthur is an economist I like. Complexity theory is also very exciting for me. I do not have any experience in those, but they and other things inspired how I perceive the world.
I probably did not deliver what I think clearly. The link above might be helpful to deliver what I mean.
I'm not an economist, but as a left of center libertarian I'd caution that an obsession with metrics and measurement can introduce biases (often biases that encode subtle class-based prejudices) about what one is measuring with an implicit mentality that what is being measured is an accurate metric for the desired subjective outcome, which very dangerously can slide into a mindless optimization exercise of the metric that gets so detected from the original intent that it begins optimizing for something antithetical. It's not quite praexeology, but I definitely came to this belief through listening to critical rethinking of econometrics by Austrians.
For me, there are people want to perfectly analyze a thing and discover its model, there are people try to do something with the thing with whatever they have. We as humans are usually not able to achieve the first. The later is what we have every day, almost all day. A perfect model does not mean we know how to do anything properly. Without a perfect model, it's even less possible. But humans always want to do something while we can ... While most parties are doing things the similar way. They are able to play the same game before the game can not continue. Just another way to put what I said above:)
Do colors used have any meaning? When I look at it as part of a tree, green and calm colors for me always suggest healthy growth. I understand my question might be a bit political. I'm just getting this feeling when I perceive all the beautiful graphs as part of a tree. This probably would get many downvotes. But still I want to let you know my instant feelings.
Colors and side of the tree are points of origin; it's in the 3rd image on the page. If you're asking why those colors were picked... they have to be something; it's almost certainly random assignment of easily-distinguishable colors.
Big companies seem to have industries as their unit of operation. If this is generally true, top leaders have very limited detailed input/output into a specific product itself. Many resources can not be taken into the process of a product evolution. Put it simple, top leaders of a big company usually have quite different direct goals instead of a product. A product's evolution depends on the options and resources a product team can have in a time frame. The rest of a big company is meaningless. The bigger the overlap of top leaders have with the product team, the better chance the product can evolve with the market demand. Jobs comes to my mind.
I'm glad it was. I hadn't heard of it before, and now I'm watching the introduction video to learn more. I'm not really familiar with IPFS, but what I do know is that it has had some consistent buzz for a while now.
And consumers simply don't have any other options can match what Apple is offering. If an average cares about both product and service experience and data privacy, I don't see any alternative comes remotely close. That's the position Apple has been building for a few years and it's a clever move. This alone can make Apple a lot more attractive for data privacy concerned consumers. Apple doesn't have to worry about the decline of their software/hardware design/production level as before. Data privacy service can compensate those to a very big degree. Any alternative not more expensive, easy to use and not more burden on user's mind as a whole is welcomed.
Am I trust Apple with my data? No, but that's my best choice for now and near future.
Ai always gets attention from inside the country and he has been there for a long time. Waves of such people left or disappeared in public's view. He's still there. Someone can stay and do a lot of opposing things and get and be able to keep constant public attentions is like a miracle. Why he? Why not others like him? He's like collecting those badges every time the government did something to him. And he's doing good and better. If you know China and know what people act like him could have faced, he is such an odd spot. I know westerners like him, giving him a lot of high quality badges. He has a quite rooted network to keep him safe and do a lot of fancy things delivered to public and shows this off. All sides seem to need him.
Sorry for the rant. As a Chinese, I just hate those people with very special privilege to show off in the name of some symbol impressing outsiders and has nothing to do with all those truly matter.
From the fine article, he doesn't live in China any more... after they beat him and locked him away for a year and took away his passport. That's ignoring the forced confession, and several million in fines. Yeah, I'm sure he got out because he's rich and famous... and what he did was embarrass an official?
I like China and its people, but this argument doesn't make much sense. It's the last part (not the middle) that makes it impossible to fix corruption.
That's extremely hard for someone to get away with. He can simply ignore it? I do not follow Ai's news after I did a little research many years ago. He's famous on HN. So I wanted to find out what this guy did and what his works were like at that time.
IIRC, he is a son of a ruling party's famous poetist which indicates he has some strong connections.
Last time I read some news of him was live stream his own life in Beijing's studio or something like that. Of course, with his experience, acceptance/approval level in western world and his art skills (he has some real art work. For me, his work is facing outsider customers, expressing the customer's view of China in a bit above average customers' way.), he is among the best options for some field.
I don't understand what you mean by mentioning 'last part (not the middle)'.
Years ago, I'd seen some his art in China and liked it, and I vaguely know he's an activist, but I don't follow it so I didn't know he had left the country until I read the article. I don't think anyone would know what had happened if he wasn't internationally famous.
What I meant (by 'the last part') is that if we excuse the government for politically motivated force to punish non-violent dissent for any reason, then we are agreeing with the worst form of corruption. Bribes (and excusing them) are bad enough, but excusing threats, violence, and property destruction by the state is worse. How to create a better (more fair) place to live for the poor and weak with this kind of threat, when even the wealthy, connected, and famous can't speak up?
When I see this sort of acceptance from my colleagues from Africa, India, South America it saddens me just as much as it does in China.
You can not image how sad I was/am as someone comes out of that system and I love my nation from the bottom of my heart. I want to see my nation has a bit more awareness of fairness you mentioned. The part of Ai I criticize is mostly how he got away from those kind off trouble safely while collecting so many credits internationally. Sounds strange to outsiders, I know. I just have deeper understanding of what the consequence for many of his activities should've if that was someone else. Outsiders don't have knowledge of this. So as expected, I got many downvotes on this one. Some reporters lost their lives and were betrayed by their wives since they were the first to report some food/medicine quality issues affecting a lot of people (in some cases, the majority victims were very young kids) over the past 2 decades. They did what actually mattered in a massive scale but were not known to average outsiders. People like them are not very marketable in the outsider funding market (This is just a simple and blunt way of describing some fancy and socially high-profiled things. This can get many downvotes as well.). We know too many people like them. And Ai became an icon for outsiders in such a way. Hopefully, my rant can give you more information to know what I feel. There is nothing people can do. There is no party can/need collect the opposing force and combine them into something bigger. Cooperating is the way to go or you are forced to get funding from outsiders to fulfill their own agendas. And they do not know what Chinese think of. So once they live on outsiders' funding system. What they delivered associate little to what average Chinese can echo. Soon they are not relevant any more. It's a different system.
He's not. After everything he went through, he moved to Germany.
Criticizing Ai Weiwei as a person of privilege who's able to get away with things conveniently ignores the harrassment and subjugation by the Chinese authorities that he's endured. It sounds rather like you're condemning him for somehow not suffering enough, in proportion to the severity of his dissidence?
Well, see my other comments here. I might sound that way to people don't realize the real consequences of many of his activities if someone else did something similar.
And he got back to be in the view of the public proudly. He did ok in the jail. Jail time became another shining badge. Do you know those reports in China regarding serious food quality issues over the past two decades? If you do, do you know how the first reporters for those news ended up? China for me is not just a symbol. So I want to give out another angle many are not aware of.
I love things with substance. Those are where the beauty of human intelligence and execution lies.
However, hype does solve the most difficult part of sales process: customer's willingness to pay. And it solves it way beyond perfect. After 15 years learning in the market, it's the mindset I found I need to learn and adapt to. I don't like the feeling of being dragging to most likely opposite directions. But sales seems more important to a lot of market participants.
Dynamic coordination among a group of people. Top down approach does not work best under this. It's not reactive enough. There are just so many to talk about regarding this. But I think that's one of the very core dimensions of this game. And there are so many other national teams do not reach their potentials. China is a nice key word for clickbait. And it worked well.
