Praxeology - Episode 9 - Uncertainty

In this lesson I talk about the uncertainty inherent in human action.

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[bwood21390]

You do a phenomenal job of being concise. I have to watch these videos about 5 times each to soak up all the information....so much coming out with every sentence, which is a credit to your writing. Kudos.

[dantean]

The "by the way, social engineering is fascism" is dropped in like a 1000lb. anvil one's foot. If seemed random beyond belief. Oh, well carry on...

[geomonicdotorg]

One last point - social engineers do engineer, regardless whether their artificial machinations produce the ends they state, or even desire. The stated objectives of social engineers are as irrelevant to praxeology as the psychology, or motives, of any human action. A tyrant may claim to do something for the good of its people, but the actual result of the tyrannical action will produce another end altogether, which may well align perfectly with the real intended purpose of the social engineer.

[geomonicdotorg]

Love the series - would like to suggest that gambling, speculation and engineering all exist on, and can be described as, a single unified field, the varying points of which are distinguished and described in terms of a spectrum of varying levels of knowledge and the capacity to control, all of which relate to the individual causing an action. Thus, what may be gambling or speculation on the part of one trader can be the result of engineering on the part of another.

[noteagod]

Thank you very much for your lectures. I just wanted to point out that you made a slight departure from praxeology as value-neutral when you criticized social engineering. Of course, I'm all for it, but I just wanted to point out that it was an evaluation of human action on your part.

[Goodatconnect4]

No problem. She's actually going chapter by chapter through Human Action by Mises, it also being free at the same site, under Literature. I asked her in a PM what book would be best to understand praxeology and she immediately recommended HA, especially the first 200 pages. What Mises did was to start off with human action and show that economics is merely a branch of this science, praxeology. He derives his entire theory from the action axiom. Currently reading it now. :D

[Cornampoo]

@Goodatconnect4 thanks for the joke and the book recommendation. :)

[Goodatconnect4]

The best way to measure degrees of satisfaction is based on a values scale taken from someone's actions. praxgirl explains with the example of a family and their use of cars in one of her episodes. Scales of value can also explain demand, supply, and prices from their roots with a more reasonable explanation than current demand schedules & supply schedules, sans explanation, from schooling- been there, trust me. A good book on this is Principles of Economics by Carl Menger for free at mises*org.

[Goodatconnect4]

Right, I know a joke that runs like this: A professor is invited to teach at a prestigious university rather than continuing teaching at his current university. He can't decide what to do. He asks a buddy who asks, "What do you mean? Write your utility function, take the derivative, and set it equal to zero." Our professor replies, "Come on, this is serious."

Consequently, do you choose going to the movie theater over reading Human Action based on how many utils you receive from doing each?

[Goodatconnect4]

Because it's purposeful behavior. If a company believes that it can predict conditions, as humans do day to day, with the aid of a price system in a marketplace, then it will try to do so in the interest of greater profits or less losses. Austrians claim that theoretical claims, if sound, are necessarily true before empirical testing: upon hearing the Pythagorean theorem in high school, did you go out in the field and perform experiments to test its validity? Or start solving triangles?