The Axiom of Choice

[BCPVP]

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There is of course valtaherra's line of objection, but I find it to be patently absurd. Anyone who believes that any person (even themselves) always knows what is best for themselves is simply deceiving themselves.

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I don't think the objection is that everyone always knows what's best for themselves. It's that you are in a better position to know what's best for yourself than someone else.

[xorbie]

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There is of course valtaherra's line of objection, but I find it to be patently absurd. Anyone who believes that any person (even themselves) always knows what is best for themselves is simply deceiving themselves.

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I don't think the objection is that everyone always knows what's best for themselves. It's that you are in a better position to know what's best for yourself than someone else.

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Again, this is meaningless. It's clearly not always true, and yet made as a general statement. Do you mean that most people mostly know what's best for themselves?

[Zygote]

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There is of course valtaherra's line of objection, but I find it to be patently absurd. Anyone who believes that any person (even themselves) always knows what is best for themselves is simply deceiving themselves.

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I don't think the objection is that everyone always knows what's best for themselves. It's that you are in a better position to know what's best for yourself than someone else.

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...and you can always choose to give power of attorney to another or divert your decision making and trust the expert opinion. No matter what this still should be your choice. You shouldn't be forced to take an expert an opinion or be forced to have your choices made by another unless you choose to. I cant see a way around this.

[xorbie]

I should add that another problem with saying that "I generally know what is best for me" is that it takes too narrow a view on the issue. It may be the case that, individually, we are all acting to maximize our utility and yet overall we end up in a far worse situation (i.e. prisoners dilemna on a mass scale both people and time wise).

The entire point that he is bringing up isn't that it's best to choose poorly given a lot of choices, it isn't that someone else knows which of 100 pairs of jeans is best for me better than I do. His point is that having 100 pairs of jeans to choose from (both literally and metaphorically) may not actually be an improvement.

[Zygote]

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I should add that another problem with saying that "I generally know what is best for me" is that it takes too narrow a view on the issue. It may be the case that, individually, we are all acting to maximize our utility and yet overall we end up in a far worse situation (i.e. prisoners dilemna on a mass scale both people and time wise).



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Have you read about the iterative prisoner's dilemma?

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The entire point that he is bringing up isn't that it's best to choose poorly given a lot of choices, it isn't that someone else knows which of 100 pairs of jeans is best for me better than I do. His point is that having 100 pairs of jeans to choose from (both literally and metaphorically) may not actually be an improvement.

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If its best to choose poorly given a lot of choices how is it better to be forced to choose poorly given fixed limited choices?

[bobman0330]

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I think a lot of you are focusing too much on the political commentary here, it's really IMO a minor part of what he's trying to say and certainly not something that necessarily follows from the first half of his talk.

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There are other points that I think are being misunderstood. I actually agree with Bobo, there's definitely a lot of that going on. What Schwartz was trying to say was that the reverse process is actually in place a lot today, i.e. doctor's asking patients what the patient wants, drug manufacturers advertising directly to patients and so forth.

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I think the problem here is definitely accentuated in the healthcare industry, which is a very weird market in the first place. Customers don't understand it, they're very emotional, they're often not paying their bills, and doctors have to worry about malpractice. I don't think the choice problem is limited to healthcare, but those things might exacerbate the issue.

As to not focusing on the politics, I will point out that your OP indicated that you felt this talk highlighted a fundamental issue with capitalism. Certainly I can agree that it's a problem capitalism must address if it is to continue to satisfy consumers, but that, IMO, is a very different thing.

[pvn]

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As to hmkpoker, interesting topic. Let's consider something else instead of happiness. Say a bunch of coal companies are doing something bad for the environment. One may say that the research focus of economics is not the environment (perhaps until someone has to pay to clean it up, and which point it can be quantized). Fair enough. This does not mean that economics of coal mining should be considered entirely seperate from the environmental effects, it simply means that something beyond the economics of the situation needs be analyzed.

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Again, economics is all about *scarce resources*. Damage done to property via pollution is damage to *scarce resources*. So environmental effects are part of economic effects. You just don't think of it that way because government regulation has obscured and distorted it.

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So, if you want to say that the study of happiness is outside the realm of economics, it doesn't really bother me much. Either economics itself must incorporate these findings or we must turn outside the field. Either way, I think this is a very important issue to be adressed.

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Except as has been previously noted, happiness is not scarce.

[Borodog]

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Interesting talk by Barry Schwartz.

I don't want to say much because it would be better to just go into without any preconcpetions, but I think this adresses some very fundamental issues with regards to capitalism.

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The market already automagically limits choices to those that people actually choose. People didn't choose the Edsel. The next year, it was not included amongst the list of choices.

Voila.

[Dan.]

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Interesting talk by Barry Schwartz.

I don't want to say much because it would be better to just go into without any preconcpetions, but I think this adresses some very fundamental issues with regards to capitalism.

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The market already automagically limits choices to those that people actually choose. People didn't choose the Edsel. The next year, it was not included amongst the list of choices.

Voila.

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[Borodog]

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Interesting talk by Barry Schwartz.

I don't want to say much because it would be better to just go into without any preconcpetions, but I think this adresses some very fundamental issues with regards to capitalism.

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The market already automagically limits choices to those that people actually choose. People didn't choose the Edsel. The next year, it was not included amongst the list of choices.

Voila.

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Exactly.