/sci/ - Science & Math

The handbooks in economics series is very good, but expensive and hard to get at. Your university library probably has some.

>>4992225

How the hell did Marxism bring that about? I'd like you to point out where Marx argued that Idealism is equal to Materialism.

>>4630970

Why do you hate Economics? It's a fascinating discipline offering rich mathematical insights into strategic behaviour and rationality, and yet all you can do is masturbate to the Economics equivalent of Creation Science.

>>4577260

>In the economic sense, retard. The same economic sense that you never admit is real. The same economic sense that governs ALL residential construction.

Suppose I decide to build an underwater hotel. There are plenty of rich people with too much money to spend, so let's assume for the sake of argument that it's a profitable venture.

I need people to work that hotel. Of course, I could just send them in for shifts at a time, but it would be cheaper just to have them living there all the time. Which is fortunate, because clearly there are volunteers.

>>4576933

I'm one of those who believes in controlling variables.

Crazy behaviour on a science board, I know.

> It's laughable, known to be completely ineffective, and open to complete manipulation of the people.

If we ignore the effect of inbreeding, a monarchy will, on average, yield a leader as capable as the median citizen, whereas many have argued that in many cases elections produce worse. A monarch is also immune to the effects of lobbying and mass hysteria, and thus produces a more stable form of government. So while there are many reasons why we tend not to give monarchs a lot of power today, the institution is by no means "laughable" nor "completely ineffective". It is a robust form of government that outperforms others in many circumstances.

>How long do you think it will take until a similar revelation comes in terms of the modern bastardization of Democracy and Republics? What do you think will inevitably follow the fall of these two major types of governments?

The next big development, I hope, is that citizens will become less squeamish about randomisation. of course this is not really "progress", as the original democracies all had this characteristic, but we seem to have lost it. For instance, suppose we have a very close election where the winner is determined by a handful of votes. In today's society this will spark counts and recounts, none of which will be conclusive because the margin of error of the counting process is greater than the margin of victory. A much more efficient way of resolving a close election is by flipping a weighted coin, but voters today will never accept that.

>Secondly, what economic system best serves such a settlement? Assume most employment comes from a large cluster of undersea fish farms of the sort built today by Kona Blue, as well as a Flexblue undersea nuclear reactor and a gulf stream turbine plus various wave power installations.

I think it's more reasonable to assume most employment will come from some primary industry: tourism or mining. The colony obviously won't be self sustaining for a long time; fuel for the nuclear reactor, building materials, clothing, amenities would need to be imported and presumably the initial investment would need to be repaid.

In which case the economic system would likely be the same as in most frontier industrial settlements, corporate central planning.

>>4542486

Stanford's holding an online game theory course right now. It's a good introduction to one of the pillars of rigorous economics.

But in general the textbooks I came across are not very good. Of course any first year textbook is valuable simply because it will introduce you to the language of the field, but it won't offer much beyond that. Can't give you more advice than that off the top of my head, sorry.

>>4542475

It's a good analogy, but there is the extra difficulty of the fact that the field is more politically relevant than physics. So over and above the problem of explaining the macrocosm using the limited means we have, there is the issue that the powers that be have very specific notions of what such a macrocosm should look like, every Joe and Jill at the voting booth thinks they understand how it works, and there is no reliable way for the layman to spot the difference between a scientific approach to the issue and charlatanry.

>>4542420

If you look at formal, rigorous microeconomics then you'll find that there really aren't any "schools of thought" at that level, and everything is relatively unambiguous. Not to say we understand everything, but at least we have some consensus on how we can come to understand.

The schools appear when you look at the bigger picture. The models become more complicated, and there is disagreement on what the best way to extrapolate the conclusions of microeconomics is, or whether we should bother at all.

In short, folk like Keynesians and Monetarists disagree on which the appropriate mathematical assumptions are, whereas Austrians think they can get by without mathematics at all. (They can't).

>>4531357

I'd like to see you prove that property rights solve the tragedy of the commons in the absence of utility maximising behaviour.

>>4531346

You can't have it both ways, moron.

You assume perfect rationality because you want to prove markets work as you claim (not that I dare suppose you ever hazarded a formal proof). Then you quickly relax the assumption and introduce some irrational parental sentiment because you don't want to accept the consequences of fully rational behaviour, and hope that no one notices.

>>4531333

Well, yes. We're assuming perfectly rational agents, right? So the owner is maximising his own utility, not his son's. If his son's happiness increases his utility he will of course keep his son happy, AS LONG AS HE'S STILL ALIVE. In the last moment before death it's perfectly rational to spend all his resources on crack and hookers because as soon as he dies his son's happiness is no longer relevant.

>>4531325

And what if the owner has a finite lifespan?

>>4495365

Essentially. You should also add relative stability of environment - if the socially optimal balance of skillsets changes every day, then obviously we would want most individuals to be sufficiently general to switch without much loss in productivity.

Just bear in mind that all those variables need to be interpreted locally. The amount of farmers we have has no bearing on how specialised our number theorists should be.

In that vein, giving researchers, especially from the more abstract disciplines, a general education I feel is always a good idea, because they find themselves precisely in the sort of area our assumptions fail. Things change rapidly, there aren't that many people in the field, funding can be sparse and the relative productive lifespan of an academic in most fields is very high. The problem is triaging between students whom we want to induct into research, and those that belong in the workforce.

>>4495316

>It's merely only a hop, skip and jump from that simple scenario to realize that general specialization is optimal in all scenarios.

The problem with hopping, skipping and jumping is that it doesn't take long to find yourself outside of the assumptions your theorems are based on.

Consider the scenario where you have a single man on a deserted island.

>>4470832

The odds of the US defaulting are rather low. But the interest rates are nothing to write home about.

If you really are worried about security, don't put a bunch of your money into anything. Diversify. If you're interested in the long run, safe bets are things like land, forestry and mining the demand for which isn't going to go away any time soon. Otherwise, pick something you feel good about, I guess.

>What would happen to US bonds if the US did default under President Palin?

You will lose your money. No power in the world can force the United States to liquidify its assets to honour something as petty as legal obligations. Only small states are vulnerable to gunboat diplomacy.

>>4067630

As yet, batteries are highly inefficient. If we could make efficient batteries, we would resolve the peak/off peak problem of electricity production.

Your joint probability formula is off.

<span class="math">P(A,B)=P(B)P(A|B)[/spoiler].

If humans move on to colonise other planets, it is likely that there will be relatively little mixing between the different planet dwellers. Unless the selective pressures are the same on all planets, we can expect the emergence of distinct breeds of man on different worlds, just like geographical separation caused on Earth.

>>4065597

Well logn is smaller than n. So nlogn is smaller than n^2. So if you find a c such that cn^2>4n^2+10n^2, it's also greater than 4n^2+10nlogn.

You should get an intuitive feel for the growth rate of functions after a course or two. I'm guessing you didn't do any proper maths courses?

>>4065362

Give an example of a c and an <span class="math">n_0[/spoiler] such that <span class="math">4n^2 + 10n\log n - 10<cn^2[/spoiler] for all <span class="math">n>n_0[/spoiler] to get the upper bound, then flip the inequality for a lower bound.

>>4064339

FIFO is not a stack, it's a queue. Let's say you have three frames. With FIFO, the first page fault would go into frame 0, the second into frame 1, the third into frame 2, the fourth into frame 0 and so on.

>>3958133

>The gist of it is: If you are playing a game with other people and the other people have the potential to lie, cheat, and steal, it is ALLWAYS in your best interest to lie, cheat, and steal yourself

Well that's just not true, is it. Players can often obtain an advantage for themselves by committing themselves to an honest policy. Consider the "chicken" game.

Two cars are driving towards each other. Each car has two strategies available: swerve (to the left, to avoid complications) out of the way, or drive straight. If both drive straight they crash and take -1000 utility. If one swerves one drives straight the one that drives straight gains 10 utility, the one that swerves -10. If both swerve, both take -5. Without commitments, there are two equilibria, were one player swerves and one does not. But there is no way of telling which outcome we'll end up in. If the players are both risk averse, it's quite likely they will both swerve. If they like to gamble, we might see a crash. Neither is outcome is optimal for you: you want to drive straight, and for the other guy to swerve.

Consider, instead, the Stackelberg equilibrium. You announce, sincerely, that you are going to drive straight, and commit yourself to that policy. The other player knowing this has only two outcomes available: they can swerve and take -10, or drive straight and take -1000. So by being honest you gain the first mover advantage and can force the equilibrium you want.