

The Moral Power of Curiosity - dctoedt
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/opinion/brooks-the-moral-power-of-curiosity.html

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Snail_Commando
>One lesson of this tale is that capitalism doesn’t really work when it relies
on the profit motive alone. If everybody is just chasing material self-
interest, the invisible hand won’t lead to well-functioning markets. It will
just lead to arrangements in which market insiders take advantage of everybody
else. Capitalism requires the full range of motivation, including the
intrinsic drive for knowledge and fairness.

Alternatively stated: 'Capitalism, as we understand it, requires that market
actors are enabled to realize the full spectrum of net-benefit desires. That
no (intrinsically good) class of human desire should be inherently privileged
relative to others. That intrinsic market biases which select for certain
classes of motivation place an "invisible tread" on those that market
machinery is not aligned for; the antithesis of the "invisible hand".'

Under the assumption that capitalism is the best means of organizing and
maximizing societal utility and productive output, people can look at the
world through the "market bias/full spectrum motivation" filter and _still_
walk away with remarkably disparate philosophical outlooks on capital market
organization.

It's troubling (or exciting, depending on your outlook) that Economics is such
a young field. The optimist would say that there is so much to be discovered.
The pessimist would say that our entire meta-organizational mechanism for the
human species is predicated on a precarious understanding of emergent systems;
an understanding with a high intellectual center of gravity. That it's wrought
by a legacy where positive and normative statements are considered, or at
least perceived, to have the same scientific (or effective) impact within the
field, and by extension, society. Not only are these types of understanding
often traded pound for pound, but this legacy provides higher dimensional
vectors of debate. A dimension that may (or may not) have any bearing in
reality or analogue in effect. Often, these vectors are political, hardened by
moral absolutism.

Statements like: "Capitalism requires the full range of motivation, including
the intrinsic drive for knowledge and fairness." and "One lesson of this tale
is that capitalism doesn’t really work when it relies on the profit motive
alone." give us a skein of understanding of societal condition. On a surface
level, they seem to be predicated on positive knowledge of market failures.
However, by the vary nature of Economics in its current state, we cannot know
how well founded these statements are. Market machinery, organizational
dynamics, philosophical market doctrine have all evolved in a universe where
positive and normative statements of understanding have historically had the
same molecular weight.

The systems, taken whole, are inherently untestable. That is not to say
Economics is doomed as a science. As a species, we are just barely figuring
out how to remove our own biases from our understanding of emergent systems.
There lies ahead a bright future for Economics. Perhaps some future Adam Smith
will yield a _Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica_ of behavioral
economics-unearthing the underlying axioms of rational and irrational action
in markets. Or perhaps some future son or daughter of ours will discover some
novel underlying geometry to (or approximation of) chaotic systems, allowing
our species to further unveil one of our oddest creations. Perhaps further
integration with high horsepower computational machines will enable us to
develop more experimental means of validation and understanding.

I suspect one thing is certain, any framework of understanding which values
normative understanding as equal to or above positive understanding will
likely end up at an intellectual local maxima. To put it melodramatically: we
may argue over the rations as the lifeboat sinks. Did I say local maxima?

Of course, I have normative beliefs. Normative outlooks are inherent to the
human condition. They are our attempt to abstract, approximate, and process
information from systems that we do not yet fully understand. But I worry that
my normative beliefs will delude me into thinking that my philosophy will help
those in need, those for whom the market has failed, when I am in fact harming
them. This is also to say that all normative beliefs aren't necessarily bad.
There are some that most people will agree with. If anything, this furthers
the need to develop a positive understanding at the foundation of those
beliefs. Imagine how much worse off we would be as a species if we dusted our
hands and decided that there 'should' be four elements, a universal aether,
lobotomy, and a moral stance against vaccination.

For what it's worth to this tangential rant, I really enjoyed this article.
Thanks for submitting.

