Oh, once again I think I see a misconception. I have no expectation that everything be valued or priced in dollars. Value (to each agent) is multidimensional, and costs (resources used) are multidimensional, not always even with the same dimensions. Money is just one flattening of a small set of dimensions, and does not capture anywhere near everything about a preference. Values flatten only in an actor’s decision of which future universe-state they prefer, and for that purpose value is unitless and only ordinally-comparable.
The cost of playing a game is that you won’t experience the universe where you didn’t play that game. You trade one universe for another with each decision you make. Whether money is involved is a tiny subset of that decision.
It seems to me like Zvi’s trying to use the commonsense meaning of “trade” with all of its connotational loading and built-in implicit biases, to describe a common cluster of actual human behavior, and compare that with sacredness, and you’re getting hung up on the fact that you want to use the word in a more formal way that doesn’t commit to those connotations.
I keep seeing you defend the coherence of the way you use the concept. I grant that it’s coherent, at least locally, but attention spent on that is attention not spent on engaging with what Zvi is actually trying to say. Asking for clarification can be a way to build a solid basis for interaction, but we’ve pretty much just repeated the exchange we had here.
I wonder if you (and maybe Zvi) are confusing “trade” with “market”. I make no claims that any given market is capable of generating a “correct price” for any given individual trade, or even that such a concept is coherent. Instead, each trade is idiosyncratic to the involved parties and their particular valuations of the actions or objects exchanged.
Oh, once again I think I see a misconception. I have no expectation that everything be valued or priced in dollars. Value (to each agent) is multidimensional, and costs (resources used) are multidimensional, not always even with the same dimensions. Money is just one flattening of a small set of dimensions, and does not capture anywhere near everything about a preference. Values flatten only in an actor’s decision of which future universe-state they prefer, and for that purpose value is unitless and only ordinally-comparable.
The cost of playing a game is that you won’t experience the universe where you didn’t play that game. You trade one universe for another with each decision you make. Whether money is involved is a tiny subset of that decision.
It seems to me like Zvi’s trying to use the commonsense meaning of “trade” with all of its connotational loading and built-in implicit biases, to describe a common cluster of actual human behavior, and compare that with sacredness, and you’re getting hung up on the fact that you want to use the word in a more formal way that doesn’t commit to those connotations.
I keep seeing you defend the coherence of the way you use the concept. I grant that it’s coherent, at least locally, but attention spent on that is attention not spent on engaging with what Zvi is actually trying to say. Asking for clarification can be a way to build a solid basis for interaction, but we’ve pretty much just repeated the exchange we had here.
I wonder if you (and maybe Zvi) are confusing “trade” with “market”. I make no claims that any given market is capable of generating a “correct price” for any given individual trade, or even that such a concept is coherent. Instead, each trade is idiosyncratic to the involved parties and their particular valuations of the actions or objects exchanged.
FYI this was helpful to me and apologies if I was rounding you off to a stereotype.