I am not sure what to make of criticisms of Seattle meetups (they appear correct, but I am not sure if they are relevant; see my comment there).
Not planning to write a proper post, but here is an example blog post of Peters which I found illustrative and demonstrates why I think the “ergodicity way of thinking” might have something in it: https://ergodicityeconomics.com/2020/02/26/democratic-domestic-product/ . In summary, looking at the aggregate ensemble quantity such GDP per capita does not tell much what happens to individuals in the ensemble: the typical individual experienced growth in population in general is not related to GDP growth per capita (which may be obvious to a numerate person but not necessarily so, given the importance given to GDP in public discussion). And if one takes average of exponential growth rate, one obtains a measure (geometric mean income that they dub “DDP”) known in economics literature, but originally derived otherwise.
But maybe this looks insightful to me because I am not that very well-versed in economics literature, so it would be nice to have some critical discussion about this.
I am not versed in economics literature, so I can’t meet your need. But I have also encountered ergodicity economics, and thought it was interesting because it had good motivations.
I am skeptical for an entirely different reason; I encountered ergodic theory beforehand in the context of thermodynamics, where it has been harshly criticized. I instinctively feel like if we can do better in thermodynamics, we can employ the same math to do better in other areas.
Of course this isn’t necessarily true: ergodic theory might cleave reality better when describing an economy than gas particles; there is probably a significant difference between the economics version and the thermodynamics version; the criticism of ergodic theory might be ass-wrong (I don’t think it is, but I’m not qualified enough for strong confidence).
Howdy. I came across Ole Peters’ “ergodicity economics” some time ago, and was interested to see what LW made of it. Apparently one set of skeptical journal club meetup notes: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gptXmhJxFiEwuPN98/meetup-notes-ole-peters-on-ergodicity
I am not sure what to make of criticisms of Seattle meetups (they appear correct, but I am not sure if they are relevant; see my comment there).
Not planning to write a proper post, but here is an example blog post of Peters which I found illustrative and demonstrates why I think the “ergodicity way of thinking” might have something in it: https://ergodicityeconomics.com/2020/02/26/democratic-domestic-product/ . In summary, looking at the aggregate ensemble quantity such GDP per capita does not tell much what happens to individuals in the ensemble: the typical individual experienced growth in population in general is not related to GDP growth per capita (which may be obvious to a numerate person but not necessarily so, given the importance given to GDP in public discussion). And if one takes average of exponential growth rate, one obtains a measure (geometric mean income that they dub “DDP”) known in economics literature, but originally derived otherwise.
But maybe this looks insightful to me because I am not that very well-versed in economics literature, so it would be nice to have some critical discussion about this.
I am not versed in economics literature, so I can’t meet your need. But I have also encountered ergodicity economics, and thought it was interesting because it had good motivations.
I am skeptical for an entirely different reason; I encountered ergodic theory beforehand in the context of thermodynamics, where it has been harshly criticized. I instinctively feel like if we can do better in thermodynamics, we can employ the same math to do better in other areas.
Of course this isn’t necessarily true: ergodic theory might cleave reality better when describing an economy than gas particles; there is probably a significant difference between the economics version and the thermodynamics version; the criticism of ergodic theory might be ass-wrong (I don’t think it is, but I’m not qualified enough for strong confidence).