300 sats \ 7 replies \ @Undisciplined 24 Mar \ on: Debate: History is only useful to the extent that it can predict the future history
Value is subjective, which means usefulness is also subjective. History can be valuable as a pure leisure good, if nothing else.
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I'd still make the same point: subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics.
I would wager that more of the demand for history comes from it's value as entertainment than it's value for guiding decision making.
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yeah i think you’re right about people enjoying history more for the entertainment than the decision making.
for now let’s assume your only goal is to make better decisions, and let’s also replace the word “history” with “historical data”.
is there a point in collecting more historical data if at a certain point it doesn’t help you better understand the future?
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It depends on exactly what your caveats mean. Generally, we don't know which data will be useful for answering economic questions. So, the point would be that it might be valuable now or perhaps it will be useful in the future.
If subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics, doesn't that necessarily imply that the value of economics itself is subjective? In which case, we can't ever know if anything we "discover" in economics is of inherent value.
Seems to me that if subjective utility is the fundamental insight of economics then we can't know if anything in economics is non-subjectively useful? In which case, why study it?
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Because we're human beings and it helps us understand things we want to understand. Most people don't study economics, btw, because they don't value it enough to do so.
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