It means, in this context, “the first word of the technical term ‘ideal money’ which Flinter has been using, and which I am hoping at some point he will give us his actual definition of”.
Ideal, the standard definition, means implies that it is conceptual.
You began by saying this:
I would like to suggest, as a blanket observation and proposal, that most of these difficult problems described, especially on a site like this, are easily solvable with the introduction of an objective and ultra-stable metric for valuation.
which, as I said at the time, looks at least as much like “There is such a metric” as like “Let’s explore the consequences of having such a metric”. Then later you said “It converges on money” (not, e.g., “it and money converge on a single coherent metric of value”). Then when asked whether you were saying that Nash has actually found an incorruptible measure of value, you said yes.
Yes he did and he explains it perfectly. And its a device, I introduced into the dialogue and showed how it is to be properly used.
I appreciate that when asked explicitly whether such a thing exists you say no. But you don’t seem to be taking any steps to avoid giving the impression that it’s already around.
It’s conceptual in nature.
Nope. But you introduced this whole business in the context of AI value alignment, and the possible relevance of your (interpretation of Nash’s) proposal to the Less Wrong community rests partly on its applicability to that sort of problem.
Yup we’ll get to that.
I’m here discussing this stuff with you. I am not (so far as I am aware) ignoring anything you say. What exactly is your objection? That I didn’t, as soon as you mentioned John Nash, go off and spend a week studying his thoughts on this matter before responding to you? I have read the Nash lecture you linked, and also his earlier paper on Ideal Money published in the Southern Economic Journal. What do you think I am ignoring, and why do you think I am ignoring it?
Nope, those are past sentiments, my new ones are I appreciate the dialogue.
But your question is an odd one. It seems to be asking, more or less, “How dare you have interests and priorities that differ from mine?”. I hope it’s clear that that question isn’t actually the sort that deserves an answer.
Yes but its a product of never actual entering sincere dialogue with intelligent players on the topic of Ideal Money so I have to be sharp when we are not addressing it and instead addressing complex subject, AI, in relation to Ideal Money but before understanding Ideal Money (which is FAR more difficult to understand than AI).
I think I understand the nature of money OK, but I’m not sure I understand what you are saying about it. “A money”? Do you mean a currency, or do you mean a monetary valuation of a good, or something else? What is “the general market”, in a world where there are lots and lots of different markets, many of which use different currencies? In the language I speak, “propriety” mostly means “the quality of being proper” which seems obviously not to be your meaning. It also (much less commonly) means “ownership”, which seems a more likely meaning, but I’m not sure what it actually means to say “money is ownership”. Would you care to clarify?
Why aren’t you using generally accepted definitions?
the state or quality of conforming to conventionally accepted standards of behavior or morals. the details or rules of behavior conventionally considered to be correct. the condition of being right, appropriate, or fitting.
Yes money can mean many things, but if we thing of the purpose of it and how and why it exists it is effectively that thing which we all generally agree on. If one or two people play a different game that doesn’t invalidate the money. Money serves a purpose that involves all of us supporting it through unwritten social contract. There is nothing else that serves that purpose better. It is the nature of money.
It seems to me entirely different from your earlier statements to which I was replying. Perhaps everything will become clearer when you explain more carefully what you mean by “A money is chosen by the general market, it is propriety”.
Money is the general accepted form of exchange. There is nothing here to investigate, its a simple statement.
Clearly our difficulties of communication run both ways. I have told you neither of those things. I like money a great deal, and while indeed not everyone uses it (there are, I think, some societies around that don’t use money) it’s close enough to universally used for most purposes. (Though not everyone uses the same money, of course.)
Yes.
I genuinely don’t see how to get from anything I have said to “you don’t like money therefore not everyone uses it”.
Money has the quality that it is levated by our collective need for an objective value metric. But if I say “our” and someone says “well you are wrong because not EVERYONE uses money” then I won’t engage with them because they are being dumb.
I think, again, some clarification is called for. When you spoke of “converging on money”, you surely didn’t just mean that (almost) everyone uses money. The claim I thought you were making, in context, was something like this: “If we imagine people getting smarter and more rational without limit, their value systems will necessarily converge to a particular limit, and that limit is money.” (Which, in turn, I take to mean something like this: to decide which of X and Y is better, compute their prices and compare numerically.) It wasn’t clear at the time what sort of “money” you meant, but you said explicitly that the results are knowable and had been found by John Nash. All of this goes much, much further than saying that we all use money, and further than saying that we have (or might in the future hope to have) a consistent set of prices for tradeable goods.
We all converge to money and to use a single money, it is the nature of the universe. It is obvious money will bridge us with AI and help us interact. And yes this convergence will be such that we will solve all complex problems with it, but we need it to be stable to begin to do that.
So in the future, you will do what money tells you. You won’t say, I’m going to do something that doesn’t procure much money, because it will be the irrational thing to do.
It would be very helpful if you would say clearly and explicitly what you mean by saying that values “converge on money”.
Does everyone believe in Christianity? Does everyone converge on it? Does everyone converge on their beliefs in the after life?
No but the nature of money is such that its the one thing we all agree on. Again telling me no we don’t just shows you are stupid. This is an obvious point, it is the purpose of money, and I’m not continuing on this path of dialogue because its asinine.
I mentioned my own attitudes not in order to say “I am a counterexample, therefore your universal generalization is false” but to say “I am a counterexample, and I see no reason to think I am vastly atypical, therefore your universal generalization is probably badly false”. I apologize if that wasn’t clear enough.
Yes you live in a reality in which you don’t acknowledge money, and I am supposed to believe that. You don’t use money, you don’t get paid in money, you don’t buy things with money, you don’t save money. And I am supposed to think you are intelligent for pretending this?
We all agree on money, it is the thing we all converge on. Here is the accepted definition of converge:
tend to meet at a point. approximate in the sum of its terms toward a definite limit.
Nash put forth his strategy for such. Seems kinda stupid to ignore it.