JJ: Which is more efficient:1) a car that costs $100 million in terms of other possible goods and is assured of never killing anyone
2) a car that costs $100 in terms of other possible goods and kills on average 100 motorists per year
There is no right or wrong answer. Some will value the first as a more efficient use of their resources while others the second. Technology can never tell us "the best" use of our available resources as "the best" is always a value judgement encumbent upon human beings for its existence. Science and technology can only let us know of our available options; there are no 'essential' measuremetns of value.
Qx: Hmmmm........that’s really interesting since I’ve come across some similar material in a text that would otherwise not even touch upon thre subject. for starts, I’ll type out a bit of an intro to get the readers familiar with what I’m saying. Then I’ll really start blasting.
There was once a guy named George Kelly. He was a phenomenological psychologist. (Can you say that real fast five times?). He designed what was called "personal construct theory" and a corollary to that was what he termed the ["sociality corollary", which holds that if you wish to understand another person, you must understand his or her personal construct or view of the world; you must understand the world through that person’s eyes. Actions that appear incomprehensible or even evil can make sense, Kelly believed, if you can see them from the point of view of the person who did them. In addition, Kelly believed that helping the client to achieve self-understanding was the primary duty of a psychotherapist, and his Rep ( Role Construct Repertory Test) test was designed to be a tool psychotherapists could use for doing that.]
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CONSTRUALS AND REALITY
The basic lesson of Kelly’s theory is that any pattern of experience can lead to numerous construals- perhaps an infinite number. That means the construal you have is the one you chose, not one that was forced upon you, because others were equally possible. Kelly called this view constructive alternativism, which means that your personal reality does not simply exist; it is constructed in your mind. Furthermore, there are always alternative ways you could choose to construct reality, besides the way youhappen to be using at this moment.
This lesson has far-reaching implications. Kelly’s theory draws on a part of the philosophy of science that scientists themselves forget. Scientific paradigms are different frameworks for construing the meaning the meaning of data. The basic approaches to personality considered in this book- trait, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, and so on- are paradigms in that sense. Each is perfectly sensible, I believe, and each is consistent with the data it regards as important, but also represents a choice: to focus on some aspects of human psychology and to ignore others. This implies two things about scientific paradigms: (1) The between them is not between which is right and which wrong, but rather of which one addresses the topic you are interested in understanding; and (2) you need all of them, because any one of them always leaves out something important.*
There are many other systems of constructs, or paradigms, to which the same two lessons apply. Most of us have developed systems of belief that affect how we interpret and understand politics, and morality, and economics, and many other important matters. These belief systems are useful and even necessary, but a myopic devotion to just one paradigm can make us forget (or worse, deny) that other construals of reality- other belief systems- are equally plausible. (Note: My italics.)
My personal favorite example concerns the economic concept of "opportunity costs," which in my opinion (according to my personal belief system) is one of the most dangerous ideas ever invented. The concept deals with this question of what something costs. The lay person’s answer to this question is that the cost of something is the amount of resources required to get it. A second and different answer, however, is taught in business schools: the cost of something is the difference between what it brings you and what you could have gotten had you spent your resources on something else. The mdifference between these two figures is not your ordinary cost, but your opportunity cost.
These two definitions of cost derive from two different construals of the goal of economic life. The first construes the goal as doing what you want as long as you pay for it. This is sometimes called a "satisficing" goal. The second maintains that you must maximize your gain, and that unless you make as much money as possible you have failed. This is an "optimizing" goal. Both goals are reasonable, but different, and neither is intrinsically right or wrong. Yet business schools often teach the second goal as being sophisticated and correct, and the first as hopelessly naive. (My italics)
The consequences of one’s construal can be real and concrete. A few years ago, I read an article in the Boston Globe about a mom-and-pop grocery store located on the ground floor of a building in Beacon Hill, which has developed into a fashionable neighborhood in recent years. the store, which had been there for decades, was being evicted. The longtime owner of the building had discovered that he could get more rent from a clothing boutique. When neighbors protested, the owner said, apparently with a straight face, "I couldn’t afford to keep that grocery store there any longer with property values going up so high."
This viewpoint is the reverse of a remarkably silly television commercial that an automobile maker ran a few years ago. The theme of the commercial was "What will you do with the money you save by buying our car?" In one ad, a happy woman says that with the money she saved, she is going to Hawaii!
I have news for this person: Nobody ever went to Hawaii with the money saved by buying a car. The news for the Boston landlord is, nobody ever went broke from opportunity costs. You can choose to think about these situations that way, but you are kidding yourself if you think you are getting rich by spending money, or getting poor by not collecting as much money as possible.
The Boston landlord and the car buyer in the commercial had each absorbed a particular construct about money and come to think of the construct as real. The result was a behavior on the part of the landlord that was immoral from the perspective of another construct system, and an action on the part of the car buyer that was silly according to a different construct system. Beware of the construals of reality taught in business school,in science classes, or anywhere else (including this book); other construals are also possible and you have the ability , and the right, and perhaps even the duty to choose your own.(1)
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JJ: The person you quoted seems to competely and fundamentally misunderstand the issues discussed and advanced by the Chicago School.
Qx: Oh really? I have a feeling that you’re so enamored of the mystique of the Chicago School of Economics that anything that is anywhere close to critiquing and analyzing thoroughly the implications of their hoary doctrines is basically heresy. The issue certainly has a religious nature to it and what you’re basically doing is attempting to trivialize the harm that the Chicago School has done to millions of people worldwide.
You’re basically freaking out because what John Ralston Saul is doing is unraveling this supposedly Holy of Holies and showing it to be a sham that obfuscates material reality by abstracting the sufferings of people into statistical formulae that can supposedly be blown away with the wind. Their (and your) attempts at trivialization is just that. Trivialization. And without much counter-examples to show at that.
If there are issues advanced and discussed by the Chicago School then it should be apparent that numerology that has been abstracted to hysterical levels is hardly what could be called "science".
Physics Envy- A condition that both economists and psychologists share. they seem to employ analogies between their filds of study and the "harder sciences" in attempts to justify the former by trading off of the prestige of the latter.
The psychologists (in general) are aware of this particular malady and take pains to avoid this state. Most economists seem to enjoy their ignorance of "physics envy". Especially the neo-classical variety. Hothouse conditions that shield them from outdoor realities have created hybrids at the Chicago School. This allows for anti-social and amoral ideas to take hold. If they had been exposed to natural conditions this conditioned way of thinking would not have developed to the point of becoming a adjunct to a secular religion.- Quincunx (1999)
JJ: Implicit in the whole post was that the particular person speaking knows 'what's best' for the human race as a whole.
Qx: Interesting isn’t it? In a clinical setting this could be called projection by some. Please tell me Joel. Are you an inducted member of this priesthood that sees the planet as a widget factory or are you just trying to show all the readers that you can plumb the depths of foolishness better than any other pro-capitalist who has ever posted on this little ol’ bulletin board?
What John Ralston Saul has done is question the doctrines and motives of the Chicago School of Economics. He doesn’t know or even claim to know what’s best for the human race as a whole. His methodology is Socratic in nature and if you even have a bit of honesty within you you might try to read his works instead of attempting to “read into” them. Which is what you’ve obviously made a habit of doing.
NOTES
* This does not mean they can or need all be applied simultaneously; that exercise would
lead only to incoherence. Rather, one needs to apply the appropriate paradigm for the
questions at hand while keeping the rest in reserve, lest the question of interest change.(1) Funder, David C.-The Personality Puzzle (1997). New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
