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Where does Subjectivity end and Objectivity begin?

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StrangeLoop:

liberty student:
Do you ever get the feeling that sometimes we're debating with people who just make it up as they go?

To claim that I am a person that "just make[s] it up" only confesses your own stupidity.

And that's okay. It's nice to have mounting evidence.

I didn't claim that you were making it up, and if your best response is to call my opinion stupidity, take it to the member issues forum because it doesn't belong on the main board and you know that.

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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EconomistInTraining:
Exactly, at least the scientific method makes explicit what it would take to reject a piece of research. On the other hand, I've always found it a weakness of Austrian economics that it's not quite clear exactly what it would take to disprove a particular theory or piece of research.

Is that a shortcoming of your understanding of AE, or AE itself?

EconomistInTraining:
And yet people still try desperate to make the facts fit their theory and presume that the ABCT is applicable to every business cycle in history.

Who are "people"?

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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StrangeLoop:
Either way, the more you wish to ridicule well-respected arguments from our most eminent philosophers, the more I'll rest confident your arguments can only reveal ignorance. (Don't worry, I already know you're about to bust out an "appeal to authority" here--of course, I have enough sense to trust reputation, which is considered even by Austrians to carry important information).

It is an appeal to authority.  It is a logical fallacy.  You knew that when you wrote it, and you wrote it anyway.

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Do you believe there is any social use for reputation? And, if so, what?

"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman

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liberty student:
I didn't claim that you were making it up, and if your best response is to call my opinion stupidity, take it to the member issues forum

Sorry, I'll use your code words from now on. I meant to say: you're very, very illogical.

"I'm not a fan of Murray Rothbard." -- David D. Friedman

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StrangeLoop:
Do you believe there is any social use for reputation? And, if so, what?

Absolutely there is a use for reputation.  Reputation (good and bad) helps us to estimate transaction costs.

That said, a reputation alone isn't proof of anything in particular.  It is at best a generalized indicator and only useful (in my opinion) if the person supporting the reputation bears the cost of the reputed one falling on their face.  For someone to appeal to Wiggenstein or Rothbard, and bear no cost if Wiggenstein or Rothbard are wrong, then I (personally) don't put a lot of stock in their opinion.  Someone like Grayson, who is my friend, and has our friendship on the line, is less likely (unless he has stopped valuing our friendship, or misinterpreted it) to squander our situation by giving me casual and unfounded references.

However, it is obvious that if 1 billion fools believe something or in someone, that doesn't make that idea or person any more true or false.

So instead of appealing to eminence and respect, share the argument or idea which is worthy of my attention and appreciation.

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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StrangeLoop:
Sorry, I'll use your code words from now on. I meant to say: you're very, very illogical.

I wasn't being illogical, but I am happy to see you make this progress.  Your rhetorical skills have a lot of room to grow.

"When you're young you worry about people stealing your ideas, when you're old you worry that they won't." - David Friedman
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z1235 replied on Fri, Oct 1 2010 9:47 PM

There's no (objective) reality other than the one which is (subjectively) perceived as such.

Z.

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