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VMG

> The point of economics is that it keeps us alive so we can do math

The most hacker news comment I read all year

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It reminded me of a quote from Stephen King [0] "life is not a support system for art; it's the other way around".

[0] beautifully rendered as a short comic here https://zenpencils.com/comic/king/

That's a beautiful comic, thanks for sharing.

I love it, though. Perhaps the more general statement “the point of economics is that it keeps us alive so we can appreciate beauty” would be more universally agreed to.

The specificity gives it a funny edge though. If I were a math student I'd print it and put it on my wall.

That seems like a circular dependency...

Can you do economics without math?

Modern macroeconomists will disagree.

I notice you don't seem to have dared to say you disagree — would you say that the point of consciousness is to make money?

No. But there are things besides money and math. Like photography!

I thought the point of photography was primarily so that you (people, in general, not necessarily just you individually) could look at the photos, i.e., experience them consciously, and secondarily to consciously experience the process of photography itself. But perhaps you have a different reason for considering photography worthwhile, other than the conscious experience of the photographs and of the photography process? Or do you consider photography to be a good-in-itself, even if nobody ever sees the photos or experiences the process of taking them?

I just like the smell of the chemicals (yes, I know).

> i.e., experience them consciously, and secondarily to consciously experience the process of photography itself. > other than the conscious experience of the photographs and of the photography process?

Is there a way of unconsciously experiencing these things?

None that I'm conscious of.

Hmm, I'm uncomfortable with the conflation of consciousness, awareness, sapience, and cognition.

Also, most crucially, experience — qualia. How would you formulate the relations among these five possibly different things?

Sure, various systems can use photographs to automatically do useful stuff like pea sorting even if a person is never aware of individual photos.

That sounds like a means to making money, not a viable third alternative.

It’s not just cheaper products, self driving cars are another advantage to machines taking and interpreting their own photos.

Extend this to asteroid tracking and it may be the difference between human survival and extinction.

Again, you are offering ways that photography can be a useful means to an end that we previously accept as good for other reasons, not ways that photography can be a good in itself. Suppose the humans were already extinct; would you then consider it a good in itself for machines to be taking and interpreting photos? Would you set up a video camera with a solar panel in a park, endlessly taking 60 photos per second, then deleting them, because photography is good even if nobody looks at it and it produces nothing else outside of itself?

I am fond of the humans and so I would like them to survive, but only because that is a means for them to be conscious, at least in some cases.

Efficiency can turn something from useless to useful, which means the outcome is not inherently useful.

Thus if photography is required and the only thing that makes it possible then it as a means becomes and end to it's self.

Consider, in a pure nitrogen environment animals will suffocate under no great distress. The goal has become separated from the result.

You seem to be unclear on the distinction between means and ends, which is to say, instrumental and terminal values.

A legacy that lives past humanity seems better than one that does not. If something views or does not view that legacy is effectively irrelevant as humans would never know.

PS: As to your final central point, some feel keeping a loved one alive even if they never recover consciousness is a net good.

Higher quality affordable lenses yield more conscious enjoyment of photographs. Hence the question of economic applicability.

Your comment seems to be an attempt to answer my questions, but I can't figure out how it relates to them. Do you have a different reason for considering photography worthwhile, other than the conscious experience of the photographs and of the photography process? Or do you consider photography to be a good-in-itself, even if nobody ever sees the photos or experiences the process of taking them?

Photography can be likened to painting, it's a form of art.

There's more to life than either math or money, haha. I think a lot of people might fit something in there about friends, family, or community. Spiritual growth maybe?

There's options.

I venture to say that spiritual growth is part of consciousness — that is, it's "math and thinking in other ways", which is of course what I said above, not "math".

As for friends, family, and community, what is it that gives friendship value, if not your conscious experience of the friendship, and your friend's? Could you coherently call something a good friendship if neither friend enjoys it or improves their thinking from it? The same questions generalize to family and community, though in more complex ways.

Although I agree with your main point (it's closer to the truth that the point of economics is so that we can do mathematics, than the other way around), perhaps it can be refined to incorporate the fact that not all experience is cognitive; not all enjoyment is intellectual. The feeling of joy/bliss/whatever from being with friends and family, of doing a job well, of leaving a legacy, of having good health, dignity, curiosity, material comfort, relationships, spiritual growth, having a good “life story” for oneself / serving some higher purpose etc (everything on “Maslow's hierarchy“), are not always cognitive or even conscious in nature, though some (like curiosity) tend to be.

The Greeks used the word eudaimonia for this highest / all-encompassing utility function (the experience that everything is in service of: the “point”); in Indian thought it's called ānanda. But yeah, making money is only a means to it, and not the point. (Even this understanding can get clouded. In Indian thought, “religion” only posits a higher ānanda that can be obtained by experience of the divine, without denying the everyday sorts of joy that resemble it. In Western thought, influenced by the monotheistic religions with their opposition between true and false, the fact that neither money nor comfort is the highest good gets reflected in ideas like “money is the root of all evil” or “Happiness versus Meaning” that tend to vilify them in order to counter our impulses towards them, rather than recognize them as being partial means to some components of happiness. It's fine; whatever works I guess.)

PS: Totally offtopic, but thanks for your transcript of Knuth's Web of Stories interview!

Glad you enjoyed it!

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