----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"The allocation of the epithet 'rational' on the part of neoclassical economists has been a defalcation on a grand scale: as we have argued, they have altogether overlooked the prevalence of price as ratio as one of the prime bits of evidence that market operations have been restricted to limited subset of mathematics - eminently computable mathematics - so that humans can feel free to impose any interpretation or construction they wish on economic events." (565) Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, 2002 ============================================ "I think recent work in computational complexity theory raises the possibility that there may be another "critical mass" for a knowledge representation, a maximum size threshold above which belief systems must in effect disintegrate. For a representation to qualify as being understood by an epistemic agent, the agent must be able to perceive an adequate proportion of the interrelations among elements of a set. Otherwise, the agent will not be able to identify and eliminate enough of the inconsistencies that arise...The range of intractability results leads one to wonder in turn whether knowledge systems of some finite size may be so computationally unwieldy in this way as to shatter...[Christopher Cherniak "Minimal Rationality," 128]
