Max Sawicky wrote: >> > Methinks optimism bias is not unique to capitalism...
me: >> this is another example of the logical slip I complained about >> yesterday. I said that capitalism encourages over-confidence and you >> respond with an over-interpretation, i.e., assuming that I said that >> capitalism was the _only_ source of over-confidence. >> >> obviously, other types of society besides capitalism involved >> situations where over-confidence is needed as a psychological survival >> mechanism. But it's capitalism which tends to make those situations >> the rule. (Luckily capitalism hasn't realized that tendency >> completely; as noted, there are pre-existing institutions of other >> sorts.) Max Sawicky wrote: > It would be odd, if logically possible, for over-confidence to be separately > caused in distinct ways by different forms of society and/or economic > systems.< I didn't say anything about "distinct ways." Instead, I suggested there might be a unique way (creating individualistic situations which encourage over-confidence), that non-capitalist systems might create such situations, but that _more than other modes of production_ capitalism puts us in such situations. >... My intuition is that over-confidence is ubiquitous in both the public and >private sectors because it is a rational sort of 'irrationality.'< What is a >rational sort of 'irrationality.'< besides being prima facie an oxymoron? I guess I was using this oxymoron: I suggested that what may seem to be "irrational" from an orthodox economic perspective (over-confidence) might easily be "rational" from a more realistic perspective (a psychological survival mechanism). -- Jim Devine / "Nobody told me there'd be days like these / Strange days indeed -- most peculiar, mama." -- JL. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
