On 11/5/2011 3:31 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:
I discovered a book written in 1948 that explains why the Keynesian
theories don't work - he describes what he calls the "broken window
fallacy"...
Actually, no, the author gives an argument that Keynesian theories don't work; whether that argument is sound (as you uncritically assume) it is quite another thing entirely. There are any number of strong Keynesian responses to the so-called broken window fallacy, a darling of libertarians and free-market fundamentalists everywhere. (For one thing, it assumes that the shopkeeper isn't sitting on a pile of money; for another, it assumes that the amount of money in the economy is a fixed constant; for another, it uses an example — fixing a broken window — where the purchase doesn't have any secondary, long term economic benefits — unlike, e.g., repairing infrastructure on which goods are shipped, developing sustainable domestic energy sources, building and expanding high-speed networks, etc).
I hope that helps stimulate more discussion of the role of self interest in AI and in ontology developments.
Seems to me its only purpose was to serve as an excuse for you to evangelize for your conservative economic and political philosophies. There are vastly better, more objective sources in the psychological and philosophical literature for studying self-interest that don't promote a particular economic or philosophical agenda.