Hayek’s ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ – Simplified

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Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

Hayek writes:

[P]rices can act to coördinate [sic] the separate actions of different people in the same way as subjective values help the individual to coördinate the parts of his plan.

Hayek argues that any one man always knows very little about the economy as a whole. But the price system will tell him the little he does need to know.

I wonder how far the similarities between the economy and a single mind go. If the price system is a way for parts of a decentralized system to communicate, and the mind is a decentralized system, does the mind have something like a price system for its different parts to communicate?

A mind is vast, full of ideas. Any part of it always knows very little about the rest. In this sense, ideas in a mind are like men in an economy. So how do these ideas coordinate efficiently? Do emotions act like a price system inside the mind? Ayn Rand writes:

Emotions are the automatic results of man's value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man's values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

The fun criterion is surely relevant in this context, too. Hayek writes that a rational economic order is about “conveying to the individuals such additional knowledge as they need in order to enable them to fit their plans with those of others.” That sounds like common-preference finding, which essentially works the same across minds as it does within a single mind.

Are prices inside the mind involved in finding common preferences?

Criticized1*
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

In our book club today, @erik-orrje raised the issue of split personalities.

I’m wildly speculating here, but I wonder if split personalities could be the result of the price mechanism inside a mind being broken.

If the price mechanism is needed for different parts of the mind to communicate with each other, and this mechanism breaks down somehow, then the parts become isolated.

Knut Sondre Sæbø’s avatar
Knut Sondre Sæbø revised 1 day ago·#3678
2nd of 3 versions

It seems more plausible to me that this actually is more like the division of a mind. They often recall meeting each other in dreams (seeing the other alters from their local perspective within the dream). So it seems that the split goes further, and actually gives rise to different experiences within a mind. They live and experience from different perspectives, and start communicating with each other more like distinct minds. In split-brain patients, the left and right hemispheres can disagree on what clothing to wear in the morning, and physically fight over wearing a tie or not.

Criticism of #3510Criticized3
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

It seems more plausible to me that this …

Unclear what “this” refers to.

Criticism of #3678
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

I’m not sure I understand how this idea is a criticism of #3510. They sound compatible. A broken price mechanism, if bad enough, causes the division you speak of.

Criticism of #3678
Dennis Hackethal’s avatar

the other alters

This part sounds redundant (‘other others’). Also, ‘alter’ can’t be used as a noun, only as a verb (meaning ‘to change’).

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Knut Sondre Sæbø’s avatar
Knut Sondre Sæbø, 36 minutes ago·#3740

Just referring here to alters as the clinical word for 'the other dissociated personalities

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Knut Sondre Sæbø’s avatar
Knut Sondre Sæbø, 38 minutes ago·#3739

Superseded by #3738. This comment was generated automatically.

Criticism of #3678