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That… does not seem like a historically accurate account of the formation and growth of cities.

I don’t say that you’re wrong, necessarily, but what would you say is an example of something that “has the form of a Ponzi scheme”, but is actually a change that enables permanently faster growth?

This is in reference to the Luddites, I suppose? If so, “some people’s jobs being automated” is rather a glib description of the early effects of industrialization. There was considerable disruption and chaos, which, indeed, is “doom”, of more or less the sort that the Luddites predicted. (They never claimed that the world would end as a result of the new machines, as far as I know.)

Well, people prophesying doom in general have a pretty poor track record, so if that’s all we know, our prior should be that any such person is likely to be very wrong.

Of course, most people throughout history who have prophesied doom have had in mind a religious sort of doom. People prophesying doom from technological advance specifically have a better track record. The Luddites were correct, for example. (Their chosen remedy left something to be desired, of course; but that is common, sadly. Identifying the problem does not, by itself, suffice to solve the problem.) And we’ve had quite a bit of doom from technological advance. Indeed, as technology has advanced, we’ve had more and more doom from that advance.

So, on the whole, I’d say that applying the reasoning I describe to people prophesying doom from technological advance is that there is probably something to what they say, even if their specific predictions are not spot-on.

If the premise is a world where nobody ever does any scams or tries to swindle anyone out of money, then it’s so far removed from our world that I don’t rightly know how to interpret any of the included commentary on human nature / psychology / etc. Lying for personal gain is one of those “human universals”, without which I wouldn’t even recognize the characters as anything resembling humans.

Even setting aside such textual anomalies, why is this a good argument? As I noted in a sibling comment to yours, my response assumes that Ponzi schemes have never happened in this world, because otherwise we’d simply identify the Spokesperson’s plan as a Ponzi scheme! The reasoning that I described is only necessary because we can’t say “ah, a Ponzi scheme”!

The opposite approach of Said Achmiz, namely appealing very concretely to the object level, misses the point as well: the post is not trying to give practical advice about how to spot Ponzi schemes. “We thus defeat the Spokesperson’s argument on his own terms, without needing to get into abstractions or theory—and we do it in one paragraph.” is not the boast you think it is.

If the post describes a method for analyzing a situation, and that described method is not in fact the correct method for analyzing that situation (and is actually much worse than the correct method), then this is a problem with the post.

(Also, your description of my approach as “appealing very concretely to the object level”, and your corresponding dismissal of that approach, is very ironic! The post, in essence, argues precisely for appealing concretely to the object level; but then if we actually do that, as I demonstrated, we render the post moot.)

It follows inevitably, therefore, that there is a very high chance that the S&P 500, and the stock market in general, is a scam, and will steal all your money.

Well, here’s a question: what happens more often—stock market downturns, or banks going bust?

It follows further that the only safe investment approach is to put all your money into something that you retain personal custody of. Like gold bars buried in your backyard! Or Bitcoin!

Now this is simply an invalid extrapolation. Note that I made no claims along these lines about what does or does not supposedly follow. Claims like “X reasoning is invalid” / “Y plan is unlikely to work” stand on their own; “what is the correct reasoning” / “what is a good plan” is a wholly separate question.

this choice is in general non-trivial

I disagree. It seems to me that this choice is, in general, pretty easy to make, and takes naught but common sense. Certainly that’s the case in the given example scenario. Of course there are exceptions, where the choice of reference class is trickier—but in general, no, it’s pretty easy.

(Whether the choice “requires abstractions and/or theory” is another matter. Perhaps it does, in a technical sense. But it doesn’t particularly require talking about abstractions and/or theory, and that matters.)

Yes. (If it were otherwise, then the response would be even simpler: “oh, this is obviously just a Ponzi scheme”.)

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