"Utility Theory From Jeremy Bentham To Daniel Kahneman"

May 26, 2009 (LPAC)--If you care to see just how stupid Brits can be, take a look at a 2004 "scholarly article" with the above title, written by Daniel Read of the Department of Operational Research, London School of Economics (LSE). Lyndon LaRouche noted, in this regard, that "it seems like the British race have now become actually intellectually degenerate. They can't think anymore. Maybe it has something to do with that damned diet they have. Maybe it's not genetic; maybe it's dietary. They keep telling each other 'get stuffed,' you know."

You may not want to believe this piece of bullshit, but what Read writes, in black and white, is that Jeremy Bentham's original breakthrough to develop pleasure-and-pain utilitarianism as the basis of all economics, still left a handful of conceptual problems to be resolved. These have been successively taken up over the years, leading to the master works of genius of Daniel Kahneman, the father of modern "behavioral economists"—who of course are the guiding force behind President Barack Obama's mouth. "Kahneman's ambitious program is in its early stages," Read gushes, "but if successful, it promises to alter our understanding of rationality."

Bentham—Lord Shelburne's leading intelligence agent at the British East India Company; avowed enemy of the American Revolution; and all-around pervert promoting usury, pederasty, bestialism, etc.—argued that pleasure and pain, and thus utility, is ultimately measurable, Read writes. But "Benthamite utility was deemed impossible to measure" by some, such that economic giant F.Y. Edgeworth—otherwise famous for inventing "indifference curves" and the "Edgeworth box" (don't ask)— proposed a "hedonimeter." The marginal utilitarian school then made further progress on the sticky subject of measurement of pleasure and pain, culminating in "a new approach to utility measurement, first proposed by Von Neumann and Morgenstern... [that] a cardinal utility function can be drawn from consistent choices between gambles."

Enter Kahneman. Experienced utility can differ from decision utility, he discovers, and so studies have to be conducted on the issue of "temporal monotonicity"—how to multiply instantaneous pain by the time of suffering, to reach a sum of total pain experienced. So Kahneman et al. proceed to torture a bunch of victims, which they disguise as "science." ("Of course," LaRouche commented. "They are sadists. They are graduates from English boys' schools. That's what they do: they torment each other.")

"In one [test]," Read explains helpfully, "participants first experience two painful immersions of a hand in cold water. Both hands were immersed (at different times) in ice-cold (14.1 degrees Centigrade) water for 60 seconds. One hand was then removed immediately, while the other was left in the water, which warmed up to a still uncomfortable 15.2 degress Centigrade over an additional 30 seconds. The total pain, meaning the sum of instantaneous pain multiplied by duration, was certainly greater for the second hand, yet when asked which of the two experiences they would prefer to repeat, almost 70% chose the longer one. This shows that decision utility differs from experienced utility."

Does this remind you of anything?

As one historical account recalls: "The freezing / hypothermia experiments were conducted for the Nazi high command. The experiments were conducted on men to simulate the conditions the armies suffered on the Eastern Front. The German forces were ill prepared for the bitter cold. Thousands of German soldiers died of freezing or were debilitated by cold injuries.

"The experiments were conducted under the supervision of Dr. Sigmund Rascher at Birkenau, Dachau and Auschwitz . Dr. Rascher reported directly to Himmler. Dr. Rascher publicized the results of his freezing experiments at the 1942 medical conference entitled 'Medical Problems Arising from Sea and Winter.'

"The freezing experiments were divided into two parts. First, to establish how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death and second how to best resuscitate the frozen victim. The two main methods used to freeze the victim were to put the person in a icy vat of water or to put the victim outside naked in sub-zero temperatures. The icy vat method proved to be the fastest way to drop the body temperature."