Economics

Reality really does flow based on a balance of opportunity cost. It doesn't matter how much you pondered an apple vs an orange. The calculations were done for you by every person and fly, earthquake, sunshine, and all other factors that affected the orange and apple. What mystical fruit went extinct before humans cast shadows on the hard dry ground? It is that story you kind of hears that a butterfly flapping it's wings in the amazon triggers a path of events that start a hurricane. Or, the red paper clip guy.

The book Freakonomics opened my eyes to how the study of balancing opportunity costs can be applied to other things.

Capitalism uses/relies on this balance to work. Communism and Socialism other single pile efforts are doomed to fail eventually. Cuba, the last holdout of true Communism just allowed people to buy home computers and mobile phones.China hasn't been Communist in a decade or more. No state can supply everything it's people will want or need all the time. People must be held responsible for their own survival and happiness. That way, when they get neither, it is their fault and not the state. The state must survive.

When I took a class in economics, my professor did not get this fact much less teach it. That class could have changed my life,but it just detracted me with formulas and a woman crying during our final.

Everything and I mean everything you do and see and hear and feel is filtered through your brain. Your brain throws out 99.9& of all the information that comes in and only hangs on to the important stuff. Isn't that great? You have to learn (program a filters and procedures) how to do things. As you learn (program filters procedures) your brain brings about a set of actions based on past experience and, in the case of intelligent life, things other people tell you or show you.

That last one, ... what people tell you or show you, is a bit sketchy. I believe one only learns based on experience and visualization of things that people teach. I only have my experience to fall back on. If someone tells me something, I can only learn from it if I imagine myself in the situation, and performing a specific way. Otherwise, it is in one year and out the other.

When I go to put my foot down on an unfamiliar trail, I scan the area and eliminate all the dangerous places. This makes my choice of where to put my foot limited. If my filter eliminates all places in the direction I'm going, then I have to stop moving forward and consider a  different path to my destination. This is opportunity cost analysis. If I cannot put my foot down in a place aloud by the filter in my brain, I cannot move forward. If there is no alternate path, I must reassess the filter I use to take the existing trail, even if there is a danger involved. I may have to abandon my goal if things are bad enough. That is part of the filtration process. Is my end goal worth all this trouble?

Movement in nature, like a rock falling off the side of a hill, seems random, but if you look close enough you can find the cause and effect matrix that lead to that rock falling at that moment. Endless sun and rain, hot and cold. Any time you cannot find the matrix, it is called faith. When the opportunity cost of the rock staying in it's spot is greater than the opportunity cost of it rolling down the hill, it rolls.

It seems sciences have come about because people had needs. Mathematics seems to have come about as a science only because people had math problems in their heads and needed a way to write them down. Mathematics is more a means of communication than a science. Of course, that is what science is, a means to communicate highly extract ideas and concepts to other people, to teach really. physics came about as a way to apply math to real world ideas, if not real world itself. Economics came about more as a way to make money based on the realities of commerce and greed. It is not so much a way to teach as a way to take advantage of data. Biology is about understanding the mechanics of life and could be called the foundation of medicine. Quantum, well, who know what will come of quantum. Perhaps ascension. Engineering is not a science. It is a religion based on math, physics and uncommon sense. Economics should be a science if it is not already declared one.