more uncertainty

["Forstater, Mathew" <ForstaterM@xxxxxxxx>]

Alan, commenting on Paul, wrote:

it is ontological uncertainty rather than computational limitations which
underlie the epistemological uncertainty that humans encounter in their every
day actions.

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That is the first point I was trying to get at.

But I agree with Alan and others that we may have some unnecessary
terminological troubles here. Let's suppose that "epistemological" uncertainty
as used above refers to the subjective uncertainty that the agent experiences,
whatever its cause.  So, as I think Alan also said, in this a sense, all
uncertainty is epistemological, because whatever its cause, it is experienced
subjectively by the agent.  So, "epistemological" and "ontological" are really
not being used in the same ways in all this. In some cases we are refering to
the "cause" of the uncertainty, and in other cases we are refering to the
experience.

Now, with Ted things really get interesting.  We have determined that agents
experience uncertainty subjectively, but that such a state is rooted in
ontology, i.e., in the world around us, including other people, the social and
natural environment.  We know from Keynes that uncertainty becomes an issue as
soon as we adopt historical time.  Ted writes:

the present and past will be less and less relevant as a guide to the future the
farther forward in time is the future in question.  This is because the greater
the distance into the future the fewer are the internal relations which can be
treated as stable, i.e. as what Keynes calls "given" (VII, p. 245).

<snip interesting Whitehead reference>

A further implication of the ontology is that the future (particularly the
social and economic future) is more likely to be "uncertain" in Keynes's sense
of true uncertainty the farther into the future are the consequences to be
predicted.  This is because the decreasing ability to abstract from changes in
internal relations brings us nearer and nearer to the need to know everything
before we can know something.

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is there any difference between "the farther forward in time is the  future in
question" and "the farther into the future are the consequences to be predicted"
or are these two ways of saying more or less the same thing?

One of my interests is in the structural and technological factors that
determine the length of the time horizon.  I think we could call these the
ontological basis for subjective uncertainty?

But there is another issue that I have been wondering about. While Keynes in
both _The General Theory_ and the 1937 paper does indicate that the longer the
time horizon the greater the uncertainty, elsewhere he also talks about the
speed of asset revaluation as contributing to instability.  In this case, it is
not the longer the period that increases uncertainty but the shorter (faster).
So it depends on what we are talking about whether uncertainty and associated
volatility are increased?

Mat

p.s. Ted, do you make this point in a paper (length of time horizon increasing
uncertainty), if so which one?? Thanks!