>>>> different commenter above: It is all fake and made up, and the numbers are detached from the real world, but it's not like the market doesn't know that.

>>> me: Perhaps there are salient differences between art on a wall and a company.

>> you: At heart, not really. The whole point of all of this is to motivate humans to get off their butt and reduce entropy.

> me: A painting on a wall is merely an inanimate object. / A company has agency; it seeks to add economic value to itself over time including changing people’s perceptions.

The Horror! Just look at the disjointed conversational history above. It seems like some sort of drunken history episode where people aren’t paying attention to each other.

Should I assume you are trying to understand what I’m saying? It is becoming less plausible with every comment. (I’m referring to the “be charitable” part of HN guidelines.)

Additionally, there is another anti-pattern at work here: this seems like a pretty inane definitional argument. You’re claiming there’s no difference between art on a wall and a corporation entity? By what definition? What is the utility of your definition; meaning, what can you do with your definition that provides differential predictive power?

My claim: when it comes to valuation, an agent is sufficiently different from a non-agent (yes, even if it appreciates!) What is the criteria for “sufficiently different”? To explain: if you get more benefit out of a distinction than it costs you to make the distinction, it is a net benefit.

In this case about valuing things, someone who makes a living building predictive valuation models is going to distinguish wall art from corporate entities because doing so is useful for prediction.

Of course they have some things in common. This is irrelevant to the question of “is making this distinction worth it?” As long as predicting the difference between them is valuable paying attention to the distinction is valuable.

This kind of talking past each other is one of many reasons “why we can’t have nice things” such as useful discussion. Shameful.

If you propose some grand unified theory that says two things ultimately derive from the same thing, that’s fine, but if you’re going to use it for prediction you’ll have to explain how to apply it.