Geometric Marginalism

Another [new economic theory] has to do with bilateral trade and the geometry of markets, culminating eventually in a model of humans in which they're allowed to change their tastes. Now, it sounds very strange to say that economic theory falls apart when human beings change their tastes. But since at least the late 1970s, we've had an excuse in place in the work of Becker and Stigler, that allows us to make assumptions about human beings that are known to be wildly untrue. And the way out, strangely enough, is through differential geometry, the differential geometry of markets. So that's something that I think we're going to be very interested in bringing to you. I don't know whether the idea of geometric markets is something that can be easily explained to a mass audience. But this theory of geometric marginalism is, in fact, a starter theory, that, if that is successful, might allow us to discuss an even more profound attempt, which would be this concept that I've called Geometric Unity.

- Eric Weinstein on The Portal Episode 2

The plan is that we're going to try to take over all of economics by going to the heart of the matter. We're going to look at the most basic theories. And we're going to try to see if we can upgrade. Now, what happened years ago is that marginalism slept through economics. What was marginalism? It was the introduction of the calculus into the analysis of market behavior. So if we have an upgrade of the calculus, there's nothing to suggest that we mathematicians and physicists can't swarm into economics, and rip out every place that they've got one of these old fashioned calculus machines, and replace it with this new thing, to solve problems that they haven't been able to solve.

Eric Weinstein on Gauge Theory and Inflation: Enlarging the Wu-Yang Dictionary (YouTube Content)

See Also

• Gauge Theory of Economics

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