“Since we have not more power of knowing the future than any other men, we have made many mistakes (who has not during the past five years?), but our mistakes have been errors of judgment and not of principle.” J.P. Morgan Jnr, 1933 A couple of months ago I was toying with the idea of … Continue reading The really real reason why banks have so many scandals
Category: economics
Success is always rationalised, says Michael Lewis
Princeton University - Princeton University's 2012 Baccalaureate Remarks http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S33/87/54K53/
Samuel Bowles on economic inequality as a policy option
http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~bowles/ Prof Sam Bowles has a couple of books that compliment the work of Richard Sennett on cooperation - one published in 2011, the other due later in 2012. Whereas Sennett takes a sociological approach, Bowles focuses on economics. In particular he has done some interesting work on computer modelling of property rights.
Why do People play the Lottery?
Well, why do they? It's the kind of question only those who don't do it would bother asking. I admit I'm one of them. The lottery is a mystery to me - self-evidently daft, like a slow-motion version of taking a pile of cash and setting fire to it. Why would anyone do it? One … Continue reading Why do People play the Lottery?
False Signal?
“My father told me the oceans were limitless, but that was a false signal.” NYT on collapsing fish stocks in the South Pacific. In Mackerel's Plunder, Hints of Epic Fish Collapse Related articles In Mackerel's Plunder, Hints of Epic Fish Collapse (nytimes.com)
Experts and Cultural Cognition
Dan Kahan's blog at the Cultural Cognition Project makes some conjectures about whether experts think in similar ways to non-experts. Specifically he wonders whether experts exhibit the kinds of cultural biases already demonstrated by non-experts. Do experts use cultural cognition? My observation is that there would need to be care taken to avoid something like … Continue reading Experts and Cultural Cognition
Biosemiotics and slime mould
New Scientist has an interesting article on the ways in which it may make sense to talk about non-conscious entities creating meaning. Biosemiotics. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727741.200-biosemiotics-searching-for-meanings-in-a-meadow.html?full=true Hat tip to Meika. I had been thinking abut this when I came across a report on the slime mould's 'irrational' decision-making process.It seems that like humans, Physarum polycephalum makes quick … Continue reading Biosemiotics and slime mould
Detroit: a city fit for superheroes?
Chatting with my young son this evening it occured to us that superheroes require certain types of cities, certain kinds of urban form, in order to thrive. Spiderman needs tall buildings closely packed in order to leap between them. The Hulk needs impressive edifices to knock down. Only certain types of urban form are fit … Continue reading Detroit: a city fit for superheroes?
Fresh Thinking on Systemic Risk
Fresh thinking on systemic risk: Levin and Sugihara on the ecology of finance George Sugihara at the Resilience Alliance complex systems: ecology for bankers New dimensions for understanding systemic risk extending non-linear analysis to short ecological time series Image credit: Flickr/Katz2110
Mutualism: Flavour of the month
As predicted this time last year, mutualism is the new favourite political idea. It has been so ignored by policy makers over many decades that it has temporarily lost its left/right label and the Tories are also talking about it. But it shouldn't be thought that mutualism is a way of making money grow on … Continue reading Mutualism: Flavour of the month
Four Cultures 