Lars P. Syll

.[embedded content] Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi “dai d’illusi smammai” / Un viaggio in fondo ai tuoi occhi solcherò / Dune Mosse … Dentro una lacrima / E verso il sole / Voglio gridare amore  / Uuh, non ne posso più  / Vieni t’imploderò / A rallentatore, e … / E nell’immenso morirò! … Questa canzone è un’opera d’arte. Musica d’altissimo livello. Meravigliosa!

Im Netz der Verschwörung .[embedded content]

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Mainstream economists often hold the view that criticisms of econometrics are the conclusions of sadly misinformed and misguided people who dislike and do not understand much of it. This is a gross misapprehension. To be careful and cautious is not equivalent to dislike. The ordinary deductivist ‘textbook approach’ to econometrics views the modelling process as foremost an estimation problem since one (at least implicitly) assumes that the model provided by economic theory is...

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Econometrics and the problem of unjustified assumptions There seems to be a pervasive human aversion to uncertainty, and one way to reduce feelings of uncertainty is to invest faith in deduction as a sufficient guide to truth. Unfortunately, such faith is as logically unjustified as any religious creed, since a deduction produces certainty about the real world only when its assumptions about the real world are certain … Unfortunately, assumption uncertainty...

Ergodicity — an intuitive introduction Ergodicity is a difficult concept that many students of econom(etr)ics have problems with understanding. Trying to explain it, you often find yourself getting  lost in mathematical-statistical subtleties difficult for most students to grasp. In the video below, Luca Dellanna has made an admirably simplified and pedagogical exposition of  what it means for probability structures of stationary processes and ensembles to...

.[embedded content] Paul Samuelson once famously claimed that the ‘ergodic hypothesis’ is essential for advancing economics from the realm of history to the realm of science. But is it really tenable to assume — as Samuelson and most other mainstream economists — that ergodicity is essential to economics? In economics ergodicity is often mistaken for stationarity. But although all ergodic processes are stationary, they are not equivalent. So, if nothing else, ergodicity is an...

Pedagogisk forskning — postmodern mumbo jumbo Efter att ha tagit del av ‘modern’ pedagogisk forskning i tidskriften Pedagogisk Forskning i Sverige — där författaren till artikeln “En pedagogisk relation mellan människa och häst — på väg mot en pedagogisk filosofisk utforskning av mellanrummet” ger följande intressanta ‘programförklaring’ — är man föga förvånad över sakernas tillstånd inom svensk pedagogisk ‘vetenskap’: Med en posthumanistisk ansats belyser...

Based on a re-reading of some of the great Western thinkers and philosophers (Kierkegaard, Hegel, Marx) and a radical critique of the idea of infinity, Hägglund argues that faith is not a question of believing in an eternity but rather of how to live our finite lives together and be true to our belief in the pursuit of authentic freedom. An ambitious and impressive attempt at weaving together existential and political issues, questioning our way of living and organising our...