Lars P. Syll

Was Kant a racist? .[embedded content]

Yours truly var för några år sedan inbjuden till en debatt på Handelshögskolan i Göteborg. Temat var tillväxt och miljö. Jag vet inte om jag lyckades övertyga alla som lyssnade om att det faktiskt är möjligt att leva bra och fullvärdiga liv utan att överkonsumera. De som till äventyrs inte övertygades av mina åberopade teoretiska inspirationskällor — Soddy, Georgeescu-Roegen och Boulding — kanske istället kan få sig åtminstone en tankeväckare av Nina Hedenius underbara — och...

Cancel culture — an Orwellian perspective

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! “Have the courage to use your own understanding,” is therefore the motto of the enlightenment. Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of...

Behavioural economics and complexity economics What is to take the place of neoclassical economics and its neoliberal policy offshoot? There is no shortage of candidates, grouped under the broad banner of economic heterodoxy. Some of these successor doctrines – behavioral economics and complexity economics are examples of note – take the neoclassical orthodoxies as a point of departure. They therefore continue to define themselves in relation to those...

How to do philosophy A contest was announced to see who could do the best job of carving up a side of beef.  The judge was announced as a famous chef, who had earned two Michelin stars.  Attracted by the prize money, a butcher and an analytic philosopher entered the contest. The Analytic Philosopher went first.  A fresh side of beef was placed on a large wooden table, and he approached to begin.  He was dressed in freshly pressed chinos and a button-down...

Was aus dem Arabischen Frühling wurde .[embedded content]

Keynes’s Copernican revolution in economics .[embedded content]

A small ray of hope I overheard a conversation between two high school students this morning. The first person was asking about which classes the second was going to take next. One of those mentioned was microeconomics. “Oh, that’s easy” said the first, “You just have to remember that it’s all rubbish — they want you to believe that people are rational, and that there’s all this perfection in the world.” “Really?” responded the second, “That’s really dumb....

The Lady Tasting Tea En av mina absoluta favoriter i statistikhyllan är David Salsburgs insiktsfulla statistikhistoria The Lady Tasting Tea. Boken är full av djupa och värdefulla reflektioner kring statistikens roll i modern vetenskap. Salsburg är, precis som tidigare Keynes, tveksam till hur många samhällsvetare — inte minst ekonomer — okritiskt ofta bara antar att man kan applicera statistikteorins sannolikhetsfördelningar på sitt eget...