Lars P. Syll

Feynman’s trick (student stuff)  [embedded content] I had learned to do integrals by various methods shown in a book that my high school physics teacher Mr. Bader had given me. [It] showed how to differentiate parameters under the integral sign – it’s a certain operation. It turns out that’s not taught very much in the universities; they don’t emphasize it. But I caught on how to use that method, and I used that one damn tool again and again. [If] guys at...

Anders Tegnell on the Swedish corona strategy  [embedded content]

Pandemic depression antidote (XV)  [embedded content]

Alberto Alesina, the prominent Harvard University economist and main architect behind the theory of ‘expansionary austerity,’ has died at age 63, Italian media reports today. RIP. As we all know there has been an obsession with government budget deficits since the crisis of 2008. Alesina’s ideas — mostly building on econometric analyses — about austerity expansion basically boils down to the hope that if you cut deficits, the confidence fairy will make business people invest....

The Beltrami identity (student stuff)  [embedded content]

Economic models and reality The abandonment of efforts to match real structures has led to disaster, as models of economic theory have grown progressively distant from reality. Attempts to fix the problem have failed to address the cause. Economists look at bad models, and say we should replace these by better models. But the process by which models are evaluated, the underlying methodology, is not examined. The real problem lies much deeper than bad models...

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Pandemic depression antidote (XIV)  [embedded content]  [embedded content]

Adam Smith and the other side of the invisible hand How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively...

Vågade någon tala om för dig att du gjort ett dåligt arbete eller inte ansträngt dig nog? Fick du för dåliga betyg? Höll inte uppsatsen måttet? Det gör inget! För nu för tiden kan alla slö, slappa, lata och likgiltiga komma undan det egna ansvaret med tidens egen deus ex machina — de är kränkta. Simsalabim och problemet är inte längre deras utan den som hade fräckheten att våga påtala bristerna och undermåligheten. För mig är detta en källa till ständig irritation. Varför? Jo...