Lars P. Syll

Genius of the week  [embedded content] Confirms — again — what we already knew: Trump is a reckless, untruthful, outrageous, incompetent and undignified buffoon!

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in the escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes [embedded content]Mark Blaug (1927-2011) did more than any other economist to establish the philosophy and methodology of economics a respected subfield within economics. His path-breaking The methodology of economics (1980) is still a landmark (and the first textbook on economic...

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La ‘cancel culture’ — une menace pour le débat public L’échange libre des informations et des idées, qui est le moteur même des sociétés libérales, devient chaque jour plus limité. La censure, que l’on s’attendait plutôt à voir surgir du côté de la droite radicale, se répand largement aussi dans notre culture : intolérance à l’égard des opinions divergentes, goût pour l’humiliation publique et l’ostracisme, tendance à dissoudre des questions politiques...

Epistemic humility — an intellectual virtue Being a true expert involves not only knowing stuff about the world but also knowing the limits of your knowledge and expertise. It requires, as psychologists say, both cognitive and metacognitive skills. The point is not that true experts should withhold their beliefs or that they should never speak with conviction. Some beliefs are better supported by the evidence than others, after all, and we should not...

Der Glaube an die Wissenschaft Betrachtet man den Verschwörungsirrsinn, der sich dieser Tage im Internet tummelt, kann man nur zu dem Schluss kommen: Der Irrationalismus ist auf dem Vormarsch. Aber dieser erschreckende Vormarsch lässt sich nicht stoppen, indem die Wissenschaft selbst in einen ideologischen Tunnel fährt. Ganz gleich, wie überzeugt man von seiner Sache ist: Als Aktivist muss man in einer Demokratie bereit sein, für seine Überzeugung auf dem...

Time to rewrite textbook chapters on money This article has discussed how money is created in the modern economy. Most of the money in circulation is created, not by the printing presses of the Bank of England, but by the commercial banks themselves: banks create money whenever they lend to someone in the economy or buy an asset from consumers.And in contrast to descriptions found in some textbooks, the Bank of England does not directly control the quantity...

[embedded content] Straight out of the magician’s hat. Absolutely fabulous.

Embarrassing mistakes in french  [embedded content]

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