Lars P. Syll

We did it again! MFF cupmästare 2024

Susan Neiman on why left is not woke .[embedded content] As argued by Susan, the universalist ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions and religious beliefs. It still provides a...

Skolpedagogiska reformimpulser borde så småningom sluta att förlita sig på sjuttiotalets motiv, innebörder och semantik. Annars går det som när en orkester orubbligt fortsätter att spela de gamla välkända melodierna utan att bry sig om att publiken för länge sedan har lämnat salen. Det är på tiden att spela något nytt, man borde våga en ny början. Farväl till sjuttiotalet! Thomas Ziehe, ”Adjö till sjuttiotalet”, KRUT 2/1998 År efter år kommer larmrapporter om hur illa det står...

Take it on the run .[embedded content] Old love never dies …

I am I said .[embedded content]

The non-existence of economic laws In mainstream economics, there’s — still — a lot of talk about ‘economic laws.’ The crux of these laws — and regularities — that allegedly exist in economics, is that they only hold ceteris paribus. That fundamentally means that these laws/regularities only hold when the right conditions are at hand to give rise to them. Unfortunately, from an empirical point of view, those conditions are only at hand in artificially...

April 22, 2024, marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Immanuel Kant, one of the greatest philosophers in the history of philosophy.  Kant’s ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions and...

The importance of ‘causal spread’ No doubt exists that an entirely different subject has taken over control when it comes to education in scientific methodology in almost the entire field, namely statistics … The value of the statistical regulatory system should of course not be questioned, but it should not be forgotten that other forms of reflection are also cultivated in the land of science. No single subject can claim hegemony… John Maynard Keynes …...

No sooner had I finished my comment on the irrelevancy of economics but I had confirmation — albeit unwittingly — in this morning’s Financial Times.  There on the editorial page was a short column by Soumaya Keynes talking about the rise of Hank. For those of you not on the cutting edge, “Hank” stands for Heterogeneous Agent New Keynesian, as in a complicated model of the economy. Hank is a whole new way of looking at model economies, with the really big breakthrough being...

The greatest of them all Brideshead Revisited — television’s greatest literary adaptation, bar none. Eleven episodes and actors like Jeremy Irons, John Gielgud, and Laurence Olivier. Absolutely fabulous. [embedded content]