Lars P. Syll

Identity politics? No thanks!  [embedded content]

Fyra viktiga drag är gemensamma för de olika rörelserna: Centrala idéer förklaras inte. Grunderna för en övertygelse anges inte. Framställningen av läran har en språklig stereotypi … När det gäller åberopandet av lärofäder råder samma stereotypi — ett begränsat antal namn återkommer. Heidegger, Foucault, och Derrida kommer tillbaka, åter och åter … Till de fyra punkterna vill jag emellertid … lägga till en femte: 5. Vederbörande har inte något väsentligen nytt att...

Models and evidence in economics Analogue-economy models may picture Galilean thought experiments or they may describe credible worlds. In either case we have a problem in taking lessons from the model to the world. The problem is the venerable one of unrealistic assumptions, exacerbated in economics by the fact that the paucity of economic principles with serious empirical content makes it difficult to do without detailed structural assumptions. But the...

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En garanterat icke-pk individ Kärlek hymlar han inte ned. Sex barn finns det, han älskar dem på olika vis. Barnbarnen också, men han hänger inte med dem. – När de är i rummet är de ganska gulliga allihopa. Men avsätta en kväll till att sitta och passa? Då skulle jag bli knäpp. De är för svåra att prata med! Jag delar inte deras intressen. Bolibompa och sån skit. Rita. Du har ju varit barn själv en gång. – Ja men jag är inte det längre. Jag tycker bra om...

The Swedish for-profit ‘free’ school disaster Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too. Sweden introduced a voucher-style reform in the 1990s and opened the market to for-profit...

Simone de Beauvoir — a pedophilia supporter? It has to be said that Beauvoir’s interest in these matters was not purely theoretical … She was dismissed from her teaching job in 1943 for “behavior leading to the corruption of a minor.” The minor in question was one of her pupils at a Paris lycée. It is well established that she and Jean-Paul Sartre developed a pattern, which they called the “trio,” in which Beauvoir would seduce her students and then pass...

The reaction of human beings to the truly unknown is fundamentally different from the way they deal with the risks associated with a known situation and environment … In realistic, real-time settings, both economic agents and researchers have a very limited understanding of the mechanisms at work … In trying to add a degree of complexity to the current core models, by bringing in aspects of the periphery, we are simultaneously making the rationality assumptions behind that...

Not accounting for uncertainty may result in severe confusion about what we do indeed understand about the economy. In the financial crisis of 2007/2008 the demon has lashed out at this ignorance and challenged the credibility of the whole economic community by laying bare economists’ incapability to prevent the crisis … Economics itself cannot be regarded a purely analytical science. It has the amazing and exciting property of shaping the object of its own analysis. This...

En kyss med smak av oljeblandad bensin och fett  [embedded content]