Lars P. Syll

Adorno hat Trump vorhergesehen  [embedded content] If your German isn’t too rusty, here’s for more too listen and read on the Adorno-Trump theme! div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

An emancipated society would be no unitary state, but the realization of the generality in the reconciliation of differences. A politics which took this seriously should therefore not propagate even the idea of the abstract equality of human beings .They should rather point to the bad equality of today, the identity of film interests with weapons interests, and think of the better condition as the one in which one could be different without fear. If one attested to blacks,...

Georgy V. Sviridov — ‘Holy God’  [embedded content] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

The point of the discussion, of course, has to do with where Koopmans thinks we should look for “autonomous behaviour relations”. He appeals to experience but in a somewhat oblique manner. He refers to the Harvard barometer “to show that relationships between economic variables … not traced to underlying behaviour equations are unreliable as instruments for prediction” … His argument would have been more effectively put had he been able to give instances of relationships that...

Markets as beauty contests  [embedded content] div{float:left;margin-right:10px;} div.wpmrec2x div.u > div:nth-child(3n){margin-right:0px;} ]]> Advertisements

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Solving the St. Petersburg Paradox [embedded content] Solving the St Petersburg paradox in the way Peters suggests, involves arguments about ergodicity and the all-important difference between time averages and ensemble averages. These are difficult concepts that many students of economics have problems with understanding. So let me just try to explain the meaning of these concepts by means of a couple of simple examples. Let’s say you’re offered a gamble...

The right kind of realism Some commentators on this blog seem to be of the opinion that since yours truly is critical of mainstream economics and ask for more relevance and realism I’m bound to be a ‘naive’ realist or empiricist. Nothing could be further from the truth! In a time when scientific relativism is expanding, it is important to keep up the claim for not reducing science to a pure discursive level. We have to maintain the Enlightenment tradition...

Going for the right kind of certainty​ in economics In science we standardly use a logically non-valid inference — the fallacy of affirming the consequent — of the following form: (1) p => q (2) q ————- p or, in instantiated form (1) ∀x (Gx => Px) (2) Pa ———— Ga Although logically invalid, it is nonetheless a kind of inference — abduction — that may be factually strongly warranted and truth-producing. Following the general pattern ‘Evidence  =>...

Pretending that the distribution of income and wealth that results from a long set of policy decisions is somehow the natural workings of the market is not a serious position. It might be politically convenient for conservatives who want to lock inequality in place. It is a more politically compelling position to argue that we should not interfere with market outcomes than to argue for a system that is deliberately structured to make some people very rich while leaving others...