Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Maria Alejandra Madi and WEA Pedeaogy Blog Podcasts, which can now be easily accessed online, have had a recent surge in popularity, which may be attributed to their convenience. These podcasts discuss a wide range of topics that are related to the professional and academic spheres. The issue that naturally emerges is what exactly makes it qualified to be regarded as a scholarship approach. To put this another way, what exactly is it about this method that qualifies it to be used as...

Hard to describe how depressed I am feeling about Australian politics right now. The Voice Referendum was always going to be a longshot because referendums usually fail. But Albanese’s refusal to put forward a model, and the promotion of someone as abrasive as Noel Pearson as a leading advocate risk a defeat so bad that the fallback of option of a legislated Voice is unlikely. In economic terms, Australians will be worse off by the next election than when Labor was elected –...

from Dean Baker People routinely tout Biden’s efforts to bring back manufacturing jobs as a way to rebuild the middle class and reduce inequality. Whatever the motives, there is not much reason to believe that it will have this effect. When the United States opened up its market to freer trade in manufactured goods, through trade deals like NAFTA and admitting China to the WTO, manufacturing workers had a substantial pay premium over workers in the rest of the private sector. This was...

From June 23 2002 John Quiggin What I’m reading: The Consolation of Philosophy, by Boethius. This work, written when the author (a 5th century Roman noble in the service of the Gothic king Theoderic) was imprisoned and awaiting execution, is the inspiration for the recent popular book by Alain de Botton. Is philosophy really a consolation in times of suffering? I don’t know, but I also don’t know of anything better. View original postShare this:Like this:Like Loading...

from Lars Syll Fitting a model that has a parameter called ‘probability’ to data does not mean that the estimated value of that parameter estimates the probability of anything in the real world. Just as the map is not the territory, the model is not the phenomenon, and calling something ‘probability’ does not make it a probability, any more than drawing a mountain on a map creates a real mountain … In summary, the word ‘probability’ is often used with little thought about why, if at all,...

Κείμενο υπογραφών 34 πανεπιστημιακών υπέρ της ψήφου στην ΑΝΤΑΡΣΥΑ στις εκλογές (η συλλογή υπογραφών συνεχίζεται). Για το μέτωπο παιδείας και εργασίας απέναντι στο επιχειρηματικό πανεπιστήμιο Τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες, όλες οι συστημικές κυβερνήσεις έχουν θέσει στο στόχαστρο το δημόσιο πανεπιστήμιο. Στόχος τους είναι η απαξίωση και η συρρίκνωσή του έτσι ώστε να ανοίξει ο δρόμος για ιδιωτικά πανεπιστήμια, που να προσπορίζονται κέρδη για τους φανερούς και κρυφούς ιδιοκτήτες τους. Η...

from Blair Fix In the last few months, there have been a string of open letters from tech leaders warning that artificial intelligence could lead to a ‘profound change in the history of life on Earth’. According to some insiders, AI poses an extinction risk, on the same level as pandemics and nuclear war. I think this scaremongering is nonsense. It plays into popular science fiction tropes about machines conquering humanity. But the problem with these scenarios is that when you look at...

from Dean Baker Fear the rich, not AI It is really painful to see the regular flow of pieces debating whether AI will lead to mass unemployment. Invariably, these pieces are written as though the author has taken an oath that they have no knowledge of economics whatsoever. The NYT gave us the latest example on Sunday, in a piece debating how many jobs will be affected by AI. As the piece itself indicates, it is not clear what “affected by AI” even means. What percent of jobs were affected...

Daniel Ellsberg has died, aged 92. I don’t have anything to add to the standard account of his heroic career, except to observe that Edward Snowden (whose cause Ellsberg championed) would probably have done better to take his chances with the US legal system, as Ellsberg did. In decision theory, the subsection of the economics profession in which I move Ellsberg is known for a contribution made a decade before the release of the Pentagon papers. In his PhD dissertation, Ellsberg...

Kindle $4.99  Paperback  $11.99  “No one does more than Lars Syll to identify and communicate the limitations of modern economics. An impassioned call and compelling sustained argument for economists to stop dwelling on the intricacies of irrelevant models and concern themselves with rest of the social reality.” –  Tony Lawson, Cambridge University “Lars Syll’s new book gets to the heart of what’s methodologically wrong with mainstream economics and maps out foundations for a critical...