In Praise of Blindspots
The rise of professionalized economics makes it useful for organizations to incorporate groups of economists and econometric analyses. Though no one may read, understand or believe them, econometric analyses help legitimate the organization's plans in the eyes of investors, customers (as with Defense Department contractors), and internal participan... See more
American Journal of Sociology • Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony on JSTOR
Jay Matthews added
The most direct method for comprehending a world in which not all human beings are homo economicus would therefore appear to involve a return to some version of the older tradition. However, why did the older tradition fail in the first place? After all, it seemed to ask some obvious and important questions. How could these questions simply be aban... See more
Peter Thiel • The Straussian Moment
Juan Orbea added
The time has come to acknowledge expertise as overvalued. There is no question that expertise and hedgehog logic are appropriate in certain domains (i.e. hard sciences), but they certainly appear less fitting for domains plagued with uncertainty, ambiguity, and poorly-defined dynamics (i.e. social sciences, business, etc.). The time has come for le... See more
Vikram Mansharamani • All Hail the Generalist
Supritha S added
From Ignorant Militance to Militant Ignorance: To me, however, the most important contribution of the modeling enterprise—as distinct from any particular model, or modeling technique—is that it enforces a scientific habit of mind , which I would characterize as one of militant ignorance—an iron commitment to "I don't know." That is, all scientific ... See more
Joshua M Epstein • Why Model? | Santa Fe Institute
Jay Matthews added
The big advantage of physicists—I think Doyne Farmer may have once said this to me—is not what they have learned, the tools. It’s how they have learned to think. In particular, physicists are quite good at being very, very broad, taking tools from all over the place. That is something that economists are very, very remiss in. It is a b—tch to try t
... See moreW. Brian Arthur • Complexity Economics: Proceedings of the Santa Fe Institute's 2019 Fall Symposium
Secondly, specialists toil within a singular tradition and apply formulaic solutions to situations that are rarely well-defined. This often results in intellectual acrobatics to justify one’s perspective in the face of conflicting data.
Vikram Mansharamani • All Hail the Generalist
Supritha S added
As Scott Page put it in his brilliant book The Model Thinker, for any complex phenomenon we need many models that can challenge each other, in this case including not just epidemiological models but also economic and social models.
Geoff Mulgan • Another World Is Possible: How to Reignite Social and Political Imagination
Even economics is based on the notion of “revealed preferences.” What people “think” is not relevant—you want to avoid entering the mushy-soft and self-looping discipline of psychology. People’s “explanations” for what they do are just words, stories they tell themselves, not the business of proper science. What they do, on the other hand, is tangi
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