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description= 15 posts published by Lars Syll during August 2021;
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intransigeantes et passionnées spécialement dans les mouvances complotistes antisystème or ceux qui croient ainsi lutter au nom de la liberté ne font qu accentuer les clivages et renforcer les tenants d un autoritarisme plus marqué il serait sans doute urgent de comprendre que ce si beau principe de la liberté individuelle s exerce en fait dans un périmètre infiniment plus étroit que ce que nous imaginons il faut arrêter de rêver et regarder la réalité en face jean claude kaufmann le monde share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky probability and rationality trickier than most people think 26 aug 2021 at 18 42 posted in statistics econometrics 5 comments the coin tossing problem my friend ben says that on the first day he got the following sequence of heads and tails when tossing a coin h h h h h h h h h h and on the second day he says that he got the following sequence h t t h h t t h t h which report makes you suspicious most people yours truly asks this question says the first report looks suspicious but actually both reports are equally probable every time you toss a fair coin there is the same probability 50 of getting h or t both days ben makes equally many tosses and every sequence is equally probable the linda problem linda is 40 years old single outspoken and very bright she majored in philosophy as a student she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti nuclear demonstrations which of the following two alternatives is more probable a linda is a bank teller b linda is a bank teller and active in the feminist movement rationally alternative b cannot be more likely than alternative a nonetheless amos tversky and daniel kahneman reported judgments of and by representativeness in d kahneman p slovic a tversky eds judgment under uncertainty heuristics and biases cambridge uk cambridge university press 1982 that more than 80 per cent of respondents said that it was why do we make such irrational judgments in both these cases tversky and kahneman argued that in making this kind of judgment we seek the closest resemblance between causes and effects in the linda problem between linda s personality and her behaviour rather than calculating probability and that this makes alternative b seem preferable by using a heuristic called representativeness statement b in the linda problem seems more representative of linda based on the description of her although from a probabilistic point of view it is clearly less likely share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky miles davis quintet teatro dell arte 1964 26 aug 2021 at 11 19 posted in varia 2 comments what a treasure share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky keynes was not a keynesian he was a post keynesian 24 aug 2021 at 20 37 posted in economics 1 comment but these more recent writers like their predecessors were still dealing with a system in which the amount of the factors employed was given and the other relevant facts were known more or less for certain this does not mean that they were dealing with a system in which change was ruled out or even one in which the disappointment of expectation was ruled out but at any given time facts and expectations were assumed to be given in a definite and calculable form and risks of which tho admitted not much notice was taken were supposed to be capable of an exact actuarial computation the calculus of probability tho mention of it was kept in the background was supposed to be capable of reducing uncertainty to the same calculable status as that of certainty itself thus the fact that our knowledge of the future is fluctuating vague and uncertain renders wealth a peculiarly unsuitable subject for the methods of the classical economic theory john maynard keynes and this emphasis on the importance of uncertainty is not even mentioned in is lm keynesianism share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky was kant a racist 22 aug 2021 at 12 28 posted in politics society 6 comments share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky civilisationskritiska reflektioner 21 aug 2021 at 21 55 posted in varia 1 comment yours truly var för några år sedan inbjuden till en debatt på handelshögskolan i göteborg temat var tillväxt och miljö jag vet inte om jag lyckades övertyga alla som lyssnade om att det faktiskt är möjligt att leva bra och fullvärdiga liv utan att överkonsumera de som till äventyrs inte övertygades av mina åberopade teoretiska inspirationskällor soddy georgeescu roegen och boulding kanske istället kan få sig åtminstone en tankeväckare av nina hedenius underbara och via svt s öppet arkiv numera nedladdningsbara dokumentärfilm gubben i stugan som handlar om den pensionerade skogsarbetaren ragnars enkla liv i dalarnas finnskogar i alla moderna människors liv behövs det tid för andhämtning och reflektion och ibland när alla möjliga och omöjliga måsten och krav från omgivningen bara blir för många och högljudda kan det vara skönt att dra sig undan lite grand och slå av på takten för en stund alla har vi väl olika sätt att göra det på själv brukar jag titta på just gubben i stugan enkel och vacker civilisationkritik och en lisa för själen share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky cancel culture an orwellian perspective 20 aug 2021 at 19 26 posted in politics society comments off on cancel culture an orwellian perspective share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky sapere aude 20 aug 2021 at 10 06 posted in politics society 1 comment enlightenment is man s emergence from his self imposed nonage nonage is the inability to use one s own understanding without another s guidance this nonage is self imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one s own mind without another s guidance sapere aude have the courage to use your own understanding is therefore the motto of the enlightenment laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives long after nature has freed them from external guidance those guardians who have kindly taken supervision upon themselves see to it that the overwhelming majority of mankind among them the entire fair sex should consider the step to maturity not only as hard but as extremely dangerous first these guardians make their domestic cattle stupid and carefully prevent the docile creatures from taking a single step without the leading strings to which they have fastened them then they show them the danger that would threaten them if they should try to walk by themselves now this danger is really not very great after stumbling a few times they would at last learn to walk however examples of such failures intimidate and generally discourage all further attempts dogmas and formulas these mechanical tools designed for reasonable use or rather abuse of his natural gifts are the fetters of an everlasting nonage enlightenment requires nothing but freedom and the most innocent of all that may be called freedom freedom to make public use of one s reason in all matters now i hear the cry from all sides do not argue the officer says do not argue drill the tax collector do not argue pay the pastor do not argue believe only one ruler in the world says argue as much as you please but obey we find restrictions on freedom everywhere but which restriction is harmful to enlightenment which restriction is innocent and which advances enlightenment i reply the public use of one s reason must be free at all times and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind immanuel kant to all my brothers and sisters in afghanistan share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on x opens in new window x share on bluesky opens in new window bluesky behavioural economics and complexity economics 17 aug 2021 at 22 29 posted in economics 1 comment what is to take the place of neoclassical economics and its neoliberal policy offshoot there is no shortage of candidates grouped under the broad banner of economic heterodoxy some of these successor doctrines behavioral economics and complexity economics are examples of note take the neoclassical orthodoxies as a point of departure they therefore continue to define themselves in relation to those orthodoxies others avoided the gravitational pull altogether or as in the exceptional case of keynes made a long struggle to escape the behaviorists depart from neoclassicism by giving up strict assumptions of rational and maximizing behavior complexity theorists explore the dynamics of interacting agents and recursive functions both achieve a measure of academic reputability by remaining in close dialog with the orthodox mainstream neither pays more than a glancing tribute to earlier generations or other canons of economic thought the model is that of neoclassical offshoots new institutionalism new classical economics new keynesianism that make a vampire practice of colonizing older words and draining them of their previous meaning the dilemma of these offshoots lies in having accepted the false premise of the orthodoxy to which it proposes to serve as the alternative the conceit is of a dispassionate search for timeless truth once again pursued by relaxing restrictive assumptions in the interest of greater realism thus for example in complexity theories agents follow simple rules and end up generating intricate and unpredictable patterns nonlinear recursive functions give the same result the variance of returns turns out to be non normal and so forth but once the starting point is taken to be the neoclassical competitive general equilibrium model these exercises are largely drained of insight and relevance the behaviorists can tell us that real people do not appear to fit well into the portrait of autonomous selfish commodity obsessed pleasure seekers that is economic man the complexity theorists can tell us as arthur 2021 does is that a system constructed from confections of interacting agents may be unstable these things even the dimmest observer of real existing capitalism already knew james galbraith rwer although discounting empirical evidence cannot be the right way to solve economic issues there are still in my opinion a couple of weighty reasons why we just as galbraith perhaps shouldn t be too excited about the so called empirical or behavioural revolution in economics behavioural experiments and laboratory research face the same basic problem as theoretical models they are built on often rather artificial conditions and have difficulties with the trade off between internal and external validity the more artificial conditions the more internal validity but also less external validity the more we rig experiments to avoid the confounding factors the less the conditions are reminiscent of the real target system the nodal issue is how economists using different isolation strategies in different nomological machines attempt to learn about causal relationships one may have justified doubts on the generalizability of this research strategy since the probability is high that causal mechanisms are different in different contexts and that lack of homogeneity and invariance doesn t give us warranted export licenses to the real societies or economies if we see experiments or laboratory research as theory tests or models that ultimately aspire to say something about the real target system then the problem of external validity is central and was for a long time also a key reason why behavioural economists had trouble getting their research results published a standard procedure in behavioural economics think of e g dictator or ultimatum games is to set up a situation where one induce people to act according to the standard microeconomic homo oeconomicus benchmark model in most cases the results show that people do not behave as one would have predicted from the benchmark model in spite of the setup almost invariably being loaded for that purpose and in those cases where the result is consistent with the benchmark model one of course have to remember that this in no way proves the benchmark model to be right or true since there as a rule may be many outcomes that are consistent with that model for most heterodox economists this is just one more reason for giving up on the standard model but not so for mainstreamers and many behaviouralists to them the empirical results are not reasons for giving up on their preferred hardcore axioms so they set out to save or repair their model and try to integrate the empirical results into mainstream economics instead of accepting that the homo oeconomicus model has zero explanatory real world value one puts lipstick on the pig and hope to go on with business as usual why we should keep on using that model as a benchmark when everyone knows it is false is something we are never told instead of using behavioural economics and its results as building blocks for a progressive alternative research program the save and repair strategy immunizes a hopelessly false and irrelevant model by this i do not mean to say that empirical methods per se are so problematic that they can never be used on the contrary i am basically though not without reservations in favour of the increased use of behavioural experiments and laboratory research within economics not least as an alternative to completely barren bridge less axiomatic deductive theory models my criticism is more about aspiration levels and what we believe that we can achieve with our mediational epistemological tools and methods in the social sciences the increasing use of natural and quasi natural experiments in economics during the last couple of decades has led several prominent economists to triumphantly declare it as a major step on a recent path toward empirics where instead of being a deductive philosophy economics is now increasingly becoming an inductive science limiting model assumptions in economic science always have to be closely examined since if we are going to be able to show that the mechanisms or causes that we isolate and handle in our models are stable in the sense that they do not change when we export them to our target systems we have to be able to show that they do not only hold under ceteris paribus conditions and a fortiori only are of limited value to our understanding explanations or predictions of real economic systems ideally controlled experiments tell us with certainty what caus...
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