2 Machine as Metaphor

2 Machine as Metaphor
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During [Sigmund] Freud’s university years (the late 1870s and early 1880s), young enthusiasts in the fuzzier disciplines, such as psychology, liked to borrow terminology from the more rigorous
Note:FREUD E LE METAFORE IN PRESTITO

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Freud wound up with the idea that libido or sexual “energy,”
Note:MOTORE SESSUALE

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Over the past twenty years . . . neurophysiologists have begun to study the actual workings of the brain and central nervous system. These investigators find no buildups of “pressure” or “energy,” sexual or otherwise, for the simple reason that the central nervous system is not analogous to an engine.
Note:IL CERVELLO NN È UN MOTORE

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Like psychologists, economists were taken with mechanical metaphors,
Note:LE METAFORE DELL ECVONOMIA

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The graduate program in economics at MIT was at first heavily funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, as World War II seemed to show the importance of combining economics with engineering.
Note:MIT E DIFESA

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problems of constrained optimization.

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There was even a brief attempt to model all economic policy as solving a constrained optimization problem using a “social welfare function,”
Note:FUNZIONI DEL BENESSERE

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they could fine-tune the economic machine.
Note:FINE TUNE

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The MIT revolution was led by Paul Samuelson, who in 1970 became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Economics,
Note:SAMUELSON

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Samuelson and his successors taught that the economic machine had a gas pedal that could be used to avoid economic slowdowns. That device was “aggregate demand,” which could be increased by the government’s printing money, running a budget deficit, or both.
Note:PEDALE DEL GAS. KEYNES

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the concept of specialization is forgotten entirely. Instead, economists employ an interpretive framework in which every worker performs the same job,
Note:IL GRANDE ASSENTE

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TUTTI LO STESSO LAVORO

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Fifty years ago, those researchers who were not seduced by Freudian metaphors were likely to be enamored of B.F. Skinner, who taught that human behavior could be interpreted as if we were machines
Note:SKINNER E L UOMO MACCHINA

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However, today, many researchers prefer the interpretive framework of evolutionary psychology. They see the human brain as being endowed with capabilities that evolved in the era of hunting and gathering but that can be adapted to very different environments.
Note:ATTACCO ALLA MACCHINA....SIAMO DIVERSI E NON SCOMPONIBILI....IL CAMBIAMENTO X EVOL ANZICHÈ X COSTRUZ

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Although psychology has moved on, the discipline of economics has remained stuck in its mechanistic
Note:PSICOLOGIA E ECONOMIA

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futile attempt to apply mathematical methods
Note:MAYEMATICA

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I have come to see software and Internet resources as useful metaphors for the market economy.
Note:INTERNET...UNA METAFORA ALTERNATIVA

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Internet, and the patterns of specialization and trade in the market, emerge from the actions of countless individuals, not from the minds of a few designers.
Note:DESIGNER VS ORDINE SPONTANEO

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The MIT-influenced approach that dominates the economics profession treats individual markets and the economy as a whole as if they were simple machines.
Note:SONDROME DELL AGGREGAZIONE

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In the real world, too many factors have to be left out of the mathematical models.
Note:TROPPI FATTORI TRASCURATI

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Defenders of the modern orthodoxy will argue that the use of mathematics is a way to force economists to keep track of their assumptions.
Note:DIFESA DELLA MATEMATICA

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Formal models make assumptions explicit,
Note:ESPLICITO

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On the contrary, we often make very bad assumptions, because better assumptions would be too difficult to handle mathematically.
Note:CRITICA: IPOTESI INVEROSIMILI SCELTE XCHÈ TRATTABILI

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We take market imperfections as given, rather than consider how enterprises and institutions might evolve to address current problems.
Note:ESEMPIO...LE IMPERFEZIONI

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An extensive literature using mathematical modeling says that most or all of retiree savings should be converted to annuities.
Note:ALTRO ESEMPIO

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economists tend to draw strong conclusions from simple models.
Note:SEMPLICISMO

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When it comes to the financial sector, mathematics has served economists mainly as a blindfold.
Note:MATEMATICA E GINANZA. IL DISASTRO CAPM

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In his recent book Foolproof, financial journalist Greg Ip says of economic policy analysts: Philosophically, they fall into two schools of thought. One, which I call the engineers, seeks to use the maximum of our knowledge and ability to solve problems and make the world safer and more stable; the other, which I call the ecologists, regards such experts with suspicion, because given the complexity and adaptability of people and the environment, they will always have unintended consequences
Note:INGEGNIERI ED ECOLOGISTI

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The engineering approach requires a presumption that someone is standing outside the economy—an economic policy adviser—who, with the aid of simple models and equations, clearly sees what it would take to achieve outcomes that are superior to those that would emerge without government intervention.
Note:L IPOTESI DELL OSSERVATORE ESTERNO

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Moreover, they assume that individuals and organizations acting in the context of markets will be unable to adapt to solve the problems that arise.
Note:IMPOSSIBILITÀ DI ADATTARSI...FALLIMENTI DI MERCATO...CONTRO VEDI OLSTROM

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Economists talk about “market imperfections” or “market failure.” However, economic models are themselves imperfect and capable of failure.
Note:FALLIMENTO DELLO STATO... FALLIMENTO DELLO STATO E FALLIMENTO DELL ECONOMISTA.

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outsiders who see a flaw in how the market serves consumers, those outsiders have the option of starting a business to address the problem.
Note:FALLIMENTI DEL MERCATO E IMPRENDOTORIALITÀ...MANAGER

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What we should be comparing is not the existing market configuration with an ideal based on a simple model but the market process of error correction with the political process of error correction.
Note:COSA COMPARARE

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