Economists Rarely Say “Nothing But”
Robin Hanson
Citation (APA): Hanson, R. (2018). Economists Rarely Say “Nothing But” [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
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Economists Rarely Say “Nothing But” By Robin Hanson
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Imagine someone said: Those physicists go too far. They say conservation of momentum applies exactly at all times to absolutely everything in the universe. And yet they can’t predict whether I will raise my right or left hand next. Clearly there is more going on than their theories can explain. They should talk less and read more literature. Maybe then they’d stop saying immoral things like Earth’s energy is finite. Sounds silly, right? But many literary types really don’t like economics (in part due to politics), and they often try to justify their dislike via a similar critique. They say that we economists claim that complex human behavior is “nothing but” simple economic patterns.
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FISICI ED ECONOMISTI....ANALOGIE E CRITICHE FUORI FUOCO
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wallows in our full, complex particularity.
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LE DISCIPLINE LETTERARIE
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L ACCUSA FATTA AGLI ECONOMISTI
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overreach: taking an argument that has worthwhile applications and extending
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Economists tend to be hedgehogs,
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ACUSA IN ALTRE PAROLE
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You might think that Lanchester would support his claim that we overreach by pointing to particular large claims and then offering evidence that they are false in particular ways. Oddly, you’d be wrong.
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ACCUSA NN SUPPORTATA
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“introspective taboo” that prevents us from telling the truth to ourselves about our motives
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IL TEMA DO EB
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Just as a book on auto repair doesn’t automatically claim auto repair to be the most important thing in the world,
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ANALOGIA
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of how much human behavior “ultimately can be traced back to some kind of signalling.”
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DOMANDA AD H DI TYLER
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over ninety per cent.”
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RISPOSTA
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shaping key patterns in 90% of areas explains far less than 90% of all behavior details.
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PRECISAZIONE
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Saying that an abstraction is important doesn’t say that the things to which it applies are “nothing but” that abstraction.
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SINTESI DELLA DIFESA
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conservation of momentum applies to all physical behavior, yet it explains only a tiny fraction of the variance in behavior of physical objects.
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ANALOGIA
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Natural selection applies to all species, yet most species details must be explained in other ways.
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ALTRO ESEMPIO
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Financial accounting applies to nearly 100% of firms, yet it explains only a small fraction of firm behavior.
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ALTRO ESEMPIO
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every nation has a largest export commodity. Knowing this commodity will help you understand something about this nation, but it isn’t remotely reasonable to say that a nation is “nothing more” than its largest export commodity,
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ALTRA ANALOGIA
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most models we fit to data have error terms to accommodate everything else that we’ve left out of that particular model.
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ESEMPIO TRATTO DALL ECONOMIA STESSA
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waving your hands in the general direction of “complexity.”
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LA COMPLESSITÀ COME RIFUGIO DELLE CANAGLIE