Feral Economist
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The first four panels of yesterday's SMBC:
The last four panels:
The mouseover title: "Though, every now and then we set out a bucket of utils for him."
The aftercomic:
Helpful background: "The secret sins of academics", 9/16/2004.
JPL said,
December 11, 2021 @ 4:53 pm
Take a journey through the back issues of, say, Linguistic Inquiry and you will see a lot of results of "vigorous, difficult and demanding activities" that got a lot of people tenure, but does it all get us any closer to understanding "how language hooks on to the world", (which I guess it does somehow, doesn't it?), or even understanding the possibility and the inner form and content of the thought that even Chomsky insists (and I would agree) it is the main function of language to express? "What are the principles according to which human language understands and interprets the world of experience?" is a question that can be pursued by the methods of empirical science. But it seems like the world we interact with is inevitably missing from Chomsky's Carnapian formal language models.
~flow said,
December 13, 2021 @ 11:51 am
What should peeve us most is the allusion to the destruction of what used to be free with the concomitant acquisition (to put it friendly) of resources with the aim of making general access to them a source of profit for the few. It's funny because that's what people have come to accept as the Natural Course of Events, and those who are among those to suffer most from the outcome of this 'inevitable' process ('alternative-less' as Ms Merkel once put it) seem to be among the ones that defend it most fiercely.
Philip Taylor said,
December 13, 2021 @ 12:29 pm
"resources" such as land, I assume ~flow, in which case I completely agree with your first sentence and the underlying sentiments therein.
On the other hand, I fail to understand why you believe that "those who are among those to suffer most from the outcome of this 'inevitable' process […] seem to be among the ones that defend it most fiercely".
Jonathan said,
December 14, 2021 @ 9:53 am
I like to think I'm an economist with a sense of humor (don't they all?) but I note that there is a giant literature on so-called Robinson Crusoe economies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe_economy in which the messy interactive stuff is simplified to a single individual who is responsible for everything. This has led to jokes like "Optimal Punishment for Crime in a Robinson Crusoe Society" and "Optimal Taxation in a Robinson Crusoe Economy" and "Nudges in a Robinson Crusoe Economy." (I did chuckle at the economist parents abandoning the child, though. But then I started to work out the conditions under which parents would optimally commit to having a child and then abandon it… and some of the humor drained away.)
Rodger C said,
December 14, 2021 @ 11:23 am
@Philip Taylor: America. Because Geneva Jesus.
wanda said,
December 16, 2021 @ 12:56 am
@Jonathan: "But then I started to work out the conditions under which parents would optimally commit to having a child and then abandon it"
My friend's baby cried for something like 16 hours out of the day for the first six months of its life. She would rarely sleep- no amount of soothing or rocking or "cry it out" or whatever could get her to just fall asleep. The doctors checked things out but told them that nothing was medically wrong and that there was nothing they could do. My friend's mother flew out to help them but couldn't take it and left. My friend is an insomniac herself and suffered from severe sleep deprivation and all the attendant consequences. The kid is now a bright, social, lively elementary-school-aged kid (who still can't fall asleep before 10pm)… but well, my friend is clearly not an economist who maximizes utility.