2. David Brooks talks about the flaws of traditional economics and talks up the behavioral economists. Two good bits regarding Taleb, the "Black Swan" guy: "Taleb believes that our brains evolved to suit a world much simpler than the one we now face." Interesting. Of course our brains continue to evolve and one wonders what this new complexity might result in. One also wonders if this complexity is really all that new. But this is the thing when talking about evolution: time as a point of reference is tricky. "New" and "old" are such amorphous concepts but we throw them around without much thought as though they were somehow specific. Time, as Richard Dawkins points out (he annoys me but he is very good at explaining natural selection in terms even eighteen year olds in philosophy class can grasp), is one of the primary impediments to understanding evolution. The sense of time that our own mortal existence imposes on us is so far removed from the vast timeframes involved in natural selection that it is literally hard to imagine. So are we using outdated mental hardware? Maybe. Maybe that's always the case though. Aren't we always playing catch up in a sense?
I'm rambling a bit, but that makes me happy because I haven't been able to ramble as of late. Anyway, the other bit about Taleb:
Taleb is characteristically vituperative about the quantitative risk models, which try to model something that defies modelization. He subscribes to what he calls the tragic vision of humankind, which “believes in the existence of inherent limitations and flaws in the way we think and act and requires an acknowledgement of this fact as a basis for any individual and collective action.” If recent events don’t underline this worldview, nothing will.Yes. I don't have much to add here, I just like it when others reinforce my worldview. There's an inherent limitation for you! Everything is "metrics" these days and our metrics are supposed to explain everything, improve productivity and solve all our problems. Going along with the metrics program requires lots of pretending and a fair bit of cooking the books. (This is just another way in which The Wire was so brilliant: it showed what happens when institutions become obsessed with statistics) And we see what it's gotten us.
3. The enthusiasm for metrics has made its way into my academic world as of late. Which is really just what we need--to be more corporate! Two recent examples of my academic institution acting like a big corporate shitbag: they raised our parking rates, hey these things happen, but they refused to say this. Instead they claimed that they were "removing our parking subsidies." They'd never mentioned that any such parking subsidies even existed, but now they were going away and we would have to pull our full weight! I'm being kicked off of parking welfare! Second, in the wake of the financial crisis our institution announced that it would continue in its bid to raise 1.6 BILLION in funds. Why quit now when we're already halfway there? This is in addition to the already ginormous endowment. A few days later our president sends out a letter explaining that no budget increases will be allowed for the next fiscal year because of the financial crisis. This translates to: no raises coming folks. But he encourages individual departments to find creative budgetary ways to continue to fund merit-based raises. Bottom line: our institution is swimming in money, unbelievably filthy rich, but if employees don't get raises it is because times are tough and your local administrator is lacking creativity. Or you are lacking in merit. Bravo!
4. I have just discovered that I cannot truly do two things at once. I can listen to music and do something else but the music becomes pleasant background noise. But I cannot type or do most anything else requiring a degree of concentration while also indulging in the wonderful world of free podcasts that Br'er Bunni has introduced me too.
5. I am feeling less blocked. I think this is because I am sort of tired. I would try to explain that but this has already gone on long enough.
