“Learn to think like an economist” gets about 11,000 Google hits. “Learn NOT to think like an economist” gets 5 (now 7), and every single one of them is by me.* This is cutting-edge stuff. Clearly an endowed chair should be established somewhere so that I can teach the science of non-economic thinking.
* “Learning not to think like an economist” just teaches economists to adapt their language in order to convey basic economic concepts to stupid people.
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June 29, 2011 at 3:44 pm
This post proves that Brad loves you so much that you should gay-marry him. I hear that New York City is nice this time of year.
July 7, 2011 at 7:06 pm
Sadly, you seem to be laboring under the egregious misapprehension that if economists wish to be understood.
In your efforts to improve the communication skills of economists, you’re misunderstanding the core philosophy of all but one of the Big Names in that treasured class: “the truth is secondary to whatever pet theory I support.”
Thus, the English language must be wielded, not as a scalpel, but as a hammer, bludgeoning the reader through the sheer force of gravitas, to convince him or her that Said Economist’s ideas must be correct, as they are forcefully delivered with such syllabic intensity as to cause the listener to testify to their meretricious nature merely due to the overwhelming weight of the typeface (if I may be forgiven for employing an arcane typographer’s term).
Add to that the fact that the unique nature of many economic philosophies might, if explicated in “simple” terms, be mistaken for equine fecal matter, and you can see why the communicative skills of the average economist might appear somewhat stunted to the layperson.
No offense, of course.
July 7, 2011 at 8:39 pm
I’m teaching non-economists not to think like economists. A lot of them do. The main product of the economics profession is Econ 101, and chapter 1 of most econ texts is “How to think like and economist”. And a lot of people end up thinking that way; econ 101 is very compatible with middle class American folk beliefs.
August 8, 2011 at 6:26 pm
Research project, Guru JE:
Compare and contrast a macroeconomist’s predictions of future market activity with those of like, psychics and astrologers (which some traders actually rely upon).
Get to it.
August 25, 2018 at 1:36 am
Learn not to think like an economist | Trollblog
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