Some Quotes I Like

"If you torture the data long enough, nature will confess." (R.H.C.)
"But if you torture the parameters long enough, nature will also not deny" (W-K.W.)

"In economics it takes a theory to kill a theory;
facts can only dent a theorist's hide" (P.A.S.)

In Contrast to the unwritten rules whereby only certain stylized models are considered good economic theory, my own definition of "good economic theory" is that it poses interesting "if ... then ..." propositions relevant to some economic issue... There are two significant parts to this definition: one is the adjective interesting , the other is the phrase relevant to some economic issue . What constitutes an economic issue is empirically defined. According to Samuelson, interesting economic issues concern the what, how, and for whom of the distribution and use of economic resources... A second requirement for an interesting propositional (i.e., if ... then ...) statement is some surprise relative to what is implicit (or perhaps explicit) in the usual economics literature...

(George Akerlof, 1984, p.3.)

Good papers in economics have three characteristics: a viewpoint, a lever, and a result.

(Out in Five, part of David Romer's rules as told by Brad Delong.)

No amount of statistical evidence will make a statement invulnerable to common sense.

(Robert Solow's Nobel Lecture )

Why, for example, should a Ph.D. be necessary to teach calculus? Because there is a concept in the University about knowledge and how one should behave toward it... This view of the University is that there is more knowledge out there than you could possibly know. We cannot and will not teach you everything. But we will teach you something that is yet more valuable. We will teach you what it means to acquire knowledge... In undergraduate education you are told quite early on to specialize. You major in some field. You may spend a good share of your senior year writing a senior thesis. We want you to learn as much as you can about some specialized field in four years' time.

Our view of education then is two-fold. On the one hand we want this to be a humbling experience. We want you to know that the knowledge to be learned is vast. At best even the greatest genius among all of you can know only a tiny fraction of it. Think about how long it takes to read a single book. Then think about the Berkeley course catalogue. And think about the fact that for each course in that book-length catalogue there is a whole syllabus of articles and books. Think about the library. And also the checkout room, with its paneled ceiling that lists the greatest scholars. They include Shakespeare, Descartes, Dante, Newton, and Rousseau. Someone planned those names to be carved in those gold letters as a humbling experience. When you go into that library you are being told how little you know relative to how much there is to know, in a great University like ours, and in that great library of ours, how much there is to know.

But the purpose of the University is not just to leave you humbled. It is our real purpose also to teach you, like Frodo, how to operate in a world that is so potentially humbling.

Little by little, step by step, the aim of this education is to show you how in any chosen area, you can acquire the wisdom to deal with any given problem. An education is not a game of Trivial Pursuit. It is not just cramming odd facts into your head so you can win $1,000,000 on a TV quiz show. An education teaches you how to relate existing knowledge to any situation that may arise. This is what we are teaching when we tell Ph.D. students that their education is not complete until they have completed a new piece of research. They must understand then the relation between all existing knowledge and the question that they are trying to answer. By learning the procedures to sort out how all existing knowledge impacts one question, you learn the discipline necessary to do that for every other question.

I am a social scientist. As a social scientist I see the University then as changing who you are. I see the University as not just changing your views toward science, like physics or biology, or astronomy, or chemistry. I see it also as changing your attitude toward other people.

Every one of the social sciences teaches us that we can understand the motives of other people. People may be very different from us. Their motives may be very different from ours. Their means of expressing those motives may be strange indeed. Our knowledge about other people's problems makes their motives comprehensible to us. That means that we can see other people and their motives in our terms.

The uneducated too often believe that a conflict of interest occurs because other people are evil. The educated believe that conflicts of interest naturally occur. Moreover, these conflicts occur especially because other people are basically so very much like ourselves. So the University teaches us to see other people's views. We have mercy for them.

                                   [George Akerlof, Trained to be a Hero]


[Thinking] this is my son, this is my wealth; such is a fool's way of thinking.  If this self I cannot even call my own, what's more my son, my wealth?

Dhammapada