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"Econ is one of the few places in our society where overtly racist and sexist ideas are not totally taboo" Maybe because economics doesn't care about taboo, bu

by guylhem 13y ago

"Econ is one of the few places in our society where overtly racist and sexist ideas are not totally taboo" Maybe because economics doesn't care about taboo, but rather understanding and seing the payoff. Yes some ideas and concepts are overly simplified - but one has to make shortcuts to reason. Mainstream economics provides reasoning, and the means to test if it works against real life data (econometrics) - that's much more than most social sciences. I am saying that as someone who is deeply interested in the "logical" underpinnings for racism and sexism. I love complex things - mainly to understand how they works. Here, if these behaviours were illogical and had a negative payoff in all cases, they may not have existed in the first place- or persisted. But they do. Why? To the best of my current understanding, they are related to tribalism (as in parochialism). If you prefer, there is a nash equilibrium with cooperative and non cooperative behaviour. The external characteristics of the agent are used by the other agents to guess whichever is more likely - being cooperative or not - and to play accordingly. Basically, in both cases the external characteristic of an agent are used in a "best guess" function, which becomes self reinforcing, yet there seems to be more than self reinforcement, or these ideas would not be so prevalent. (So the interesting theories about say how agriculture helped the development of modern sexism are then developed, and tested in regressions) I find that very cool - at a "theory of knowledge" coolness level. Different paradigm coexist (because there are more than one explanation) so you can pick up your "school" (Chicago, Austrian) and see how well it works, ie test it against new concepts in an experimental way - like bitcoin and check its predictive power. That's challenging, especially when it is counterintuitive in your personal biais (ex: I'm so surprised Keynesian theory works well) Anyway, should you care about avoiding taboo (omg the n word! run!) or should you understand why and how it works? EDIT: They are not mutually exclusive, but when you study a concept, the taboo associated with it quickly goes away. Yet it remains in other persons, which makes it funny and interesting

scilro 13y ago
The two are not mutually exclusive.
glesica 13y ago
> Here, if these behaviours were illogical and had a negative payoff in all cases, they may not have existed in the first place- or persisted. But they do. Why? In my opinion, that is not a meaningful question because the answer is simple: people are not always totally rational, they do not make all of their decisions based on logical analysis. In fact, many of the opinions they hold are not even based on conscious choices. I agree that racism, sexism, and bigotry in general are probably rooted in the distant past and that, in some cases, they provided evolutionary advantages. But it is partially for this reason that their persistence needn't be logical or advantageous. A child socialized by its parents to be racist doesn't usually face a conscious decision later on whether to become (or continue to be) a racist. This is, in my very humble opinion (MA in econ, take from that what you will) one of the weaknesses of the field: economists seem to think people and social dynamics are icky. Why accept the obvious explanation that parents teach their kids racism and some of the kids, for various psychological or social reasons, continue to be racists? It is much more interesting to make a bunch of crazy assumptions about people so that you can plug the whole thing into a nice clean mathematical model.

by guylhem 13y ago

scilro 13y ago

The two are not mutually exclusive.

glesica 13y ago

> Here, if these behaviours were illogical and had a negative payoff in all cases, they may not have existed in the first place- or persisted. But they do. Why? In my opinion, that is not a meaningful question because the answer is simple: people are not always totally rational, they do not make all of their decisions based on logical analysis. In fact, many of the opinions they hold are not even based on conscious choices. I agree that racism, sexism, and bigotry in general are probably rooted in the distant past and that, in some cases, they provided evolutionary advantages. But it is partially for this reason that their persistence needn't be logical or advantageous. A child socialized by its parents to be racist doesn't usually face a conscious decision later on whether to become (or continue to be) a racist. This is, in my very humble opinion (MA in econ, take from that what you will) one of the weaknesses of the field: economists seem to think people and social dynamics are icky. Why accept the obvious explanation that parents teach their kids racism and some of the kids, for various psychological or social reasons, continue to be racists? It is much more interesting to make a bunch of crazy assumptions about people so that you can plug the whole thing into a nice clean mathematical model.