Re: poly: Econ, the final frontier...

Robin Hanson <hanson@econ.berkeley.edu> writes:

> The sad fact is that most technical "polymaths" know next to nothing
> about technical social science. You can talk with them about
> number theory, complexity theory, astronomy, particle physics,
> electronics, natural selection, viruses, computer languages, traffic
> routing, war machines, space travel, etc. But beyond simple supply
> and demand reasoning and some awareness of the prisoner's dilemna,
> they just don't know much about technical social science.

Yes, this is unfortunately true. One reason may be that knowledge
about economics and social science is not very widespread in general -
most people can at least recite 'E=mc^2' and a few other physical
laws, can name a few famous physicists and know that the stars are
very far away, but don't know the basics of economy, cannot name any
economical laws or famous economists. We technical polymaths are not
much better. So, how to ameliorate the situation? How to get a
socio-economical basic education?

(In Aleph, we are planning to hold a macroeconomics mini-course at the
end of the month, hopefully able to explain the concepts to us
technologists)

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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