Tuesday, October 14, 2008

G.L.S.Shackle

And, incidentally, amidst the encircling gloom as people clutch desperately at the straws of old, deluded gods - von Mises, Friedman, Hayek, Marx, Mandelson, Brown - it may be worth drawing your attention to one of the most unjustly ignored of all economists,  G.L.S.Shackle. He didn't think we made rational choices, nor that probability taught us anything of value about the real world. But Shackle is not taught so Nassim was entirely justified in telling a vast audience at the London School of Economics last night to drop their study of economics and take up dentistry - 'a robust science'. There wasn't a bat squeak of dissent.

7 comments:

  1. "One day we will understand Shackle’s point that economics and human affairs are about epistemics, the study of unknowledge. It will make the world a better, and certainly safer, place"--NNT, "Tales of the unexpected".

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  2. No I am sticking with Mises and Hayek, their guesses seem pretty good to me in explaining the things that I see in the here and now (Marxism is very much a materialist religion)

    My general theory is that Economics as too politics (mainly theater) are just sub branches of philosophy. At the end of the day we have to make value judgments and we will all see the world through those judgments.

    The best way of dealing with uncertainty is to pretend the future is a giant mirror on the here and now, so like Taleb, on the day of my execution I will be having a shave, putting on my best suit and watching a bit of morning TV.

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  3. The recent comment from one of juniors old flames (Oxford PPE straight into the clutches of Andersens thence onwards) "you were right, I had myself committed, still the money was good"
    The current crop of economic guestimators are not unlike Ripleys Aliens, spaceship crashes on lonely planet / lets lay some embryos in pods / passing space travellers are bound to pop by (we've done some sums that say they will) / 1500 years later / bingo / straight down the throat / hey! ain't we the f.....g greatest / oops one snag / Ripley / shit / back to the runes / oh its OK / look / there's that surly Scotch git / he's bound to mend the queen / give us the acid back / whats that he said / oh Ok its all to save his own skin / who's that ponce standing behind him with the hookey looking Russian? / what! tell him to piss off / will we pay his mortgage / will we f..ck

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  4. Bryan, I wish you'd leave me alone. I am now more worried by these black swans than I am by Sarah Palin.
    My publisher, a monster in an open-necked shirt, has just insisted that I cut the essay that had an Appleyard quote in a footnote. What if that footnote, was a black swan or even a brown one? What if it might have turned the book into an international best-seller? If a butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Florida, why can't an Appleyard dispensing wisdom in Norfolk cause a run on the bookshops? The ignorant man didn't have the faintest idea what I was talking about.
    I think the only safe course is to sneak it back in.

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  5. Sorry, Nick, but it's an uncertain world out there

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  6. Why risk cutting the footnote then? Back it goes and to hell with HarperCollins

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  7. Shackle's ideas are starting to receive attention in organization studies. See, for example, (1) Dew et al. 2004 Journal of Business Venturing, (2) Kor et al. 2007 Journal of Management Studies, (3) Loasby 2007 Journal of Management Studies, (4) Loasby 2007 Organization Studies, and (5) Chiles et al. 2010 Journal of Management Inquiry.

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