Saturday, November 26, 2005

Rival economics bloggers on French riots.

D-squared :
These young men have got a political grievance, and they're expressing it by setting fire to things and smashing them up. What could be more stereotypically, characteristically French than that?


Stumbling and Mumbling :
We should be able to use Bayes theorem to judge the relative importance of Islam, unemployment, or anything else, in the riots.

2 comments:

John Powers said...

I've got a friend who teaches horsemanship. I care little about horses, but am very fascinated by how teachers teach. Teaching horsemanship, probably like most athletic pursuits, is making conscious behaviors that must become unconcious or instinctive. Both these bloggers are trying to teach the opposite way around; making the unconcious available for inspection. D-Squared following the Aha! or cognitive dissonance path and that "snotty nosed little provincial oik" advocating scientific rigor.

Everyone knows that the behavioral sciences are, ahem, immature. Phil's juxtaposing these two posts shows his genius at teaching. People's two minds seem to require a pincer maneuver closing in on a subject between form and substance.

Perhaps idle arm waving isn't as useless as supposed.

Composing said...

Thanks, though I think you give me too much credit for having any sort of a plan here. The two thoughts just struck me as interesting.

But, as a Popperian, I do, definitely think that conjecture is the origin of knowledge. And idle, flippant speculation is better than no hypothesis at all.