tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post5227737841578065795..comments2024-03-29T03:19:09.227-04:00Comments on The Philosopher's Stone: DOWN MEMORY LANERobert Paul Wolffhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-42463556432025353162014-02-19T18:38:25.456-05:002014-02-19T18:38:25.456-05:00I think there is no silver bullet. I thought my r...I think there is no silver bullet. I thought my response in the seminar was pretty forceful, and I was, after all, THE PROFESSOR, but it simply did not get through. Nor, by the way, has Orwell's essay, even though everyone praises it and assigns it and says how wonderful it is.<br /><br />I like the point about closed systems being theoretical constructs or abstractions. It is very hard to get people to see the reality in front of their faces.Robert Paul Wolffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11970360952872431856noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5687347459208158501.post-69922401315882673372014-02-19T18:34:10.519-05:002014-02-19T18:34:10.519-05:00"Despite my heroic efforts to focus their att..."Despite my heroic efforts to focus their attention on particular, concrete examples, such as the controversy that has developed among ethnographers of the northern Kalahari desert, the students persisted in speaking and writing in the most suffocatingly abstract and stereotypical fashion."<br /><br />Although I cannot claim any experience as a teacher, I have noticed the same phenomenon.<br /><br />An instance off the top of my head: among heterodox economists is becoming de rigueur to rant endlessly about societies being open systems; prediction, these people claim, is only possible in closed systems, like natural systems/experiments; therefore, economic/social science prediction is impossible; mainstream economists supposedly ignoring this, etc.<br /><br />While I am very willing to admit there is a lot to the criticism (and the record of economists and other social scientists is less than stellar), I often wonder if these critics actually understand that, strictly speaking, a "closed system" is just an abstraction (originated in thermodynamics); there is no such a thing as a real-life closed system, whether in nature or in a lab, and yet prediction is still possible.<br /><br />Is there a clever trick to deal with these, otherwise annoying, people? To use a formulaic phrase: is there a "silver bullet"? Because, truth be told, I am no hero.Magpiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07528637318288802178noreply@blogger.com