Category: Quotes

Model Based Thinking

A brief reminder is in order here because from time to time, I do resort to very simple economic models. The utility of simple models in assisting thinking about complex matters is under-appreciated by most of us whose professional interests do not require model-based thinking. In the hard sciences, physicists and cosmologists commonly use models to clarify their thinking and illuminate the essential features of the complex theoretical subjects they study. Where the search space of a solution is unmanageable large, simulations based on simple models come in handy, such as in meteorology.

Elegant models are amazing things. That is why economists do it with models. The study of the real world would be too confusing if it were not stripped of all inessential details. The hard part lies in figuring out which bits to retain and which to discard while creating the model. Model building is an art and the product is often a thing of spectacular beauty and elegance. They illuminate and enlighten; they capture the imagination and make accessible features of the real world that would otherwise be lost in a haze of misapprehension. It seems to me that learning simple models has to be part of a well-rounded education. Children should be exposed to simple models and then taken through the logical deductions that the assumptions imply. But I will not digress into models and our education system for now. What I want to do is quote a passage from Paul Krugman, an economist whom I especially admire for his clarity of thinking and exposition, about how serious economics is done.
Continue reading “Model Based Thinking”

Techno-hype

Really productive ideas, like internal combustion and the assembly line, are hard to find… But the techno-hype that surrounds us has some real costs. It causes businesses to waste money; it causes politicians to seek high-tech fixes (give every child a laptop!) when they should be getting back to the basics (teach every child to read). The slightly depressing truth is that technology has been letting us down lately. Let’s face up to that truth, and get on with our lives.

That is Paul Krugman writing in Dec 1996.

Success

“To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived;
This is to have succeeded.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Man versus the State

It is not to the State that we owe the multitudinous useful inventions from the spade to the telephone; it is not the State which made possible extended navigation by a developed astronomy; it was not the State which made the discoveries in physics, chemistry, and the rest, which guide modern manufacturers; it was not the State which devised the machinery for producing fabrics of every kind, for transferring men and things from place to place, and for ministering in a thousand ways to our comforts. The worldwide transactions conducted in merchants’ offices, the rush of traffic filling our streets, the retail distributing system which brings everything within easy reach and delivers the necessaries of life daily at our doors, are not of governmental origin. All these are results of the spontaneous activities of citizens, separate or grouped.

Herbert Spencer in “The Man versus the State” (1884)

Desiderata

Desiderata, the plural for “desideratum” which means “something to be desired or wanted.” Years ago I came across a piece by Max Ehrman titled “Desiderata.” There is a perfection about that piece. Brief and yet packs in a tremendous amount of practical wisdom. Its simple words have the depth to provide perspective to life’s joys, sorrows, trials and tribulations. I have yet to come across any situation that could not have been referred to the piece without insight.

My favorite lines from it: “You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

That expresses the same thought as, “The world, Govinda, is perfect at every moment.”

Go read DESIDERATA.

The Living Past

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads not taken, we pursue images perceived as new but whose providence dates to the dim dramas of childhood, which are themselves but ripples of consequence echoing down the generations. The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

—William Faulkner

Abolishing Unjust Governments

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Continue reading “Abolishing Unjust Governments”

The Pale Blue Dot

Also Sprach Carl Sagan:

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
Continue reading “The Pale Blue Dot”

A Question of Balance

The following is an excerpt from a comment by one “E.G.” I don’t think it particularly matters in which context the comment was made or where. I just find it worth reading and pondering over.

Begin quote:

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Dawkins: The God Delusion

Reading on a lazy Sunday afternoon is a luxury that I look forward to eagerly. Authors that I have special regard for, I read slowly and deliberately. I value not just the ideas but also how they are presented. So it was with particular relish that I curled up with today’s book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. He is a master craftsman constructing elegant arguments that are a delight to behold. Here are some excerpts, for the record.
Continue reading “Dawkins: The God Delusion”