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Showing posts from 2016

How does it feel to be part of Europe?

I had this piece drafted before the murder of Jo Cox last week. But I don’t think it changes anything I was going to say. It simply makes it more urgent to say it. May I introduce you to my two lovely young nieces? Natasha is four months old and Rosalind four years. They live in rural Devon, and they’re just starting to discover the world and decide how to feel about it. I want to think a little about what it might feel like to be in their world. The campaign for Britain to remain in the EU has been full of facts and utilitarian arguments. Economic projections, dispelling of myths about regulations, estimates of the economic and tax contributions made by European workers in Britain. All the kinds of things that may convince you if your inclination is to weigh up the numbers and evaluate the facts. But there are plenty of people who don’t want to make a decision based on numbers, and I understand that. Numbers can be manipulated. We don’t all have the time or desire to r...

Discussion 2 of 3: No spooky action at a distance - a theory of reward

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Part 2 in a short series of posts. Part 1 and part 3 are also available. One of the most powerful ideas in physics is the principle of locality. This principle insists that objects can only be influenced by other objects that touch them. Two items separated by a distance cannot directly exert any force or influence on each other, but must communicate via some medium which physically transmits the force from one to the other. Albert Einstein described this principle as "no spooky action at a distance" and it applies to his theory of gravity as well as all the other physical forces (it gets more complicated when we consider quantum mechanics, but that would take a whole other article). The Scottish physicist James Maxwell also used it in developing his theory of electromagnetism. Instead of the magnets directly pushing or pulling each other, each magnet creates an electromagnetic field, and sends out the field into the world around it, transmitted by light waves. When ...

Discussion 1 of 3: Where do goals come from?

Discussion number 1 in a series of 3: on goal-setting. Part 2 and part 3 have now been published. Much of decision-making psychology (and by extension behavioural economics) explores the processes by which people solve a problem or achieve a goal. Usually the papers in this field contrast the rational, expected-utility way to solve these problems with the approaches people actually use in practice. An important question they rarely address is "Why that goal?" How is it that people choose the particular problem they want to solve, the objective to work towards? In the psychology lab, the answer is easy: the person in a white coat gives it to them. In real life, that doesn't happen. Answering this question is essential to developing a comprehensive theory to replace or challenge classical economics. Standard microeconomic theory has a clear, simple answer to this: we always have the same goal, maximising utility. Any other objective (finding the best job, working o...