Economics: There are surprisingly little people studying very large, grand, topics such an inequality. You've probably heard of the handful of economists that do. It's unfashionable due to the influence of the Chicago school and it's focus on free market principles, as well as many other factors.
Physics: Good luck getting any interest or funding if you are not studying the currently dominant theory in your
field (even if there has been no progress in decades).
Both examples are wrong. Lots of economists working on inequality , it is even a hot topic.
Your physics example is so vague that is meaningless. Name one promising theory/approach in physics which is not getting interest because it goes against "the currently dominant theory of the field".Tip: LQG does not count.
No, lots of economists don't. Especially considering how important of a problem it is. It's a "hot topic" because of public opinion at the moment. We have not been attacking it in new and creative ways for decades.
> Name one promising theory/approach in physics which is not getting interest because it goes against "the currently dominant theory of the field".Tip: LQG does not count.
Lack of such promising theories is precisely the point (I guess we are talking specifically about the problem of quantum gravity). Everyone is working with the same 1.5 old approaches and the progress has stalled. Of course individually this strategy is rational because if you try to think of something new and it doesn't work out (which is very probable) your career is toast. But imagine what the brainpower poured into string theory could achieve with a more breadth-first search strategy.
There are a large number of people working on inequality.
The two most common fields studying it are:
1) Development
2) Labor
Although there are a number of Macro-Economists who have studied the impact of inequality on growth. The reason you may not read about it is that the relationship between inequality and growth is a largely "solved" problem. It is "unfashionable" because of that.
Okay, but to play devil's advocate -- if you study something controversial and/or unfashionable in academia (such as economics of inequality) aren't you just going to be ignored by the community?
I think being unfashionable is more viable in fields that are meritocratic and don't require popular approval to succeed.
I have this suspicion that, in economics, trends and fashions have sometimes formed around principles whose primary attraction is that they make the math tractable.
Plus it's not like they are just handed out and you're on your own. A nice man or woman in a suit will spend many hours sitting beside you teaching you everything you want to know. And anytime you are confused you press the help key twice and you are connected with someone who will take you through step by step what to do. And this isn't outsourced IT support. It's a person in New York who knows the product really well.
Once you have a few terminals at your firm, Bloomberg will provide a dedicated router + tunnel on top off the regular security. The bad actor would likely need to be internal to Bloomberg, and at that point there is nothing you can do.
A trader has an idea about what inflation will look like in 2025-2030 (The 5 Year period starting 5 years from now).
Lots of other people have ideas about the same thing, so there is a product you can buy or sell to bet on it.
She asks her broker what price they can buy or sell it. The broker asks how much she wants and gives a price.
This conversation is so common that there is an agreed upon structure for it. Bloomberg parses all your conversations and provides you with an aggregated view of all quotes brokers have offered you. You can then chart/do whatever you want with this data.
> This conversation is so common that there is an agreed upon structure for it. Bloomberg parses all your conversations and provides you with an aggregated view of all quotes brokers have offered you. You can then chart/do whatever you want with this data.
I appreciate when a human interaction becomes so formalized that it becomes a de-facto API that computers can use. It would be funny to imagine a future where that interaction is happening between 2 chatbots and report results back to their humans.
From the 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report
...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate... [0]
The point is that there were a lot of climate models done in the 70's, and only a few of them were accurate. No one was randomly guessing, but the model you gave was not the consensus.
Despite not having children, I like hearing about my coworker's and friend's kids. Complaining about them can get old, but funny stories and things they are proud of are great to hear. I don't think I'm unique in this.
I don't mind -- and am often interested in -- cool/funny things about my friends' kids, but the complaining... ugh. I get that kids are far from being all rainbows and sunshine, and I would never begrudge my friends the occasional (or even more than occasional) venting session, but after some threshold of complaining I just want to say "maybe you shouldn't've had kids if all you can do is complain about them".
AQR published a paper on share buybacks last year [0] with the opening sentence "People seem to forget some of the very basic lessons of financial economics when it comes to share repurchases".
One of the big things missed by all the articles covering share repurchases, is that they are increasing at a rate similar to company market cap. That shouldn't be too surprising. The real story is why is R&D not keeping up?
I strongly agree that the real story is in why R&D spending is stagnating or dropping in comparison to earnings. Personally, I think there a number of contributing factors including less competition from new businesses (new businesses starts with employees are way down from previous decades), decreased competition from large competitors (see Disney buying up everyone in the entertainment industry as an example), regulatory capture, increased risk aversion in the corporate world, and just the fact that low hanging fruit are mostly picked at this point so that the next major improvement might require way more investment than a lot of companies are comfortable with (see the massive increase in new semiconductor fabs and drug discovery as examples).
It's funny reading all the debate about different wordings because it totally misses the point. The wording doesn't matter, only the delivery does. The recipients's interpretation of the question depends on who is saying it and how they say it. Whether or not they include the word "just" is irrelevant. Any single one of the phrases mentioned can be delivered in a way that causes offense or doesn't.
Came here to say a similar thing. The reaction can say a lot about the person's opinion/impression of you. It might be too much to try to correct for other people's insecurities; however, if you find that a large portion of people get upset by your phrasing, then it might be worth it to consider how you present yourself in general to others. It might just be you.
Totally agree. Words only make up part of communication. There are >300 comments on this thread because everyone has their own way of saying this phrase based on how they would be received if they said it at their workplace.
It's easier in the sense that more people are able to do it. Not in the sense that doing it incurs less suffering, or in the sense that making yourself do it requires less willpower. The spectrum between easy and difficult is multidimensional.
Economics: There are surprisingly little people studying very large, grand, topics such an inequality. You've probably heard of the handful of economists that do. It's unfashionable due to the influence of the Chicago school and it's focus on free market principles, as well as many other factors.
Physics: Good luck getting any interest or funding if you are not studying the currently dominant theory in your field (even if there has been no progress in decades).