At 02:35 PM 6/15/00 -0400, you wrote:
> >From the profile of Mathew Rabin:
>
> > Rabin has
> > demonstrated particular strength in
> > distilling from psychological research those
> > insights that can be modeled
> > mathematically.
>
>The wider conventional basis of the dominant approaches of both psychology
>and economics is "physics envy". The profile identifies "psychology" with
>the "behavioral" approach to it now dominant.
The article that I read by Rabin was hardly mathematical, though one might
say that his biases are toward behaviorism rather than toward
psychoanalysis. But I think that it's a mistake to condemn the guy based on
a minuscule profile. (hey, my profile ain't so hot either. It makes me look
fat.)
I also see nothing wrong _per se_ with modeling psychology mathematically.
I'd have to look at the assumptions and the empirical evidence marshalled
to justify the assumptions. (Does the value of the insights outweigh the
costs imposed by silly assumptions?) Also, it's possible that the
practitioner of "mathematical psychics" would miss the limitations of her
or his model (just as Chicago-school economists, including those at
UCBerkeley, confuse the ideal market with the empirical reality), but
that's not necessarily a problem with the model itself.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
["clawww" or "liberalarts" can replace "bellarmine"]
