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@JohnQuiggin

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Lionel Page

@page_eco

Oct 16

Discussions on the award of the Nobel Prize in economics to Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson have often focused on their empirical papers on economic growth.
A🧵 to point to the big picture: how they transformed the discipline.

It is easy, particularly for younger generations, to underestimate how transformational the AJR research program has been. Step back 25 years, and the economic discipline was still very traditional in how it viewed the economy.

The mechanisms economists could investigate to study growth were primarily the accumulation of factors of production: labour, capital, human capital, plus some not well-understood factors like technological efficiency.

Read 13 tweets

Lionel Page

@page_eco

Sep 12

What is depression, and why does it exist?
In spite of its prevalence, depression and the factors causing it are still not well understood. A 🧵on how an adaptive approach to cognition can help us gain a better understanding of depression.
optimallyirrational.com/p/depression

Happy and unhappy feelings can be seen as meant to help us make good decisions.👇
However, depression is characterised by a lack of motivation to engage with the outside world and a reluctance to take action. How can this be helpful in making decisions?
optimallyirrational.com/p/the-truth-ab…

To understand depression, we need to understand moods. Moods are lasting positive or negative feelings. What's the point of having moods?
@RandyNesse made the point that moods can be understood as signals for the value of the situations we are in.

Read 8 tweets

Lionel Page

@page_eco

Jun 27

Kahneman said: “The concept of loss aversion is certainly the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics.”
In a new paper @kubitzg1 and I propose an explanation for it, as a feature of our cognition that helps us make good decisions.

Loss aversion is the fact that, subjectively, losing feels worse than winning feels good. The idea has been expressed throughout human history. It can be found, for instance, in Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments:

Loss aversion is one of the three pillars of Kahneman and Tversky's Prospect Theory which posits that subjective satisfaction is relative to a reference point. Outcomes above our reference point feel like gains and outcomes below feel like losses.

Read 26 tweets

Lionel Page

@page_eco

May 2

Because talking to each other seems easy to us, we typically underappreciate the amazing cognitive feats we achieve in our everyday conversations. A 🧵

While computers are extremely good at tasks humans find hard, like making complex calculations, they have struggled with tasks that humans find almost trivially easy, like language. It is part of the "Moravec paradox".

Our everyday communications may seem simple, but underneath, they are shaped by deep principles of cooperation that determine what we say and how we say it.

Read 20 tweets

Lionel Page

@page_eco

Dec 9, 2023

We frequently lament the lack of quality information in the media. Yet, as consumers, we often seek not what's most accurate, but what aligns with our views. This shifts the information marketplace into a "marketplace of rationalisations". A🧵

Concerns about the media aren't new. In the 20th century, intellectuals voiced worries about corporate mass media indoctrinating and dumbing down the public in ways that favoured the status quo of the political and economic order.

With the advent of the internet, there was hope for a decentralised public sphere, rich in idea exchange. But reality diverged from this ideal marketplace of ideas. Instead, concerns have risen about people increasingly being influenced by unreliable information.

Read 20 tweets

Lionel Page

@page_eco

Nov 26, 2023

Why hasn't the Internet worked as a great public space where the best ideas win? Perhaps because it isn't how debates operate. Behind intellectual arguments, people aren't impartial thinkers; they advocate for their team.
A🧵on how coalitional thinking shapes our discussions.

Introductory example. When a Hayek citation criticising men's overconfidence was shared on a libertarian website, it was very poorly received. Ironically, the quote was from Hayek, the free-market economist. Who "said" it greatly influenced how the quote was perceived.

John Tooby--who recently passed away--and his wife Leda Cosmides, founded an influential school of evolutionary psychology. In a 2010 article, they highlighted the importance of our "coalitional psychology," that guides us in navigating ingroup cooperation & outgroup competition.

Read 16 tweets

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