off with your head

In economics we play a game. The name of the game changes but the rules are the same: pretend people are waaaay the fuck more rational than they actually are.

It's important to remember that this is a game. It is an assumption for building interesting and tractable models, not something economists actually believe. Everyone who's thought about it for a half a second realizes all models are idealizations and there should always be a comfortable layer of irony insulating a researcher from his model. The number of silly pop-science articles would be cut in half if this realization seeped into the minds of the literate public.

This however does not excuse us from trying to develop models that are closer to homo sapiens sapiens than homo economicus. The study of the varieties of rationality and irrationality in economics has been called bounded rationality. I have never been pleased with bounded rationality. The nice thing about the old rationality models was that there was usually an easily agreed upon most likely choice for your rational actor. It was amongst other things a way to keep researchers honest. Not so with bounded rationality. There are many actually existing types of bounded rationality and many more ways to theorize about the ways we are bounded. There are many programs with inconclusive evidence for and against.

This disturbing pluralism removes the guards against an economist gerrymandering his theory to get the result he wants.

While I welcome the introduction of cognitive psychology into the domain of economics, trying to solve the problems of economics by importing the problems of cognitive psychology was, well, depressing. It's like trying to solve traditional sociology problems by using anthropology, i.e. trading in one set of problematic institutions for another. No disrespect to either of those fields, which are wonderful storehouses for knowledge of the varieties of human belief and behavior. But I doubt one would describe the theories of one as more accurate than the theories of the other. The same goes for economics and psychology.

But now I am heartened. As reported in The Economist, neuroeconomics is starting to poke its beak through the shell. If this all works out it is quite a deal. Not only do we possibly get a more accurate reading of human behavior, we get some nifty underlying principles AND some very sound seeming empirical methodologies that may keep researchers honest.

For any one who has ever looked at a game theory puzzle and just despaired at the gap between what's on the paper and what a human would actually do, this is an exciting time.

english mike's page

New link up to a good friend, who by my tyrannical decree shall live under the webname "English Mike." Mike apparently has some wicked flash skills. He has a lot of pictures of the lao wei here in dongying and a little slice of what we like to call the "French Guy Incident."

yup, food

The four main ingredients of culture are food, work, sex and entertainment. The one that fascinates me the most, I must admit, is food. Food is the easiest to appreciate without language and language takes a lot of work. Work is unpleasant.

Barbequed baby birds on a stick. Grosser than barbequed silkworms? I would argue no.

Seller of said birds.

Girl making dumplings. It's tough to get the dough to filling ratio right, tought to make shapely dumplings. They let The Girl try her hand at a few after she took this picture.

Street vendors rock. They warm the cockles of my little capitalist heart and provide tasty stuffed pancakes (pronounced bee-ung) for 1 quay (about 13 cents).

<
Noodle maker outside a Dongying Mall.

rubble! an odyssey

People want to know, what's Dongying like? How does a foriegner get along in it? What's the feel of the city? For the answers to these questions it's best to go to the Expat's Guide to Dongying.

As useful as The Expat's Guide is, there is, alas, something missing from its pages. The feel is just a little off. This is a lack that I can very definitely put my finger on, not some mysterious je ne sais quois. What the Expat's Guide lacks that Dongying has in spades is simply this: piles, rubble and hookers.

One of the more impressive piles near my kindergarten.

There is a brisk pile derived economy in Dongying.

Certain parts of the city have a "recently shelled" look to them.

This is where the sidewalk ends.

One of the many piles of kittens to be found around town. Other popular piles include puppies, meat and shiny.

Jeez, this place has a lot of hookers. According to the locals, only foreigners ever visit hookers. By our estimate there are about 46 foreigners living in Dongying. About half of those are (more or less) heterosexual females. The number of hookers would be impossible to estimate but 500 would be a good basement estimate. Either the locals are totally full of it or these figures speak volumes about the expat sex drive.

Taking pictures of hookers is hard. If they see you they will start bellowing at you to come get your hair washed.

[Note: good photos by The Girl; crappy, oddly composed photos by otis]

there's a lot of pressure at the center of the universe

I was lent an old issue of Fortune magazine with an article on little emperors. The article was an excellant piece of culture reporting and I think it fairly nailed the odd universe of the new middle class Chinese children, whose every want is gratified and who are expected to pull an atlas's weight.

Unfortunately the article requires a subscription, registration and form fields. This companion photo essay is free, though and I believe it tells a lot of story on its own.