Category: Modeling
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Rational Fools
Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen, coined the term “Rational Fools” nearly 35 years ago. In his famous paper, Sen criticized the first principle of economics: “Every agent is actuated by only self-interest”. On top of this axiom of rational self-interest lie rational action and rational expectations, leading all the way up to the efficiency…
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The Ship of Theseus sails in Water (and not H2O)
The difference between natural language and the language of science The problem of reference in philosophy deals with relations of words to the world. Do words correspond to some mind-independent objects in the external world? In the following text, I propose the thesis that “reference” is one area where science and everyday affairs take sharp,…
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Wittgenstein contra Wahhab
The basic tenet of Salafi/Wahhabi Muslims is that the word of God, i.e., the Quran, is not open to interpretation; the meaning is apparent from what is stated and woe unto those who indulge in the needless and dangerous talk of interpretation. On the other hand, those who hold views similar to those held in…
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The Evolution of Human Behavior?
On why scientists should not make unsubstantiated claims in popular science works especially where human beings are concerned It is quite fashionable these days to try and explain human behavior as a result of evolution through natural selection. Just as a small example, I quote the following from an article by the renowned evolutionary psychologist…
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Bombs, Sectarianism and Blasphemy: What’s Art Got To Do With It?
March 4, 2013 Was coming back from an “Art Event” at the Karachi Arts council. I don’t go to such events but mom insisted (emotionally blackmailed to be precise), so I went. While coming back we started getting messages and calls on our cellphones that there had been two bomb blasts a few hundred meters…
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I ♥ Game Theory; Let’s all be irrational, shall we?
Some nights back, my flight from Karachi to Islamabad couldn’t land due to bad weather in Islamabad and instead it had to land at Lahore airport. We waited and waited, with no official intimation of takeoff plans. Hours passed. I started feeling very hungry and so I went ahead and bought something to eat in…
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Newton’s ‘Quantum Revolution’ and the Death Knell of Materialism
In an earlier post on Einstein, I discussed Newton’s demolition of the mechanical philosophy. Since the topic of materialism is so widely misunderstood, I think the significance of what Newton did should be discussed at length. Unfortunately, the revolutionary import of what Newton did has still not been absorbed by many people, even after the…
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Profits over people: Aaron Swartz and the dominant model of our world
For those who did not know, Aaron Swartz committed suicide on the 11th of January, 2013. He was being prosecuted by the state attorney for having ‘stolen’ thousands of documents from the online academic library JSTOR, and faced up to 35 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. He did this at MIT,…
Realm of the SCENSCI 