Saturday, July 08, 2006

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm: "The secret to the popularity of certain mathematical modelers, I suspect, is that they are valued precisely because they seem to absolve intellectuals from the need to understand the models that underpin orthodox views. Hardly anyone tries to understand what the Santa Fe theorists are actually saying; it is the pose of opposition to received wisdom, together with the implication that in a complicated world you can't learn anything from simple models anyway, that is valued, because it seems to say that not knowing what's in the textbooks is OK."

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