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	<title>Comments on: Daily Data Dump (Thursday)</title>
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	<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/</link>
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		<title>By: miko</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/#comment-21515</link>
		<dc:creator>miko</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:46:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=3902#comment-21515</guid>
		<description>&quot; (A economically rational man would kill a million people for a dollar if there were no cost to him)&quot;

No... we only come to this conclusion because we think of economic cost and benefit in monetary terms, and that &quot;rationality&quot; is somehow distinct from mores and emotions. Economics is not about money, it is about value. To a normal human being, murdering someone is inherently costly, because it violates our entrained mores and probably some fundamental mammalian instincts. Just as the benefit and enjoyment I get out of paying lower taxes is weighed against the cost of living in a country with decrepit and inadequate infrastructure, high crime rates, and a general level of human suffering that displeases me.

What puts someone on the spectrum between asshole and psychopath is when normal human social relations are no longer part of their (economic) value system.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&#8221; (A economically rational man would kill a million people for a dollar if there were no cost to him)&#8221;</p>
<p>No&#8230; we only come to this conclusion because we think of economic cost and benefit in monetary terms, and that &#8220;rationality&#8221; is somehow distinct from mores and emotions. Economics is not about money, it is about value. To a normal human being, murdering someone is inherently costly, because it violates our entrained mores and probably some fundamental mammalian instincts. Just as the benefit and enjoyment I get out of paying lower taxes is weighed against the cost of living in a country with decrepit and inadequate infrastructure, high crime rates, and a general level of human suffering that displeases me.</p>
<p>What puts someone on the spectrum between asshole and psychopath is when normal human social relations are no longer part of their (economic) value system.</p>
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		<title>By: Sid</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/#comment-21514</link>
		<dc:creator>Sid</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:28:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=3902#comment-21514</guid>
		<description>John Emerson: The &quot;rational man&quot; of economics sounds an awful like King Leopold II, of the Congo Free State fame. He had no qualms whatsoever about enslaving, terrorizing and halving an entire population for the sake of profits. Really, what could the Congolese offer him unless he threatened pillage and mutilation?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>John Emerson: The &#8220;rational man&#8221; of economics sounds an awful like King Leopold II, of the Congo Free State fame. He had no qualms whatsoever about enslaving, terrorizing and halving an entire population for the sake of profits. Really, what could the Congolese offer him unless he threatened pillage and mutilation?</p>
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		<title>By: Razib Khan</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/#comment-21513</link>
		<dc:creator>Razib Khan</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 04:18:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=3902#comment-21513</guid>
		<description>ray, it takes all types. if you are going to be an armchair humanist, &lt;i&gt;be one&lt;/i&gt;. no need to math-it all up :-)</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>ray, it takes all types. if you are going to be an armchair humanist, <i>be one</i>. no need to math-it all up <img src='http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
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		<title>By: Ray Sawhill</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/#comment-21512</link>
		<dc:creator>Ray Sawhill</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 02:15:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=3902#comment-21512</guid>
		<description>Hey, are you dissin&#039; &quot;armchair humanists&quot;?</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hey, are you dissin&#8217; &#8220;armchair humanists&#8221;?</p>
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		<title>By: John Emerson</title>
		<link>http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/04/daily-data-dump-thursday/#comment-21511</link>
		<dc:creator>John Emerson</dc:creator>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:12:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/?p=3902#comment-21511</guid>
		<description>Amartya Sen has said, more or less, that the &quot;rational man&quot; of economics is a psychopath. (&quot;Rationality and Freedom&quot;).  The rational man of economics (whether rationality is defined in terms of rational ends-means thinking, or in terms maximization of reward)   isn&#039;t descriptive, and it isn&#039;t really an ideal either. (A economically  rational man would kill a million people for a dollar if there were no cost to him). The economic man is in one sense a fiction invented in order to have something simple to plug into equations, and in another sense it IS an ideal of what people should be like if they were acting purely economically and not messing around with sentimental, idealistic non-economic considerations that economists think make the economy less efficient.</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Amartya Sen has said, more or less, that the &#8220;rational man&#8221; of economics is a psychopath. (&#8220;Rationality and Freedom&#8221;).  The rational man of economics (whether rationality is defined in terms of rational ends-means thinking, or in terms maximization of reward)   isn&#8217;t descriptive, and it isn&#8217;t really an ideal either. (A economically  rational man would kill a million people for a dollar if there were no cost to him). The economic man is in one sense a fiction invented in order to have something simple to plug into equations, and in another sense it IS an ideal of what people should be like if they were acting purely economically and not messing around with sentimental, idealistic non-economic considerations that economists think make the economy less efficient.</p>
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