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Social Science

Human economics: getting economics right. Finally.

by Johannes Bhakdi June 19, 2010

When I was 19, I felt one of the most important things in the human universe is the question where the wealth of nations and individuals originates from. Why some nations are poor, and other peoples are rich. And even more important: why all of us are so much better of than a few centuries [...]

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Does knowledge change human behavior – or not?

by Johannes Bhakdi June 19, 2010

One of the most fundamental debates around progress is directly related to this insight: is knowledge the bottleneck of progress – or is the real problem that people don’t apply knowledge to their behavior, because they are irrational?

To answer this question, we have to take a step back and become clear about what knowledge is [...]

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Why Newton was right in the first place and what it means for progress

by Johannes Bhakdi June 19, 2010

There is a repeated, annoying pattern in discussions about science and knowledge production. The story goes: Newton and his laws of nature (f=m x a) was wrong, as Einstein’s relativity theory proved. And this means: all knowledge is relative, our scientific findings are only true within a limited historic timeframe.

This is wrong on several levels, [...]

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It’s dark. We need a theory of progress ASAP.

by Johannes Bhakdi June 19, 2010

When I was 19, I had an idea. The idea was: all problems can be solved if people would think about them. The only reason problems don’t get solved is that either people don’t think, or they think in the wrong way. But when I started to try to decipher the human thinking process and [...]

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Economics: the road from ruins

by Johannes Bhakdi June 19, 2010

Every time I look up in the sky and see a plane crossing the sky, I feel a deep sense of pride and satisfaction. The ability to fly is just one of the many examples of the greatness of modern science, the incredible power of the human mind, and its ability to achieve the unthinkable.

The [...]

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