Unfortunately for my academic career, my thesis was that everything was simultaneously bell-shaped, sigmoid, sinusoidal, stochastic, fractal AND metaphorical, depending on the predisposition and vantage point of the observer. Every time I tried to explain this to my advisers, they thought what I was saying was "shit happens".
On Sat, Oct 2, 2010 at 10:46 AM, Mike Spencer <[email protected]> wrote: > > Arthur wrote: > >> Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite >> world is either a madman or an economist. -- Kenneth Boulding > > Why is that not obvious to anybody who has taken the basic math > courses required for an undergrad degree in economics? Everything is > sigmoid. > > At the risk of distracting us from more serious debate, I venture to > inject a bit of levity on where to begin when writing a paper on > economics or, for that matter, any academic paper, up to and including > a PhD thesis, on any subject. > > > From the Data Analysis Devices Application - Toolkit With > Integrated Tao (DADA-TWIT): > > 1. Everything is bell-shaped (Normally distributed) > > 2. Everything is sigmoid (Diminishing returns) > > 3. Everything is sinusoidal (Goes in cycles) > > 5. Everything is stochastic (Completely random and unpredictable) > > 6. Everything is fractal (It's turtles all the way down) > > 7. Everything is a metaphor (The Pomo option, for the math challenged) > > > None of these putative universals is true, of course, but you > can write a nice academic paper on almost anything by assuming > one of them and then demonstrating that the assumption is or is > not justified. If you can't spin a PhD thesis out of one of > these, you may need to invoke: > > > 8. Shit happens (The Dada, holistic, artistic option) > > > -- > Imafa Kinasso > > Director, Ontic Research Knowledgebase (Lagos, NG) > Bridgewater Institute for Advanced Study > _______________________________________________ > Futurework mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework > -- Sandwichman _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
