I don't think Brian Cox does 'The Wonders of the Solar System' because he believes the world would be a better place if people understood about the rings of Saturn; I just think he finds physics extremely interesting. It brings him joy, and he wants to spread the love. I feel the same about economics.

Tim Harford

Categorized in : Feel World People Love

Success Comes Through Rapidly Fixing our Mistakes Rather than Getting Things Right the First Time.

Tim Harford

fixing mistake firsts

I see the God complex around me all the time in my fellow economists. I see it in our business leaders. I see it in the politicians we vote for - people who, in the face of an incredibly complicated world, are nevertheless absolutely convinced that they understand the way that the world works.

Tim Harford

complicated-world motivation inspiration

You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.

Tim Harford

trial-and-error errors successful

Trying to be able to have, let's say, more than three partners was absolutely impossible, at least for my own relationships.

Tim Harford

able three trying

Economics spreads happiness.

Tim Harford

economics spread

Loss aversion is a really disproportionate anxiety about stuff that doesn't matter very much. So for instance, if you lose $5, you feel really bad about the $5 you've lost. You're cursing yourself. You're going through it again and again. If, on the other hand, you find $5, you go - hey, great, five bucks. And you've forgotten about it really quickly.

Tim Harford

anxiety loss hands

British politicians used to be good at misleading people without actually lying.

Tim Harford

politician lying people

There's lots and lots of guys out there. The question is trying to find the right one.

Tim Harford

guy trying

Failure in Innovation - it's a price worth paying.

Tim Harford

innovation

How did the economy produce all these amazing things that we have around us - computers and cell phones and so on? There were a bunch of ideas, and the good ones grew and prospered. And the bad ones were pretty ruthlessly weeded out.

Tim Harford

phones cells ideas

Synthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.

Tim Harford

real player book

Norway has a relationship with the EU which is very close. It has to accept most EU rules. It has to pay EU membership fees. It has free movement of people just like other EU countries, but it's not actually in the EU.

Tim Harford

movement country people

People today dont become economists to make the world a better place.

Tim Harford

today people world

There's nothing wrong with a plan, but remember Von Moltke's famous dictum that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. The danger is a plan that seduces us into thinking failure is impossible and adaptation is unnecessary - a kind of ‘Titanic' plan, unsinkable (until it hits the iceberg).

Tim Harford

enemy firsts thinking

Accepting trial and error means accepting error. It means taking problems in our stride when a decision doesn't work out, whether through luck or misjudgment. And that is not something human brains seem to be able to do without a struggle.

Tim Harford

errors struggle mean

We now have political chaos. We've got parties in Ireland saying they want to merge with Northern Ireland. You've got parties in Scotland saying you want to leave the U.K. You've got the Spanish government saying it would like to take ownership of Gibraltar, which is a British overseas territory... So just the politics of this is a mess.

Tim Harford

scotland party government

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

Tim Harford

advice giving thinking

I am aiming my books at anybody with no economics background.

Tim Harford

economics backgrounds book

If the whole process of learning from failure means discarding stuff that's not working, but in fact, our natural reaction is to keep going, to throw more money behind it, to throw more emotional energy behind it... that's a real problem.

Tim Harford

emotional real mean

A lot of international companies invest in the U.K. as a base for doing business with the rest of the European Union.

Tim Harford

european-union company unions