Yoram Bauman
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2009–2023
5:21 · 1.4M views · Feb 26, 2007
Economist-comedian Yoram Bauman delivers a humorous translation of Mankiw's ten principles of economics for the uninitiated. It was presented at the AAAS humor session in 2007.
HN points to it as a short, funny and genuinely informative take on economic principles such as trade and opportunity cost.
6 comments from Hacker News
I actually don't think they're funny. That's not code for "I think they are inappropriate" (which at a developer's conference, I think they are inappropriate), but rather I don't find them humorous. It's the kind of easy humor people try for when they're not actually funny. I find listening to this sort of thing painful because I feel sorry for the speaker - trying to be funny, failing, and having to deal with it. With that said, even if the speaker did as you said and was completely deadpan, I would still think it's inappropriate. It's just not the appropriate place to even attempt to make those references, no matter how you do it. Among friends, I make and laugh at raunchy jokes. But professional environments should be more inclusive than that. This is what topical, appropriate and actually funny humor in a professional setting looks like: this video
"AI can improve society" reminds me of "Principles of Economics, Translated" (a great 5min video, this video ) - "\#5: Trade can make everyone better off." The same translation can be applied, methinks.
Whilst it doesn't really support or refute any points, economists and interested people might be interested in the light-hearted this video
Right. In terms current thinking I can't speak for an entire field, and I should say from what I have seen economics maybe still follows the lead of hard sciences where coming up with a theoretical model and a beautiful equation on paper which is then strongly supported by empirical research is still sort of a holy grail. But today, the availability of empirical real world data or a way to go get it if not yet collected is night and day different compared to 60 years ago when many of the old economic theories were being thought up and became popular. Go read the old papers there is no data just theory. Today, economic theories and formulas can often very quickly be tested with empirical research and data. And in my opinion current economics has turned toward empirical work having weight over theoretical work How do you disaggregate? You do the best you can. And yes we do try to look at each part individually (not in a vacuum though). Because it turns out aggregating is worse. When you look at TFP the way you describe, you are not just aggregating technologies you are aggregating everything...aggregating all technologies and also whatever else is happening that K and L didn't capture. Who needs that, it doesn't tell you anything practical but that "other stuff is happening". Technology might turn out to be only <5% of TFP. There's enough evidence that TFP has too many "factors" in it to be lumped as just technology. Physicists didn't give up when they realized 95% of the unive
Really, a (not the , but a ) problem is that almost everybody is right. We are certainly fooled by probability. But also, if someone volunteers that one out of their two children is a girl, then it's effectively-100% that the other is a boy, in real life . Slightly amending a quote in a similar context from "Principles of Economics, Explained" ( this video ), nobody says "I have a girl. I have another girl. I have another girl." One way of interpreting this perennial debate is as proof of how just how fuzzy English can be. People aren't just arguing about the answer, they argue about the question too.