{"id":1626,"date":"2009-04-27T03:52:27","date_gmt":"2009-04-27T11:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1626"},"modified":"2023-08-28T01:30:35","modified_gmt":"2023-08-28T08:30:35","slug":"modeling-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=1626","title":{"rendered":"Modeling Madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some people try to light a candle.  Some people curse the darkness.  Me?  Part of me wants to <em>model<\/em> the darkness.<\/p> <p>I was led to this re&auml;lization upon reading <a href=\"http:\/\/zenicurean.livejournal.com\/171813.html\">the latest entry from <span style=\"font-weight: bolder ;\">zenicurean<\/span><\/a>.  In response to news reports about the latest swine-flu concerns, he writes<\/p> <blockquote style=\"font-size: smaller ;\">Plenty of first reactions appear to heavily involve doing things actual health care experts are <span style=\"font-style: italic ;\">not<\/span> chiefly concerned about getting done, but that's how it always works, isn't it?<\/blockquote> <p>And I almost immediately thought about <em>why<\/em> those first re&auml;ctions are what they are.  For example <ul><li>Officials want to be seen as <em>doing<\/em> something.<\/li><li>People, including officials, often greatly over-estimate their understanding of issues that have (or seem to have) a significant bearing on general welfare.<\/li><li>Officials with axes to grind are quick to find excuses for the grinding.<\/li><li>Politicians can exploit the prejudices and desires of voters who are predisposed to support various measures (such as blocking foreign trade or travel, or subsidizing some profession).<\/li><\/ul><\/p><p>So, could we pull this altogether, and surely other things that don't come so quickly to-mind, perhaps into a mathematical model, or perhaps into something less formal, that would have some predictive efficacy, or at least some distinctive explanatory efficacy?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some people try to light a candle. Some people curse the darkness. Me? Part of me wants to model the darkness. I was led to this re&auml;lization upon reading the latest entry from zenicurean. In response to news reports about the latest swine-flu concerns, he writes Plenty of first reactions appear to heavily involve doing [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,36,104,175,4],"tags":[401,577,419,575,576],"class_list":["post-1626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-economics","category-news","category-philosophy","category-public","tag-politics","tag-public-choice","tag-public-policy","tag-science","tag-social-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1626"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12155,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1626\/revisions\/12155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}