Economists Studying The Human Brain
from the still-trying-to-figure-us-out dept
Economists used to operate under the assumption that, for the most part, people behave rationally. Eventually, they started realizing that their theoretical models of human behavior didn't translate very well into the real world. Behavioral economics, the study of how people act in real world situations, was born. But this has problems too; for one thing, people sometimes change their behavior when they know they're being studied. So now it's time to go beyond behavioral economics, to neuro-economics. Now instead of speculating about how humans might behave, economists are looking under the hood, using medical technology to monitor how the human brain reacts when making economic decisions. Turns out that the human brain is wired completely wrong when it comes to assessing risk and reward, and it makes people perform poorly in areas like investing. On the other hand, the brain does use resources in an efficient decentralized manner, with different sections specializing in different kinds of decision-making, sort of like Sony's upcoming nine-core chip dubbed The Cell. Of course, it remains to be seen whether any of this research will make economics a more useful discipline, or whether it's just more fodder for papers that nobody reads. Most likely, it will simply spawn a few niche hedge funds.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Cell
For one, each Cell will have one SPE disabled, to improve yields.
For two, the SPE's aren't quite cores, per se, but they sort of are...they fall into a grey area.
Oh, and IIRC, Cell is supposed to be able to support multiple configurations. The version that has "8 cores" with one SPE disabled is the one which will be used in the Sony PS3.
Finally, it's not Sony's chip. It's Sony, Toshiba, and IBM.
But I'm just picking nits.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Cell
So that means they are manufacturing chips with nine cores laid out but the defect rate is so high that they can only count on eight working on most chips. Talk about making a virtue out of necessity. It will be interesting to see if they announce products with 7, 6 or five functioning cores.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Oh Wow
The Human Brain AND The Economy
I am humbled
[ link to this | view in thread ]
human brain
and my friend is really hot so if you are a boy my
friend is wiating....
OH, IF YOU EVER GO NEER HER I WILL CALL THE COPS...
Bey for now!
[ link to this | view in thread ]